Monday #636

Posted on June 30, 2025 by Fiona

I took last week off as I realised it was the last week of term and it was my last chance for peace during the day for SEVEN WEEKS. Now it’s the first week of these really long holidays, so why not get back to normal.

June round up

and

Letters to Enid part 73

“Well, fathead is too good a name,” said Mary. “Thinhead would be better. You can’t possibly have got any brains in you do a thing like that, so you must be a thinhead with no brains at all.”

Rather harsh, Mary – but nice wordplay! The Thing Mary speaks of is leaving a camera in the store-cave of the enemy, thus tipping them off that someone is about. After that thin headed bit of forgetfulness Tom pulls of a thinheaded stunt and goes off alone to retrieve the camera, getting caught in the process…

 

 

Posted in Blog talk | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Blyton references in non-fiction books

Posted on June 21, 2025 by Fiona

I have finally compiled enough references to make another non-fiction post worthwhile (the first was references in memoirs). That means that shortly after posting this I will undoubtedly find another reference and have to start a third post.

Lego Lost at Sea – Tracey Williams

A very interesting book about the cargo ship that lost several containers in 1997, spilling five million Lego pieces into the sea. Pieces regularly wash up on beaches in the South East of England but this book also touches on other curiosities that the author has found on beaches.

As time went on, I realised that much of the plastic I’d found was far older than I first thought. Not just the toys, but plugs made from Bakelite, poppit beads from the 1950s, ‘buried treasure’ ice-cream sticks from the 1960s and 1970s, Noddy toothbrushes and old fashioned hair curlers.

There’s also this picture of a washed-up Big Ears from a 1960s cereal packet.

The Library Book – Rebecca Gray

Several quotes from this one as it features writing from many authors on how they love libraries.

I suppose there must somewhere have been Enid Blyton, but since she too would have been backed in the same funereal but immensely serviceable boards she passed me by – Alan Bennett

I read all of Enid Blyton except for the Secret Seven, who irritated me for some reason –Val McDermid

Mrs Macgregor turned me into a crime writer. She introduced me to Enid Blyton, and then to Malcolm Saville, mysteries with chases and pace and surprise endings – Ann Cleeves

Strong Female Character – Fern Brady

Fern Brady’s memoir of growing up with undiagnosed autism and how that then affected her adult life has a couple of somewhat incongruous references.

Jeez. Sometimes it felt like we were characters in wildly different novels: Mum a wide-eyed schoolgirl in an Enid Blyton story and me a city slicker in a Jackie Collins bonkbuster.

…

Lisa worked in my first club, Big Daddy O’s, and made me feel as genteel as a kid from an Enid Blyton novel.

A History of Reading – Alberto Manguel

I had copied this reference from somewhere else as I have not read this book. I then had to track down the original post to give due credit – so thank you to Judith Crabb for this one. There are another few remarks in the book (but not full quotes given) and some additional context in Judith’s original post.

I knew about [jelly] from Enid Blyton’s books. [It] never matched, when I finally tasted it, the quality of that literary ambrosia.

…

[At one time he] saw a windowful of Noddy stories with their shrill-coloured covers.

My Scotland – Val McDermid / Nicola Sturgeon

Having been reading my way through Val McDermid’s novels a colleague then suggested her non-fiction work about Scotland (where various parts of her novels are set).

I didn’t pay attention to the heading for the first pages and initially thought this was Val McDermid’s words but having then seen husband and East Wemyss I looked again and realised that it was a foreword from Nicola Sturgeon.

When I read Enid Blyton’s Five Run Away Together, where the Famous Five set up camp in a cave on Kirrin Island, I was singularly unimpressed. Just one cave? In East Wemyss, we had half a dozen.

…

I remember as a child looking forward to the TV version of Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five, only to find myself, a few minutes in, stomping around the house complaining that they’d got it all wrong.

…

Fictional places would take shape in my mind’s eye with extraordinary detail. To this day, if I close my eyes, I can see with utter clarity my version of the Enchanted Forest, Kirrin Island, Narnia, Middle Earth, Treasure Island… and so many more of the imaginary landscapes of my childhood years.

Born in the 1940s – Tim Glynne-Jones

A group of boys sit on a bridge in Winslow, Buckinghamshire, watching their friends launch a toy boat on the stream. It’s a scene of innocence and beauty reminiscent of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books, which became essential reading for young adventurers in the forties.

The Five were far to busy having adventures to play with toy boats – it’s perhaps more reminiscent of the Secret Seven and their toy aeroplane, or some of her many short stories.

The 1950s Scrapbook & The Fun of the Fifties: Ads, Fads and Fashion – Robert Opie

I took these pictures so long ago that I have no idea which of the two books above any of them came from!

