Previous letters pages can be found here.

Letters page from Volume 3, issue 26.
December 21st 1955 – January 3rd 1956.

OUR

LETTER PAGE

A letter from Lesley Quick, St. Peters, Kent.
Dear Enid Blyton,
I am proud to say that I have saved all your magazines from Number 1. I am extra pleased about this now because I have a chance to put them to good use. In my brother’s ward in hospital is a girl of my own age, and each week I am sending a few magazines to her, and now she looks forward to them ever so much. Unfortunately it is a polio ward and they will both be there a long time, so I’m glad I can help in this small way. Goodbye for now.
Yours sincerely,
Lesley Quick.

(I am very glad that the old magazines of mine that you saved are being put to such good use, Lesley. Well done!)

A letter from Dorothy Mason Walsall, Staffs.
Dear Enid Blyton,
Last night Mummy found a hamster that a cat had got. It was bleeding so Daddy bathed it and put it into a box. This morning, on my way to school, I called at a house where they sold hamsters, and asked if they had lost one, and they had. So I took the hamster to them at dinner-time and I was given a shilling which I am sending to you for the little Children’s Home in Beaconsfield.
Love from
Dorothy Mason.

(What a kind family you are, Dorothy! Thank you so much for sending me the shilling for our small children.)

A letter from Jean Kent, Newdigate, Surrey.
Dear Miss Blyton,
I read the letter on our Letter Page about the budgie who could
talk. I have one just as clever.
It can say “Pretty Mickey” (that is his name), “Humpty Dumpty, Little Bopeep, Goodnight Mickey, God Bless, Hickory Dickory Dock.”
He can also say our address.
Yours sincerely and a few chirps from Mickey.
Jean Kent.

(You certainly have a very clever budgie, Jean. If ever he gets lost I hope he remembers to say his address !)

Having seen the cover of the magazine I did briefly think it was a pity I hadn’t gotten through these letters pages just a little quicker, as then we could have had this Christmas issue around Christmas. However the letters, having been written and posted some time before the magazine was published have nothing to do with Christmas whatsoever.

The mention of polio is one of those things that really dates the letter sent by Lesley Quick. Many letters could have been sent just last week, but a child having polio in the UK, and indeed enough children to populate a whole ward, would be unthinkable today. The polio vaccination would begin to be rolled out in the UK just weeks after this magazine was published, and Lesley may have then been vaccinated herself. I hope her brother and the girl who got the magazines (and all the other children) were able to recover.

Dorothy’s letter is quite a funny one. It was quite convenient that there happened to be a hamster selling house close by, otherwise she might have been banging on many front doors the next day. We had three hamsters over the years as children, but only one ever escaped. Thankfully she decided to climb the stairs (heading as far away from the kitchen and food sources as possible, for some unknown reason) and ended up sitting on the landing across from our bedroom door. My sister spotted her and shouted “SPICE”, to which my parents thought she’d been dreaming about the Spice Girls and it took more shouting before they came to apprehend Spice. (She was actually named for her colouring, being different shades of brown. Previous hamsters were Sandy and Fudge, also named for their colours.)

I think Jean’s budgie would have been the perfect inspiration for a short story about an escaped budgie. Whoever found her could be wondering how to find his owners until he decides to reel off his address.