when the posh children in Enid Blyton have an "ice", I always thought it meant "ice lolly"...

[sadpapercourtesan]

...but I was reading "Five Go To Billycock Hill" last night, and they talked about having an "ice" in a tub with a little wooden spoon...surely that's an ice cream?!

Yes, I have too much time on my hands. I should be doing stuff

We once had a holiday in a house with a dinner gong. My dd1 was delighted.
The series about the farm family - and the strange old man who lived in a cave...that was slightly odd.

I have read Nancy Mitford, I know about this stuff

Me too! seems I used to have quite the thing for 'posh family' books!

Loved it when one of them - Linda? Said she was 'in pig' when pregnant.

@Aesopfable

George’s parents were quite progressive though considering her dad took his wife’s surname (Kirin was her mother’s name/connection) though he then seemed selfishly preoccupied with his work, shouted at everyone, and despite his ‘very important work’ he didn’t earn enough for his daughter to go to school (she only went after she found gold on the island that had been inherited from her mother’s family).

Kirrin was Aunt Fanny’s maiden name, since Kirrin Island and Kirrin farmhouse come from her side of the family, but I am pretty sure that in the first book it is established that Julian Dick and Anne’s Dad is Quentin’s brother. And it is later established that their surname is also Kirrin. So Quentin Kirrin must have married Fanny Kirrin - perhaps they too were cousins.

I had a bit of a crush on Uncle Quentin, ever since Five on Kirrin Island Again when he was doing some research on the Island which required him to be underwater in a cave for some reason, and Anne asked if he was working on a new kind of bomb and he was absolutely horrified. It was some kind of clean energy source he was working on.

Everything I know about "posh" comes from Jilly Cooper books .

Getting invited for Kitchen Sups is a no frills , whatever we're eating tonight , type of meal . (Which your domestic rustles up, obvs )

Ps about the ice business. Isn't an ice just a lolly?

Which is actually all you got back in the old days, no cornettos nor nothing in shop freezers. Oh apart from choc ices which you also got in cinemas. I remember the excitement which rocked the nation when they introduced the mivvi , which was a smidgeon of icecream encased in erm, a lolly. You could get icecream from an icecream van in a cone, or a block to wrap in newspaper and run home with before it melted for tea on Sunday , but icecream was a treat to be eaten seriously. American films were made even more exciting and extraordinary because they had things like ice cream floats and delicious flavours we could only dream about.

We did call ice-creams just ice in my fifties childhood, as in "would you like an ice?" It was pronounced "aice". 😂
Quite often served in one of those cone shaped glass dishes with a wafer stuck in it. I have a vivid memory of eating them in Kennard's in Croydon, whilst a string quartet of ladies in silk blouses played.

I grew up in Enid, I took an ice to mean an ice cream but it could have been on a cornet or a tub or like we had it as kids just in a bowl on its own.

This thread is the best. I developed a life long love of ginger beer after reading the famous five as a child. Imagine to my delight that I discovered alcoholic ginger beer a few years ago!

I recently reread the Valley if Adventure, which was one of my favourite EB books. It seemed a bit darker reading it as an adult.

My daughter was an avid reader of Enid Blyton when younger; I well remember her asking me what 'ejaculated' meant when we in the Co-op one evening. There were sniggers from fellow customers... Fortunately I asked the context; good ol' Enid has people ejaculating quite often!

This thread is making me want a slush puppy. Do 7/11 still do them? Are there still 7/11s?

@FlossieTeacakesFurCoat18

I'm so glad I'm not the only adult who reads famous five books 😄

There is no better feeling than going to bed knowing you've got an Enid Blyton adventure to read ❤️

You have spurred me to start reading Blyton. It's never too late!

The 1990s adaptation of the FF are pretty good, 7 year old DS loves them.

@missclimpson

We did call ice-creams just ice in my fifties childhood, as in "would you like an ice?" It was pronounced "aice". 😂 Quite often served in one of those cone shaped glass dishes with a wafer stuck in it. I have a vivid memory of eating them in Kennard's in Croydon, whilst a string quartet of ladies in silk blouses played.