Text reads:

Road Safety

‘When crossing remember your kerb drill: look right, look left, then right again – wait until all traffic has passed and then walk over quickly.’ The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (ROSPA) had been founded in 1917, but as ownership increased in the 1950s and cars were driven faster, there were more pedestrian accidents, especially among children. RoSPA promoted safety messages through posters, leaflets, booklets, handkerchiefs, novelty cards and even a game called Tiddley (inspired by the game of Tiddley Winks – not being tipsy). Oxo produced a couple of road safety painting books. The Daily Mail sponsored Enid Blyton’s Road Safety Colouring Book, ‘A stands for Accident, Ambulances too, You must take care or it may come for you.’

Books for Children

A vast range of books were available for children to read – from the best- selling stories of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five (21 adventures between 1942 and 1963) and Captain W. E. Johns’ Biggles, tales of a pilot’s wartime exploits (96 titles published between 1932 and 1970), to the shunting of Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends, written by the Rev. Wilbert Awdry. Another train book from the early 1950s was Chuff’ty Puff’ty: The Jolly Railway Engine, which had a resemblance to the engine on the Sugar Puffs cereal box.
Annuals were a popular present at Christmas for boys and girls, and many comic papers and TV series created their own annuals, for instance, PC49 which ran for 112 episodes between 1947 and 1953. The Rupert Bear annual became a classic; the comic strip had begun in the Daily Express newspaper in 1920, with the first annual published in 1936- and they continue to this day.

Noddy

It was the inventive genius of Enid Blyton that created Noddy; she began with Noddy Goes to Toyland, which was published in 1949. She had been writing children’s stories since the 1920s.
In all, there were 24 Noddy books, the last one released in 1963. Along with Noddy’s best friend Big Ears, the world of television beckoned in 1955. Now every child was mesmerized by a boy wearing a blue pointy hat with a bell on top.
All types of toys joined in with Noddy fever. There were soft toys, lacing cards, fuzzy-felt, novelty egg cups and quoits, as well as the most frustrating thing in the toy cupboard, the hammering set – the nails held each wooden piece into a soft board, but they easily popped out as the next piece was being tapped in.

Posted in Other Authors | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Maps in books

Posted on June 19, 2025 by Fiona

Having shared the map Eileen Soper drew of her own garden in a recent post I made the same comment again – about how much I love a map in a book.

That got me thinking that I should then scan as many maps as I could find in my books and share them here – a sort of celebration of the book map.

Before I got the scanner set up, though, I thought I’d better check the blog’s media gallery as I would probably have scanned some of them already, to go along with reviews.

Well, it turns out that I’ve already shared most of the maps I have! The only glaring lack is the Lone Pine Books, but those books have so many maps between them that I’m going to save them for their own post. So for now, here’s a reminder of all the maps I’ve already shared – plus a few new ones.

Kirrin

It’s a shame that there were rarely maps in Blyton’s books – and never endpaper maps. How I’d have loved a map of Kirrin and Smuggler’s Top and the Valley of Adventure and so on. Though I can see how putting a map containing secret passages at the start of these books might spoil the story somewhat. Perhaps a map of the general area at the start then a map of, or a map including, the secret passages could come at the end?

Anyway, what we have instead are later impressions of Kirrin. This one I shared very recently as it is from the New Famous Five book, Five and the Forgotten Treasure. It doesn’t match with my mental image of Kirrin, but as we never had a Blyton-approved map we’ll never know how accurate or not accurate this is.

We also have this full-colour one from The Famous Five Everything you ever wanted to know, bu Norman Wright. This is somewhat closer to my mental picture but some things are still in the wrong place.

The Cherrys

I assume all the Cherry books by Will Scott had a map at the front but again I have to grumble about how I only have two of them as they are so hard to find (and afford!).

This first one is from The Cherrys to the Rescue.

And this is from The Cherrys’ Famous Case.

Adventure Island

The Adventure Island books by Helen Moss always have a map at the front. Every adventure takes place on the island so the maps are pretty similar, though new places are added as the children discover them. Some stay on the map but others only appear when they are relevant.

This is the one on Helen Moss’ website, hence the lack of the big line down the middle where the pages meet. And here is the one from The Mystery of the Cursed Ruby, which is number 5. As you can see there are a few less details. (As a bonus the map is printed with a gap in the middle so that nothing is lost in there!)

Most Unladylike Maps

Murder Most Unladylike has a map of Deepdean, Daisy and Hazel’s school.

