After our brief detour to the Adventure series we returned to back to back Famous Five. (There have only been about 20 days where I have not read an Enid Blyton book this year and most of them are the evenings I work late and get home after Brodie’s bed time!)

Five Go to Billycock Hill

This is one of my lesser favourites so I wasn’t looking forward to reading this as much. Saying that, I usually find something new when reading them to Brodie as he has a different perspective.

I’ve read this book many times before, and never thought to look up a Billycock hat, which is what Billycock Hill gets its name from. Lo and behold, it turns out that a Billycock hat is just another name for a bowler hat! It has only taken me 25-30 years to discover this…

He asked (yet again) what humbugs are, then probably forgot the answer right away as he always seems to do, and demanded to know why the Five didn’t drink from the stream like Timmy did. (My explanation being that it was OK to drink from springs as the water comes from underground, but not to drink from a stream which might have passed through a field where animals might have contaminated it.)

When something small and pink ran to greet them he thought it was Toby, and that Biky must be a pet rat if they were “ratting”.

Whenever he sees collie dogs in real life he now describes them as the kind of dogs Timmy always meets.

He was slightly perturbed by Curly’s grandad ham on the table and kept asking what happened to the lamb and the geese Benny had as pets before… they quite possibly got eaten too, I guess.

More things I had to look up to show him were rushes and heather. We found some heather in pots at Stirling Castle (Brodie took a photo so we would remember) so we spent some time prodding it to feel how springy it is.

My rrrrrrrrr aeroplane noises are obviously not very good as he didn’t guess what’s what it was – but at least on later attempts he got it.

Like George he argued that moths fly at night and butterflies in the day. He said he didn’t know what muslin was, but he should as he still has muslins from when he was a baby!

We talked about stalagmites and stalactites and he’s done his best to remember which is which (I’ll have to ask him again now to see if he still remembers).

First he believed that Jeff and Ray had flown the planes. Then he thought that it was just Ray and Jeff wasn’t involved. Then he changed his mind back and forth a few times. He was a bit upset at the thought that they were drowned. He couldn’t figure out the fake Mr Brent at all. Other than it was someone in disguise – maybe Jeff! (Who he sometimes called Tom Jeffries )

He guessed they might be in the caves. J… T… (from Curly’s back) he exclaimed Jeffrey Thomas!! He was excited that they were in the caves after all.

He said he liked this one but not as much as the others. He didn’t like the setting so much, it was too back and forth between the camp and the farm and the butterfly place. He liked all the characters especially Benny and the Pigling. He really understood Benny blaming the pigling for running away as an excuse to explore – probably because he’s got the same mindset!

Things he found particularly funny – Uncle Quentin tripping over the Five and him forgetting he’s tidied his own desk. He’s not quite self aware enough to realise that he does very similar things himself! Also the salt with strawberries and sugar with radishes, I’m hoping he’s forgotten and won’t try it himself.

Five Get Into a Fix

We looked at the endpapers the first night and he asked are they skiing? Does that mean they won’t be having an adventure?

In order to not have a load of questions about who Mrs Barnard is I chose to just call her Mrs Kirrin.

He was concerned that going off somewhere cold would make their coughs worse or make them catch new ones and he didn’t know what a a toboggan was (but he understood when I said a wooden sledge).

I had to dust off the old Welsh accent for this one of course – but I forgot that Jenkins was Welsh so he had a different accent to begin with. He was surprised they were going to Wales and had to be told where Wales was.

We had a conversation about what it means when an idea clicks and he spent some time making clicky mouth noises.

He didn’t ask but I played a recording of whooping cough to explain it and he found it funny, but I tried to explain it was very dangerous! So he ran off to tell Ewan about kids with the whoops.

He was baffled by the car problem and just said it must have been something wrong with the car. Thought later that the hill might be full of the magnetic sort of rocks he finds on the beach (he has a metal detector and some rocks set it off).

When the other dogs face off against Timmy he said they’ll only come when Morgan calls them!

We had a disagreement about the book referring to the two girls as he says that George is a boy. I had to try to explain that yes nowadays some girls feel like they are boys (and vice versa) so they might change their name and you’d then call them he etc, or some people don’t feel like boy or a girl so use ‘they’ but it was a bit different for George as the book is 70 years old. (My personal opinion is that George didn’t necessarily want to be a boy/ didn’t feel like a boy but she wanted the freedom and respect that being a boy would give her).