I remember that too!

@eddiemairswife

I always wondered about the lavatory arrangements. In one of the 'Adventure' books they were in a cave,( beds of bracken, tinned peaches etc.) but nobody needed to have a wee.

I've always wondered about this too!

In Kennards jessstan2? Did you do the pony rides in the arcade?

tinymetalbirds I think this is one of those occasions where Enid forgot her own characters. Pretty sure thar later on (possibly as late as Five have a mystery to solve), It is said that Julian et al’s surname is Barnard.
Kill me now.

The Adventure series is racist as all get out. DH and I accuse each other of being a swarthy foreigner when the other one mumbles and we can't understand each other.

We've just read the whole series with the DDs at bedtime and I've infuriated them by asking about toilets. Those 4 kids are forever hiding in caves and bushes and suits of armour for days at a time but no one ever needs a poo

Oh and ice is definitely ice cream.

@OxenoftheSun

Or in fact give them food because they are so taken with the kids. Every farmer's wife seems to be a Mrs Doyle, pressing cake, sweets, ham, bread, and in one case I seem to remember "bottled raspberries" whatever they were, onto the children completely gratis.

Exactly! Because they like Julian and his seigneurial manners (the fascist little toad). You can always tell the 'good' working class from the 'bad' working class in EB, because the good ones press food upon the children, tug forelocks, address the children as 'little Master and Miss',and tell them old stories in charming West Country/Welsh voices. The bad ones are urban, Cockney, or suspiciously foreign, and if they're rural policemen, they don't defer to the children OR believe their stories about mysterious lights/smugglers/spook trains, so the children have to go over their heads to the middle-class inspectors, who have big cars, invariably believe them, and treat them to a hotel tea when they've solved a case.

This post really made me chuckle.

I reread St Clare's and Malory Towers over Easter, partly because of the BBC MT adaptation. I particularly noticed that it's pine-apple, not pineapple.

And cocoa-nut. I'm re-reading the Faraway Tree books with my DS. It's not quite as magical as I remember! So many repeated recountings of how they get to the Enchanted Wood and that the leaves are a darker colour than usual and how much they look forward to going and recapping of all the characters, and the word 'queer' is used almost every sentence in wonder at how most peculiar it all is.

I loved the five find outers stories but hated the snobbery towards Mr Goon the policeman. When I was reading them to ds I kept pointing out that they were being very rude and disrespectful.

In the Blyton context, it means assassinating some people. Usually bullies.

@OxenoftheSun

Or in fact give them food because they are so taken with the kids. Every farmer's wife seems to be a Mrs Doyle, pressing cake, sweets, ham, bread, and in one case I seem to remember "bottled raspberries" whatever they were, onto the children completely gratis.

Exactly! Because they like Julian and his seigneurial manners (the fascist little toad). You can always tell the 'good' working class from the 'bad' working class in EB, because the good ones press food upon the children, tug forelocks, address the children as 'little Master and Miss',and tell them old stories in charming West Country/Welsh voices. The bad ones are urban, Cockney, or suspiciously foreign, and if they're rural policemen, they don't defer to the children OR believe their stories about mysterious lights/smugglers/spook trains, so the children have to go over their heads to the middle-class inspectors, who have big cars, invariably believe them, and treat them to a hotel tea when they've solved a case.

Yes, Julian and Anne would have been first in the queue to join the Hitler Youth/Bund Deutscher Mädel if EB had been transposed to 1930s Germany. Julian's the perfect little fascist - he might aspire to be seigneurial, but he's really a petty bourgeois thug, and Anne's all about the Kinder, Küche, Kirche. I have my doubts about Timmy too - potential Fifth Columnist, I'd say.

Dick was always a bit underwritten mysterious and potentially subversive though. And George would definitely be signalling the Resistance from her Kirrin Island stronghold, using the Enigma machine Quentin had run up.

yeah, just a posh word for ice cream. See: choc ice.

And “rugs” when she means “blankets”!