Book two (Arsenic for Tea) has a map of Fallingford, Daisy’s home where their second murder mystery occurs.

map arsenic for tea

There’s even a map – or perhaps more accurately – a diagram of the train from book 3, First Class Murder. I listened to the audiobook of this so I missed out on this helpful diagram of who was in which room.

I also listened to the audiobook of the first Ministry of Unladylike Activity book, so I missed out on the three (!) map pages of Elysium Hall, which also would have been helpful seeing as solving the murder largely hinged on working out who was where in the house during a blackout.

 

It appears that all the books have maps, but I will stick with the ones I have read for now.

And the rest

Milly Molly Mandy has a map of her village with helpful annotations on who lives where.

milly molly mandy

And of course Eileen Soper’s own garden map.

Posted in Illustrations and artwork, Other Authors | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Monday #634

Posted on June 16, 2025 by Fiona

Maps in books

and

Blyton references in works of non-fiction

I am paraphrasing like mad here because I didn’t take a note of this at the time!

Unlike, say, the Famous Five who never seemed to learn their lessons. Let’s go into this dark cave at midnight, nothing bad happened last time!

– Val McDermid

Val (as I now call her, having been in the same room as her once), was talking about her love of the Chalet School books. One thing she particularly liked about the series was that the characters grew and developed through the books and if a girl broke a leg in one books she would still be limping a few books later. Which then led to something along the lines of the quote above. I think I have the general message if not the exact wording.

Sometimes I go into caves. But not at midnight…

 

Posted in Blog talk | Tagged , | Leave a comment

If you like Blyton: The Challenge of Palores Point by Zöe Billings

Posted on June 15, 2025 by Fiona

Following on from The Mystery of Tully Hall and The Secret of Flittermouse Cliffs, The Challenge of Palores Point is the third book in the Great Friends at Grey Owls series by Zöe Billings.

I read this from September to November last year – if you’re wondering why it took me so long to read it I was actually proof reading it, so I was correcting it and making the odd suggestion as I went. Having finished it just in time for the pre-Christmas printing deadline I then entirely forgot about reviewing it!

Palores point

You may well know what palores means, but before I read this book I didn’t. Palores is the Cornish word for the chough.

You also may well have seen choughs in the wild – they are found on the west coast of the UK and Ireland. They are only found in a couple of places on the west coast of Scotland so I’ve never seen a wild chough.

Having read this book however, I seem to be noticing choughs a lot more often. There are two in the wildlife centre near me and recently this book was highlighted to me at work.

I actually thought it said Marcus Harris (aka 70s Julian) at first.

But I’m getting off-topic now.

The palores, aka the chough, is an important element of the book which opens with the friends (Jenny, James, Liz and Barrie) deciding that their school project is going to be about choughs. They choose the bird as they are going to be visiting Cornwall to stay with Jenny’s aunt, who has just sent Jenny an article about the challenges facing choughs in Cornwall.

Cornish Camping and Criminal Catching

In Cornwall the four camp at Aunt Jane’s campsite, which borders a nature reserve. They visit the reserve and learn more about the chough and other wild birds, many of which are under threat not just because of the usual things like habitat loss but also because of their nests being raided for eggs.

Being the conscientious children they are the four decide that they are going to keep a watch for bird egg thieves and soon have some suspects in mind. They put technology to good use again as James has bought a special motion activated trail camera for recording wildlife – but it could just as easily record people. They are also assisted by Anka who they have made friends with in Cornwall.

Despite having an adult nearby the children manage to do a fair bit of night-time surveillance, though somehow the nests are still getting targeted and neither the children nor the camera is able to see the thieves.

At least, not until James notices something on the trail camera recording and just has to go take a look…

My thoughts

To throw in a horrible pun which I’m sure she’s heard many times already – I think that Zöe should be choughed with this book.

It’s another great blend of detective work and adventure alongside the fun of four kids exploring interesting places and enjoying each other’s company. As with the first two books in the series the modern setting means that we can’t get away from technology but it is carefully woven into the story without us having to deal with four kids glued to Tiktok.

Posted in Book reviews, Other Authors | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Letters to Enid part 72: from volume 4 issue 9

Posted on June 12, 2025 by Fiona

Previous letters pages can be found here.

NB – a warning again for the use of wording that is considered derogatory and offensive in the UK (and potentially elsewhere) today. As I am transcribing these letters exactly as written by the child authors I will therefore be using it, though I wouldn’t be using it in any other circumstances.

Letters page from Volume 4, issue 9.

OUR

LETTER PAGE

A letter from Sherin Ratnagar, Bombay, India.
Dear Enid Blyton,
I am a member of the “Famous Five” Club. Six other friends of mine are members too. We meet every Saturday, in a shed, on which we have painted “F.F.” We have a smashing password you wouldn’t dream of. We do wish we had adventures but we never do. I like “Five Have Plenty of Fun,” best of all your “Fives ” books. I live in India, and we have to wait a long time for new books. I must end my letter now or you will get too many sheets to read!
Love, from
Sherin Ratnagar.

