Previous letters pages can be found here.

Letters page from Volume 4, issue 18.
September 26th – October 9th, 1956.

OUR

LETTER PAGE

A letter from Susan Herrin, Shiplake, Oxon.
Dear Enid Blyton,
I am very pleased to say that I have saved every magazine from the very first issue. Not long ago, I and my friend Susan and my father, constructed a kite. We bought a six-foot cane, and cut it into two lengths, one 2 feet long and the other 3 feet. One foot away from the end of the longer cane we fixed the shorter one as a crossbar. We bound them together with some strong string. Then we cut slits at each end of the canes, and went round and round the canes with the string, fixing it in the notches. We went round four times, and then knotted the ends together. Then my father cut a piece a little larger than the kite out of his old parachute (the piece was the same shape as the kite). Then I stuck it on to the kite, the extra pieces folded over like a hem. We made a very long tail and fixed it on. We got some kite string and tied it on, and then we went to Christmas Common and the kite flew beautifully.
Good luck to you from
Susan Herrin.

(I have printed your excellent letter, which wins my prize, because I think other children may like to make a kite like yours, Susan!)

A letter from Morag Park, Kirkcaldy.
Dear Enid Blyton,
In our garden there lives a black- bird that we nicknamed Blackie. He sits on Mummy’s knee and chirps a song to her. He has two babies, who can just fly. When they were hatched Blackie brought them to show Mummy. One day we threw some cherries on the grass, and Blackie picked two up and stuffed them into his babies’ mouths, and nearly choked them! Love from
Morag Park.

(You are lucky to have a tame blackbird, Morag. I wonder if anyone else has.)

A letter from Mary Browne, Aviemore.
Dear Enid Blyton,
I had a garden tea some time ago at my grandmother’s house. Along with four friends I worked as a waitress, and my granny and mother baked all the cakes and scones for the teas. I send you £2 Is. od. for your Children’s Home for children who are not so lucky as I am.
Love from
Mary Browne.

(You must have had great fun Mary-and I think you are very kind.)

I had not heard of Oxon before but looked it up to discover it’s short for Oxfordshire. It turns out I’ve been near to Shiplake before as it’s only five miles (by road, less as the crow flies) from Loddon Hall where the Enid Blyton Society Days used to be held. It’s also only about fifteen miles from where Blyton lived at Old Thatch, though she had left there fifteen years before this letter was written, and about 20 miles from Green Hedges where she would have been living in 1956.

The other two letters come from nearer to me than Blyton. Kirkcaldy is in Fife and Aviemore is in the Cairngorms and I’ve been to both many times.

But enough geography lessons as I’ve just wasted a good twenty minutes looking at random places on Google maps!

I really wanted a Mary Poppins let’s go fly a kite quote in there, but this is ten years too early for the film with Julie Andrews. I’ve read the first PL Travers book and don’t recall there being kite flying in it, but apparently in the second book has Michael pulling Mary Poppins down from the clouds with a kite.

Mary’s is the first fund-raising in a wee while – since August 1956 in fact.

Although different to the tame bird letter in our previous letters page I thought this a good place to share info on what to do if you find a young or injured wild bird in your garden or out and about. A commenter on the previous post was right in saying that it’s often not the best idea to swoop in and ‘rescue’ it. Advice is different depending on the age of the bird (nestling vs fledgling) and also depends on where the bird is and if it is in danger.

https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/if-you-find-an-injured-bird