What was your favourite Noel Streatfeild book?

[Deminism]

Have been reading some to DD and we’re loving them. I realise however she wrote loads and I had only read a few as a kid. Ballet shoes, White Boots and Thursday’s Child.

Of the others which did you love the most?

@rogerponny

Ballet Shoes. The idea of the book is good, but it fails in its motivational function. Much of this has to do with the completely passive-amoebic behaviour of the girl protagonist. Personally, at the very least, I find it strange that Anna herself has done nothing for her dream; has not taken any decisive steps to somehow bring her dream closer. Yes, Anna says practically directly that she is a gifted ballerina and it is not her concern to find money for her own dance training. All means are good in the pursuit of dreams, and it's great when there are people close to you, ready to do a lot for the sake of your "desires". For any athlete or dancer who wants to make a name for herself to the world, achieving success and her goal is a personal challenge, not shifting the responsibility for its implementation to others.

Anna in BSFA is a particular type of character - like Posy - the single-minded ballet 'genius' as opposed to the talented all rounder (Pauline) or the merely competent because they've been taught well (Petrova, Francesco, Gussie).

In Streatfeild's world, normal rules don't apply to this character type - they must live for nothing but ballet, no matter if that makes them selfish or unreasonable (as in your example above, or Posy's reaction to Madame's illness).

You're right that this character-type's success depends on having tolerant, supportive family. Anna's brothers had been brought up to believe everything should be sacrificed for the sake of Art - their father had stolen from his family to run away and paint, but that was justified because he was a genius. It also depends on someone recognising the 'special spark' of talent, as Jardek had for Anna, and nurturing this.

In the 21st century, real world, amid millions of aspiring dancers, artists and so on, all egged on by social media, it's very doubtful that a 'special spark' would get you on without luck, contacts and hard work. But even BSFA, one of Steatfeild's last books, was written almost 50 years ago, and times were different then.

@OperationRinka

Yes Pauline pays for the holiday for them all to recover from whatever retro disease they have ?scarlet fever? Mumps? out of her savings. It's a sign that she's growing up and making her own choices that she sees the state of the family and takes drastic action.

Isn't Pauline's holiday the one they have because they're all feeling very low - crying for no reason?

There's another holiday they go on to get over whooping cough, which is in the countryside where they can 'whoop' away to their hearts' content without embarrassing themselves in public.

Do children still get whooping cough (I wonder, in an off-topic way)? I remember it 'going round' in the early 1980s when I was at junior school.

I still don't know what the 'black plastics' were all about!

And many of the ballet clothes in the earlier books were slightly beyond my imaginings as well, though the illustrations helped a bit. I don't think I ever worked out what an attache case was, though. In my mind it sounded like a briefcase, but then I couldn't pictures all these little ballet students arriving for lessons like miniature businessmen.

Here is the 1930s cardboard attache case that was no longer available in wartime - you could only get the leather ones like Miriams's costing pounds and pounds.

Also, am I right in thinking that Ruth Gervis was the real Isobel?

That isn't so far from what I was imagining the cases looked like, actually, though not such bright colours!

Yes I think Ruth Gervis was Isobel

Do children still get whooping cough (I wonder, in an off-topic way)? I remember it 'going round' in the early 1980s when I was at junior school.

Don't know about children, but but a friend got it a few years ago, in her late 40s. She had a pretty rough time with it.

I always thought the black plastics were PVC/pleather dresses. I probably read Gemma and watched Grease at around the same time!

Whooping cough is now one of the routine jabs given to pregnant women and then to babies. There was an epidemic in the UK in 2012.

Ballet Shoes, I love it

I loved Ballet Shoes as a child, and was thrilled to find a copy recently in a book exchange. Can't wait to read it again!

Whooping cough is also covered in the routine childhood vaccination schedule.

So many old children's books where an important plot point would now be unlikely - I'm pretty sure whooping cough was featured in Worzel Gummidge, to say nothing of the extra weeks of holiday the Swallows, Amazons and Ds get in Winter Holiday.

(I know Winter Holiday is mumps, not whooping cough.)

Enid Blyton's characters miss whole half terms of school.

I had two online meetings with people yesterday who were ill with Covid. I think we need a middle ground between weeks and weeks of bed, and actually taking time off when ill.

Yes in one of the Famous five books, the one where they befriend a barefoot feral Welsh child (oh Enid), the gang are told that they must go skiing in Wales rather than return to school in January. Because they'd all had the flu at Christmas or something.