(I have printed your letter, Sherin, because I am sure that all F.F. members here will like to hear of your F.F. Club in faraway India. You have won our Letter-Page prize, so look out for a new book!)

A letter from Susan Cradock, Aston, Bucks.
Dear Enid Blyton,
We have started a Club called “The Put-Em-Right Club” after a name in one of your books. We have called it this because one important thing we want to do is help to put the little spastic children right. This week all our six members have arranged a Rummage
Sale, and although we had a lot of things left over we are able to send you £1 for the spastics.
With best wishes, from
Susan Cradock
(Leader) and the other five members.

(I have many letters about clubs, Susan, but yours has a most unusual name and you live up to it too. Thank you – and all your members as well!)

A letter from Marian and Isobel Spence.
Dear Enid Blyton,
My friend and I have a Nature Club, and we made our badges in the way you said in your magazine some while ago. We have our meetings every Tuesday and Wednesday in the Park, and gather lots of notes for our Nature books. We also collect nature pictures to stick in our books – we get them from the Nature page in your magazine, called “Some things to look for,” and we get them from your nature stories too.
Yours sincerely,
Marian Spence and Isobel Spence.

(I can see that you and Isobel enjoy your little Nature Club, Marian, and I am very pleased to hear about it.)

A club-theme this time around. I initially thought that Blyton must save up letters on a theme then use them together, and then I thought that she probably got so many hundreds of letters a week that it would not have posed a problem to find three or four on any given topic!

I wonder if Sherin and her six friends ever thought to call their club the Secret Seven? Not only does it have seven members but they also have their initials on the door and use a password! Mind you, I’ve played at being the Famous Five as a child with only two people, so perhaps numbers aren’t that important!

I thought it interesting that Susan and her friends chose to name themselves after a group who were as unsuccessful as the Put-Em-Rights. Isn’t the whole message of that story that you should be careful about judging and trying to fix other people’s lives especially when your own behaviours may be less than perfect? The word choice of “putting the [children with CP] right” is unpleasant though I’m sure they Susan and her friends meant well, and would only be using language that they had heard at the time.

I don’t know why but Marian and Isobel’s letter suddenly reminded me of a short-lived club I was in as a child. A small group of us formed the Winnie-the-Pooh club, and we met every week. I don’t actually think that any of us even loved Winnie-the-Pooh that much but it was the only thing we all liked enough to agree on. We basically got together and would draw pictures of the characters, or use stickers, but would soon get bored and play hide and seek etc. It didn’t last long as we always had to hold it in the garden of the youngest member as she wasn’t allowed to play at anyone else’s house, and if it rained we had to cram into the porch as we weren’t allowed anywhere else in her house, and her parents didn’t like the noise of us either…

Like I say, not sure why the far more interesting and organised nature club reminded me of that – but it did!

Posted in Magazines | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Monday #633

Posted on June 9, 2025 by Fiona

I was reading an un-put-down-able book last night so didn’t get around to doing the Monday post (yes, another Val McDermid but I am seeing her talk later this week, so I’ll probably stop binge-reading her stuff after that. Probably.) but here it is now.

Letters to Enid part 73

and

If you like Blyton: The Challenge of Palores Point by Zöe Billings

As I’m going to write about book #3 this week, this feels like an opportune moment to revisit books 1 & 2 in the Great Friends from Grey Owls series.

If You Like Blyton: The Mystery of Tully Hall by Zöe Billings

If you like Blyton: The Secret of Flittermouse Cliffs by Zöe Billings

Posted in Blog talk | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

If you like Blyton: Cherry Ames by Helen Wells

Posted on June 8, 2025 by Fiona

I have had two of the Cherry Ames books sitting on my bookshelf for years. I’m not sure how many years exactly, but here they are (sixth and seventh from the right) back in 2019 when I did my series on what was on my bookshelves.

As part of my aim to finally read my way through all the unread books on my shelves (and stacked up around the flat) I picked up the first Cherry Ames book and read it. That’s something like 5 down and 70 to go, then.

I don’t remember when or where I bought them, but I’ll have bought them as they combine two things I like – nursing stories and vintage children’s books with nice covers.

Who is Cherry Ames?