Other things I had to explain were what crockery was, and a blouse. Also what sleeping like logs meant – even though it’s probably been said dozens of times in the series already. He was confused and said but trees move a lot! and gave me a demonstration of him moving like a tree in the wind. I got the usual ohhhh of comprehension for explaining it’s a cut log not an actual tree. He asked what a hearth rug was – again – so we had to talk about that again. He insisted the regular rug at our holiday house was a hearth rug because it was black and fluffy and like that dog they called a rug.

When Anne says it’s a pity Timmy can’t ski, he’ll have to be left at the hut he made me turn back to the endpapers to see Timmy left behind as they ski.

George says she doesn’t like Morgan and he butted in with I like Morgan. I love Morgan! He has the best name and an amazing voice! He’s my favourite character – so far.

He was surprised at the idea of boiling snow for water but concluded it did make sense. Of course he asked what a snow slide was right before the book describes it… I didn’t get as far as an elongated sleigh when he butted in with I know what it’s like – Santa’s sleigh! He wanted to know why they didn’t put the toboggans and skis on the snow slide too. And what a toboggan was – even though I explained it the other day.

I asked him what he’d rather do, stay at the farm with the hot meals or go stay in the cabin. He chose the farm because of all the food. I suggested a compromise maybe he’d visit the hut and stay one night then go back down for breakfast.

Yes. I’d have pork pie and sausages for breakfast. Hot dogs and burgers! And Apple pie! And tomatoes and cucumber! Then to finish it all off a bowl this big (he had his arms spread wide) of fizzy juice which I’d drink in one go.

As I don’t have a dust jacket on my copy I looked up the cover when we read about Dick and George falling off the toboggan. He surprised me by saying he’d already seen it, turns out it’s on one of the postcards in the hall!

I asked him if Aily’s mother’s story was real or a tale. He said it was real and it would be the adventure. He thought there were diamonds in the towers at Old Towers and the Five would go and find them. I looked up at heat haze for him and he said the shimmering must be a heat haze, the snow wouldn’t dissuade him.

He suggested that maybe it’s a washing machine making the vibrations as I said it must feel like it does when our washing machine spins the washing. What colour is was the mysterious haze? Rainbow coloured. He guessed smock was smoke.

I went with a non-Welsh accent for the caretaker which was good as the next page they said he didn’t sound Welsh.

He guessed that the biting fence was electric and he agreed that Aily was lying about the notes. When Aily’s mother speaks Welsh he demanded to know what she was saying, he wasn’t happy that a) the book just says poured out a long string of Welsh words or b) that I don’t speak Welsh.

When Morgan went past after the boys talked to him he said it’s not good that Morgan’s going past.

He could not guess what was in the coal bunker even from the picture. Eventually got a head?” from him. (My illustration is not in colour it’s  little less clear than the one below.)

He definitely did not want them to let Morgan in when he came back down.

Derailing the story he disagreed with my pronunciation of compass, he insisted it was an “uh” sound at the beginning rather than an “oh”, but I was speaking in Julian’s voice which is a wee bitty posher than my own.

He thought that a corridor of paintings could be pretty spooky. When we learned more about Lewellyn Thomas he asked why did they have a killing in this book? Why did there have to be a dead person? It is slightly unusual I suppose, usually deaths are of the my parents died when I was little variety, rather than murder.

He was very tense during the underground chase. He guessed that Morgan’s shout was going to be him calling his dogs. He wanted the Five to go after the men too with kicks and punches.

At the end he said he didn’t like this as much of some of the others as it wasn’t as adventurous. I nearly disowned him when he said that Billycock Hill was better. But he did say it was confusing and there was too much going here and there. To be fair the underground bits are a bit confusing with the tunnels and cellars – I can never remember how it all works after I’ve read it.

His favourite part was the same as mine – Morgan calling his dogs. His favourite characters were The usual, Mummy! Julian, Dick, George, and I guess Anne this time as she was brave too. Morgan, and the old lady, and the men, and everyone.

There was only one really funny moment for him this time – when Julian jumped out the top bunk forgetting that’s where he was.