I actually got confused today (it really doesn’t take much!) as I was idly trying to work out what part of Mountain we had got to, but couldn’t remember. We’re actually reading Circus at the moment, but as I’ve spent this week skimming through Mountain to remind me of all the things Brodie said, it felt as if we had just read it.

We actually read it from the 7th of August to the 29th of August – so I’m catching up!

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A book of many emotions

I know that some people dislike this one (or at least, like it less) as they are not fans of the weird sci-fi stuff, and they find the Welsh whateffers to be silly and over-the-top. Brodie had a lot of feelings, but none of them were of dislike.

Horror

The idea that there might be wolves prowling around

The notion of men being forced to jump to their deaths

Even more so that one of the children might have to try out the wings

Dismay/despair

That David and the donkeys had abandoned the children and left them lost

That the helicopter wouldn’t fly, that they lost in the mountain, and that  someone’s coming up the ladder just as they are so close to escape… I swear he was quite breathless!

Fear

When the wolves came back at night and get between Philip and the cave he was quite frightened and wanted to sit close to me, and again when the dogs are hunting them near the end

Worry

He was extremely concerned about Kiki when she’s separated from Jack, and kept asking if they’d find her again. He was afraid the men would hurt her, and then that she wouldn’t make it out of the mountain with the others.

Relief

When the wolves turn out to be dogs

When Kiki is heard (and obviously alive), and when she flies out to join them once they’ve escaped.

Confusion

He was baffled by the cave – though he thought the wheel might drain the pool and lead to an entrance under water.

He wasn’t sure whether or not to believe in these marvellous wings (the story does seem to suggest that there ARE anti-gravity rays in the mountain) and kept asking me if they were really real. I think he’d love to have had a go if they were.

Disappointment

He really had hoped that Philip could keep all the dogs, and snowy!

Joy

As always he loved all of Kiki’s antics, and was particularly pleased that she saved the day again. As he put it

Kiki always confuses the bad guys and scares them off!

He also loved them feeding Philip secretly.

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Reading aloud

This one required probably the most amount of thinking on my feet to adapt as I read.

There’s some irritating ‘poor weak girls’ stuff in this one, and also a lot of problems with the way Sam is described.

First up everyone was still after their donkey rides, not just the girls and Mrs Mannering.

Philip said Let’s get the food out. Instead of Get out the food, Lucy-Ann and Dinah. Not even a please! The girls wash the dishes afterwards, which is fine as the boys are busy unpacking the donkeys.

“Poor Lucy-Ann!” said Philip. “We certainly do happen on strange things. I think it’s very exciting. I love adventures.”
“Yes, but you’re a boy,” said Lucy-Ann. “Girls don’t like that kind of thing.”
“I do,” said Dinah at once. “I’ve enjoyed every single one of our adventures

I left that part as Dinah gets to disagree with him! Brodie agreed that girls can like adventures, like George.

I can’t remember exactly what I said but I know I changed (or maybe just skipped) the second half of this:

All the same it was a pity [Philip] wasn’t with the others—especially as now there was only Jack to look after the girls.

I decided NOT to go with black, black, black, when David runs off but hadn’t thought that far ahead and very quickly chose eyes, eyes, eyes! (I could have, with hindsight, gone with a face).

You could perhaps explain David’s reaction as him never having seen a Black person before – he lives in a remote part of Wales where there was unlikely to be many Black people in 1949. (In the 40s there were probably around 10,000 Black people living in the UK, predominantly in port cities).

I actually haven’t checked this in any modern versions – I wonder what it has been updated to?

Lucy-Ann’s reaction isn’t much better – certainly, you’d be surprised to see a face in a tree when you thought you were alone in the valley. But it’s not just that it’s a face, but it’s a black face, as if this is somehow more horrifying. Perhaps, again, it was merely meant to be surprising, but I felt that bit off anyway.

The blackness is (like with Jo-Jo) remarked on rather too often, so I omitted some of it again.

I did not use negro which both Blyton and the children use repeatedly instead of just man, particularly frustratingly they do this long after it’s established that his name is Sam!

For the most part this all meant very tiny differences between the text and what I read aloud. Omitting a single word here and there, switching a single for for man – as I try to stick as close to the books as much as possible.

Sam’s dialogue needed a bit more as I chose to not use such broken English.

Lucy-Ann rushing off to tell the others had to change too as it wouldn’t have made sense for her to rush off and say eyes, or a man’s eyes or anything. So she said a man and Philip said It must have been his eyes David saw.

Not the best bit of dialogue ever but best I come up with on the spur of the moment.

For the Japanese servants I missed off the references to little men and their little feet. I also referred to them as the men rather than the Japanese at least some of the time as it was annoying that they were referred to as a nationality rather than as people.

I definitely did NOT do the You be caleful, much bitee, stuff!

Anyway, on to accents now – all terrible.

The Welsh accents start from p5 but thankfully are gone by chapter 7 with the exception of a few rare words from David, and a few lines from Mr Evans near the end.

As I said above a lot of people are annoyed by the look yous and whateffers but I found them very useful for getting me into my “Welsh” accent, which I will never do in front of a Welsh person for fear of offending them horrifically.

I found Evans/Effans rather annoying as it’s one thing for Mrs Evans to pronounce their name with the F sound, but Blyton calls him it too and I was forever getting it muddled.

Meier got a vaguely German sort of accent which slipped towards Russia/Eastern Europe sometimes. Basically I switch in V for W and see where it goes. No idea what nationality Meier is supposed to be!

Brodie helped with some of Kiki’s noises. He likes to do all her hiccups and added the farmyard sounds as well. (Except for turkeys as I had to get Alexa to play that for him.)

I (as always) did not attempt any of her special sound effects like a car changing gear or the express train in a tunnel (human voice boxes are just not that good, or at least mine isn’t!).

Donkey noises I cannot do, but at least a goat is easy enough.

I was excited for the don’t forget Bill Smugs part, and his reaction was pretty great. Though he didn’t didn’t at first think it WAS Bill. I think he suggested it was Mr Evans or Trefor or someone equally improbable.

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Other derailments

I feel like we didn’t have as many conversations/explanations in this book.

He did assert (several times) that of course they were going to have an adventure.

He (predictably) gasped when they mentioned Scotland.

He sighed and said yes, you have to wash when Philip asked – he doesn’t like having to wash up before meals any more than Philip does.

He didn’t think that spring water could be as nice as lemonade.

He asked what panniers were.

He predicted that they would get lost in the mist and inside the mountain.

The shuddering was an earthquake, and the crack in the mountain was a secret passage. 

He sang little bit of bread and no cheese when the yellowhammer was mentioned (he loves to sing this, sometimes when we’re out and hear a yellowhammer,  but also sometimes at random).

He knew what gravity is of course. I explained how Blyton often used the youngest of the group to ask what might seem like silly questions so that she could explain it to the readers and he was quite impressed by that.

The slow worm babies were so cute.

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I forgot to ask him at the end who his favourite characters/what his favourite bits were, and he’ll never remember now!