As of the second chapter of her first book Cherry Ames is a student nurse in America.  She leaves home to study at Spencer Nursing School, and then according to the dustjacket of book one, she becomes (amongst other things) a senior nurse, flight nurse, cruise nurse, chief nurse, visiting nurse, private duty nurse, department store nurse, dude ranch nurse, mountaineer nurse…

I’m not sure that’s an entirely normal career trajectory but at least there’s plenty of variety! I wonder if she moves every 6-12 months or whether she does a Famous Five and barely ages instead.

Interestingly although Helen Wells begins the series, she doesn’t write all the books. She wrote 1-7, 12, 14 and 17-27. while Julie Tatham wrote 8-11 and 13-16.

Student nursing

The world of Cherry’s student nursing was familiar to me – mostly from having read various other books about student nurses from the 1930s-1950s. Less so from my own student nurse days as thankfully they were quite different by the time I started.

(Hilariously the dustjacket blurb reads that nursing offers: many opportunities for service, for adventure, for romance [and] makes a nurse’s career a glamorous one. Definitely not in my experience! I found it offered many opportunities for a sore back and aching feet, and absolutely no glamour.)

As was regular then – both in the UK and the US it would seem – student nurses began as probationers for three months, winning their caps if they passed. Probationers would have lessons on anatomy, hygiene, nutrition and so on, including practical learning (which always seems to involve wrestling with a recalcitrant dummy patient) as well as working shifts on the wards.

And so that’s what Cherry and her fellow probationers do. Cherry, of course, is not only pretty and popular but clever and compassionate so she does well – though she’s not convinced she will pass and get her cap. This is at least partly down to the fact that she does sometimes make very risky decisions – like smuggling the aforementioned recalcitrant dummy across the hospital to cheer up a child patient whose room she was never meant to be in in the first place.

There are some other risks she takes which are more serious – but the bigger the gamble the bigger the pay-off – and in the end lives are saved.

The fact that we know she goes on to be a senior nurse takes away some of the suspense as we know she won’t fail or be thrown out, but that was never likely in a children’s book anyway. Would have made for a bit of a depressing read if so!

For fans of Blyton?

I’d say this one was a little more of a stretch than some previous recommendations. If this were a series on If You Like Nancy Drew, it would be top of the list. Cherry and Nancy are quite similar – and the writing style is too – so it reads like it could have been a Nancy Drew book if only Nancy had decided to become a nurse and not an amateur sleuth. Saying that there is a little mystery solving done in the first Cherry Ames book – and a few later books have mystery in the title!

However, I have recommended that if you like Blyton you might like Nancy Drew, so we are only one step away from that.

Although perhaps a bit too perfect Cherry is likeable and her hospital experiences are interesting. While there are a few challenges and unhappy occurrences for Cherry along the way these are not dwelled on, as this is a light read for (as per the dustjacket) girls aged 11-16.

 

Posted in Book reviews, Other Authors | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

May 2025 round up

Posted on June 4, 2025 by Fiona

What I read

I have been reading a lot this month – I am going to see Val McDermid talk soon so I thought I had better read a few more of her books (I’d only read two when I booked my ticket in the middle of May!). Turns out her books are un-put-down-able and I have been reading them in 2-3 days, or in one case, a single day. The only thing that has really slowed me down is having to wait until I can get to the library for the next one!

I’m back to seven books ahead now, as I managed 15 books in May. Only two were BABALs, but I did borrow four from the library because it was the only (free) way to get my hands on the Val McDermids I wanted to read.

So I read:

  • The Paris Bookshop for the Broken-Hearted – Rebecca Raisin
  • The Secret Seven
  • Cherry Ames, Student Nurse (Cherry Ames #1) – Helen Wells
  • Girl Meets Grump (Hailey Gardiner)
  • Grave Peril (Dresden Files #3) – Jim Butcher
  • Wizard of Most Wicked Ways (Whimbrel House #4) – Charlie N Holmberg
  • Five and the Forgotten Treasure – Chris Smith (reviewed here and here)
  • The Bookstore Sisters (Once Upon a Bookshop #3) – Alice Hoffman
  • Love on the Brain – Ali Hazelwood
  • The Buttercup Farm Family
  • The Wire in the Blood (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #2) – Val McDermid
  • This is Going to Hurt – Adam Kay
  • The Last Temptation (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #3) – Val McDermid
  • The Torment of Others (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #4) – Val McDermid
  • Killing the Shadows – Val McDermid

I ended the month still working through:

  • 1979 (Allie Burns #1) – Val McDermid
  • Beneath the Bleeding (Tony Hill & Carol Jordan #5) – Val McDermid
  • The Queen Elizabeth Family
  • The Dictionary of Lost Words – Pip Williams
  • The Lamplighter’s Bookshop – Sophie Austin
Screenshot

What I watched

  • Given that Supernatural is 15 seasons long, unsurprisingly we are still watching it. Currently on season 4. We’ve also been watching Taskmaster.
  • As I have been reading so much I haven’t chosen anything new to watch yet, but I did watch a couple of episodes of Malory Towers.
  • My sister and I finished The Flatshare and went back to Ten Years Younger.
  • With Brodie we watched the sequel to Twister (1996) – Twisters.