@Classica

Yes in one of the Famous five books, the one where they befriend a barefoot feral Welsh child (oh Enid), the gang are told that they must go skiing in Wales rather than return to school in January. Because they'd all had the flu at Christmas or something.

Yeah, I get told that all the time. It's a real drag, those recuperative ski-trips. (And yes to EB's depiction of Welsh people in general, not just the feral barefoot Ailie -- in one of the 'Adventure' books with Jack, Philip, Lucy-Ann and Dinah, all Welsh people are all plump, short and dark-eyed and say 'Look you' every ten seconds, when they aren't feeble-minded shepherds called Dafydd who are only in the plot to be useless.)

I tell you, though, I never really understood the importance of the start-of-term 'health certificates' that feature in so many boarding-school stories (the returning pupils have to hand them to the matron/secretary on arrival to say that they haven't been in contact with anyone with an infectious disease recently), but it starts to make a lot more sense in the age of Covid certs, when you look back at pre-vaccination times and start to think about the stuff like measles, mumps, whooping cough etc that used to be rife.

As I suppose the plots involving holidays while recovering from illnesses etc.

I certainly understand the Fossils enjoying being able to whoop while having whooping cough in freedom in a field, given that people will often cross the road to avoid a cougher at the moment, even if if it's fairly clear it's a crisp gone down the wrong way!

Does anyone know what the origin of Welsh people stereotypically saying, "Look you," comes from? I've often wondered. I've never ever heard anyone say it, and I've lived in Wales pretty much all my life.

@110APiccadilly

Does anyone know what the origin of Welsh people stereotypically saying, "Look you," comes from? I've often wondered. I've never ever heard anyone say it, and I've lived in Wales pretty much all my life.

I've always vaguely assumed that a lot of subsequent writers borrowed it from Shakespeare's Fluellen in Henry V, who says it a lot, and has a lot of 'comic stereotype' elements to his characterisation...?

I always wondered what Harriet's debilitating but non-infectious illness was, in White Boots.

The Johnsons do actually seem genuinely hard up, with Alec having to get a paper round to afford the skates, and no servants/household help.

I had had no contact with other children before I started school (yes, none! No playgroup nor did I play with anyone). Consequently I got Every Single Thing, including whooping cough (also scarlet fever, mumps and German Measles etc etc) all in one year and was off for weeks at a time. I can remember being on the swing in the garden and hearing the children in the school playground (and being jolly glad I wasn’t there ) .

Wouldn't it be great if your GP gave your prescription that just said 'Courchevel'!

Ailie, yes that was the wild Welsh child's name. Thinking about it, it's just as well Enid didn't stray beyond English characters too often. Her characterisations of English people she felt weren't quite top drawer could be offensive enough.

@Storminamu

Reminds me of the start of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, where we're told the family are really poor, as the 2 children come home from boarding school for the summer holidays.

I have no recollection of this at all!

@110APiccadilly

Does anyone know what the origin of Welsh people stereotypically saying, "Look you," comes from? I've often wondered. I've never ever heard anyone say it, and I've lived in Wales pretty much all my life.

I used to work with a lovely (and extremely bright and well qualified) Welsh woman who was utterly mortified when, halfway through a job interview for a role well beneath her capabilities, the recruiting manager stopped her and said 'I feel I need to make sure the panel knows that English is your second language'. He seemed to think that his colleagues might find her perfect spoken English with a Welsh accent hard to understand.

@Classica

Wouldn't it be great if your GP gave your prescription that just said 'Courchevel'!

Ailie, yes that was the wild Welsh child's name. Thinking about it, it's just as well Enid didn't stray beyond English characters too often. Her characterisations of English people she felt weren't quite top drawer could be offensive enough.

Violently offensive. If you weren’t white and middle-class, you only had the option of being a baddie, a simple-minded shepherd who says ‘Ah’ a lot, a picturesque but surly circus person, a feral gypsy girl who takes a fancy to Dick, an unhelpful local bobby who doesn’t recognise the innate superiority of Julian and co who go over his head to the Inspector and humiliate him, a rosy-cheeked farmer’s wife who plies the Five with apple tarts and ham and refuses to take more than five p in return, or an elderly tyke called Old Grandpa Something who yarns on about smugglers or wreckers and calls George ‘Young Sir’.

Or the working-class comic relief like Ern in the Five Findouters series, who writes ‘pomes’, doesn’t wash and is sent to have tea in the kitchen with the servants.

Or foreign and lacking honour.