What I did

Despite the good weather I feel like we didn’t get up to much in May. I did spend a lot of afternoons sitting at the park with my book after school though!

  • I went a bit mad with the googly eyes at work.
  • We visited the wildlife park and paid more attention to their two choughs this time, having read The Challenge of Palores Point by Zoe. I am just now realising that I haven’t reviewed this yet – I really thought I had! Well, at least that gives me an idea for next week’s blog.
  • We did our favourite riverside walk and bought ice-cream at one end, and then had a paddle on our way back.
  • We took a ride on a steam train (pulled by a faceless Thomas!) and met Paddington at the station.
  • We had a fairly massive clear out of Brodie’s bedroom and put aside lots of books to donate to charity (don’t worry he still has hundreds!).

How was your May?

Posted in Personal Experiences | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Monday #632

Posted on June 2, 2025 by Fiona

May has been a month of two parts – the first part where it was warm and sunny all the time, and then when it was cloudy and rainy almost all the time. Perhaps June will strike a better balance!

May round up

and

If you like Blyton: Cherry Ames by Helen Wells

Seeing as we just had a post about Eileen Soper’s work, why not revisit some of her “hack work” – her words not mine! – for Blyton. Specifically all those times she drew children that looked awfully familiar…

The Five as you have never seen them before

Posted in Blog talk | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Eileen Soper’s artwork

Posted on June 1, 2025 by Fiona

I’ve been promising this for a few weeks and yet I almost never managed it tonight either as my scanner decided it was firmly offline and couldn’t be persuaded otherwise. Luckily I bought a cable for it recently and so I was able to connect it up and get it working in the end.

Wildings

You know how I love a book with a map in it. It’s a very large map and as even a single page of this book is too big for my A4 scanner, this is the best I could do – combining several scans into one image. I think it is enough to give you an overview of the size and scale of the gardens as well as the key features. Click on it to see a much larger version.

Something new on every page

There is honestly at least one illustration or painting on each page, often more than one.

From sketches in various stages of progress,

To an array of wildlife drawings,

 

Some of which are also in colour.

There’s even a self-portrait or two. These are of Soper bundled up to go badger watching – unsurprisingly she put a lot more effort into her renderings of the badgers than she did into drawing herself.

There are also a dozen or so full and half-page colour works, such as the badgers that sketchy Eileen above was observing.

This is only a tiny fraction of what’s in the book – and that’s only a fraction of the thousands of drawings that were found at Wildings. The book is almost worth it for the artwork alone.

I’ve stuck to just a handful of examples here as for one, it’s late (it always seems to be late when I’m blogging!) but there’s also copyright restrictions to consider. Saying that, if there’s anything specific you’d like to see of Soper’s work then just ask and I’ll see if there’s anything in the book that matches.

Posted in Illustrations and artwork, Other Authors | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Letters to Enid part 71: From volume 4, issue 8

Posted on May 29, 2025 by Fiona

Previous letters pages can be found here.

Letters page from Volume 4, issue 8.
May 9th – May 22nd, 1956.

OUR

LETTER PAGE

A letter from Jennifer Bursnall, Llandudno.
Dear Enid Blyton,
A few days ago some friends and I were playing Red Indians on some big rocks. One of my friends and I were just passing some rocks when we both heard a baa of a sheep below us. As my friend had a dog she could not come, so I clambered down. The sheep was not a bit frightened, and I discovered later that it had once been a pet lamb, fed from a bottle. It was caught in some bramble sprays. So I freed it and took it through two rocks standing close together. The sheep then followed me down a rough lane to the farm. As I came near the farm two dogs started barking, thinking that I was doing their job, bringing sheep in from the fields! The farmer’s wife thanked me and said the sheep would have been there all night without food, for they probably would not have missed it.
Love from your Busy Bee,
Jennifer Bursnall.

(This is a most interesting letter, Jennifer, and deserves my letter prize. I am so glad you were able to rescue the sheep.)

A letter from Sandra Green.
Dear Enid Blyton,
One day I saw two big boys throwing stones at a small bird. I picked it up and took it to the vet, and he said that one of its wings had been broken. Then the vet did something to its wing, and told me to take it home, which I did. In a few weeks’ time the bird could fly again, so we let him out of the bird-cage where we had been keeping him, and he flew away. And now every morning he comes and sits on our bird-table, has some food and flies away again.
Yours faithfully,
Sandra Green.

(What a good thing you were there when the bird was hurt, Sandra!)

A letter from Barbara Newman, Wotton-under-Edge, Glos.
Dear Enid Blyton,
My little sister Hilary, who is only just two, picked up one of my Noddy books, and saw a picture of Noddy crying. She went up to Mummy and said “Poor Noddy!” –and then she wiped his tears with her dress!
With lots of love, from
Barbara Newman.

(What a dear little sister you have, Barbara – she must amuse you when she does things like that!)

Two letters from animal rescuers this week – one of the few cases where a fundraiser didn’t win the prize. In fact there are no fundraising letters at all this week.

I wonder what kind of bird Sandra rescued?

I do like when Blyton picks letters which are not much more than an amusing anecdote from a small child. Barbara’s anecdote is sweet and I’m sure she was thrilled to see it be printed.

Posted in Magazines | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Monday #631

Posted on May 27, 2025 by Fiona

Yes, I know it’s Tuesday, but better late than never, right? For a moment I couldn’t remember why I didn’t manage to sort this post out yesterday evening but then I remembered – I was binge reading a Val McDermid book and was determined to finish it. Spoiler alert – I did finish it, hence the not blogging.

Last week I was supposed to be sharing illustrations from Duff Hart-Davis’ book about Eileen Soper, but could I find it to do some scanning? No, I could not. I later discovered it behind the sofa so providing it doesn’t go walkabout this week, I’ll get it done.

Letters to Enid part 71

and

Eileen Soper’s illustrations

Stef and I have had an idea for a new bit of fan fiction, and we might actually even write something!

One suggestion was Dick bumping into Jeff Thomas – and I made these superbly detailed notes.

Dick was on the air base. The basey-air base that had no name yet because it was late and the authors were tired. He looked up and saw Jeff Thomas who had risen to the rank of a higher rank than whatever rank he has in Billycock Hill…

It’s just a matter of filling in the blanks later, right?

Posted in Blog talk | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Famous Five and the Forgotten Treasure part 2

Posted on May 21, 2025 by Fiona

Last time I ran out of time to finish the review let alone scan any of the illustrations or the map, but hopefully I can put that right this time.

Last time I got a far as the Five having the miserable Roland tagging along after them. It’s at this point that I realise the boy’s name is actually Raymond. I really should have checked before I wrote part one.

Anne’s brainwave

While it’s nice to see Anne having a non-food-preparing moment to shine it’s sort of a shame that she is still relegated to reading people’s feelings to solve part of the mystery. She identifies that there really is someone weird going on with Raymond and his mother.

He’s not missing her – he’s afraid of her. His mother hasn’t been pleased to see them around the dig and that’s because [Spoiler!!] she’s not his mother, she’s an impostor! The real mother is bound and gagged, and her assistant has taken her place so she can loot the dig site in Whispering Wood instead of giving the artefacts to a museum.

I couldn’t help but wonder why she then passed Raymond on to the Kirrins – known for their adventures as they are – and asked him to report back to her if anyone in the village started asking questions. Yes she threatened to hurt his mother if he didn’t do as he was told, and yes he didn’t dare tell them what was really going on but what a risk to take! She’d have been far better tying Raymond up with his mother until they were finished.

Back to the future

As the flashback is only about half the book it’s all resolved pretty quickly. They make one night-time visit to the camp, rescue Raymond’s real mother and then, rather recklessly they change the lights on the cliff so that the baddies’ boat crashes into the rocks and sinks.

Back in the present day it’s clear that Raymond (the man storming out of Kirrin Cottage earlier) is after the treasure that sank with the boat. George has given him the map to find it. It’s still there as young George deliberately misled the police about where the boat went down, to prevent sightseers and treasure hunters swarming the area. I don’t feel that’s something George would do – she’s not a liar and she would recognise the importance of the historical artefacts.

The New Five then get to (briefly) have their adventure as they go up against Raymond to prevent him from stealing the treasure.

My thoughts

This isn’t a bad book. but I think it could have been better. As I said already the two stories are fairly thin as neither is a full book.

George’s ability to recount an adventure in such detail is unrealistic especially when it comes to conversations she wasn’t even present for, and those pages could have been better spent fleshing out the present-day action.

George is not particularly recognisable as a grown-up version of the girl we knew, even if she does still insist on being called George.

If this wasn’t a Famous Five book I’d probably have rated it higher than three stars. There were some nice touches, such as the parallel between the New and Old Famous Five arriving at Kirrin, the New ones ribbing George for the jolly good language (though there was very little of it!), the reference to the Sanders’ Dairy and so on. We briefly get to see Kirrin Island, the secret passage from the study and the passage from the quarry to the island (both of which are never seen or used again in the original books).

It’s also illustrated which seems unusual these days. Shame it’s not Soper-esq but it’s better than nothing.

So yes, not bad, but not great. I read it in an afternoon and at least wasn’t prompted to put it down repeatedly to write great long complaints so that’s something, and I’m intrigued enough by the ending to read the next one!

 

Posted in Book reviews, Other Authors | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Monday #630

Posted on May 19, 2025 by Fiona

As much as I enjoy the sunshine we haven’t had any rain for weeks and it’s starting to feel weird. Plus there are now low water level warnings across the country. One of those rare times I’m actually hoping for rain, then.

Illustrations and artwork by Eileen Soper

and

The New Famous Five part 2

The other week I was saying something about parking at the beach probably not being so busy on weekdays even in the school holidays.

Brodie, as always, was earwigging.

“Mummy! You can’t say that! That’s the password! You’re giving away the password!”

We have recently read The Secret Seven where weekdays was one of the passwords. The other one was Wenceslas which I’m a lot less likely to be saying at this time of year. But I wonder what other everyday phrases I’m going to be banned from saying once we read more of the Secret Sevens?

 

 

 

 

Posted in Blog talk | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The New Famous Five: Five and the Forgotten Treasure

Posted on May 18, 2025 by Fiona

Having taken this out weeks ago I then procrastinated over actually reading it. What if it was really, really bad?

First thoughts

My very first thought was that I still did not like the cover, but I did appreciate the shiny gold details like the coins and the lettering, which don’t really show on pictures of it,

My second thought was A MAP!! Yes, there is a map of Kirrin in the front of the book. It doesn’t quite match my mental picture of the area, and there’s no coastguard’s cottage marked, but it’s nice to have all the same. To the west is Whispering Woods and I briefly wondered if we were visiting locations for Mystery to Solve, but that was Whispering Island, and I was therefore none the wiser.

The first page is very reminiscent of a Five adventure, with three children and a dog arriving at Kirrin Station on a steam train. There are also references to Sander’s Dairy which is nice. It is quickly made clear that this is the present day, however, and the steam train is some sort of heritage railway.

Despite being the present day, though, the three children have arrived alone and are to find their way to Kirrin Cottage with only the vaguest of instructions. They get a hint from an old man who gives boat tours – I suspected that this was James/Alf as he knows George and her island – but annoyingly he’s not seen or mentioned again.

George

I don’t know how I feel about the George we get in this book. The children find their way to Kirrin Cottage to find that George is not expecting them, and has no time for them. It appears that she has turned into her father. Cross, forgetful, impatient – oh and she’s a scientist too.

Even as someone who is absolutely turning into her mother (despite her best efforts) I wouldn’t have expected this of George. Yes she shared her fierce temper with her father and they could be alike slamming doors and scowling, she hated how bad-tempered he was. It’s a bit sad to see she turns out the same, even if she is nicer underneath than her first impression gives.

It was also sad to see her tell Maddie that Gilbert (the dog) had to stay outside at all times. Later in the book George goes on about how she can’t bear to see anyone mistreat an animal, and we all know how wild she was about Timmy. I could see George asking them to keep the dog out of her sight but not making him live outside just to protect her feelings.

The Story

I think the important thing to say here is that the book is actually two stories. First we have the children going to stay with George, and when she runs into trouble she starts to tell them a story about one of the Five’s adventures, and how it relates to the trouble they are in now. Back to the present day and they have a little adventure of their own.

Both stories were reasonably decent but the fact that there are two means neither was fully fleshed out.

The present-day story sees a man storming out of Kirrin Cottage, and later returning in the night to demand George give him her map. She does, and he tells her the house is being watched so she and the children can’t leave and stop him. This is slightly reminiscent of Julian, Dick, Anne and Joanna having to stay inside while the house is watched in Five Fall Into Adventure, but the solution this time is not a paper boy who is partial to chocolate mould. Instead they simply go down the secret passage from Uncle Quentin’s George’s study. This has a new exit – as George says, they can’t very well turn up in the back of someone’s wardrobe in the middle of the night.

Having escaped to the strange Whispering Woods on the map, they camp out and George tells them her story. It is nice that it starts in a similar way to the main story, with a steam train bringing Kirrin siblings into Kirrin Station.

Set 55 years ago – so 1970, which doesn’t fit with the time the book(s) were published, it’s not clear where this story would fit into the canon timeline. Anyway, the Five are at Kirrin and have a boy dumped on them as he is the son of an archeologist working in Whispering Woods. Strangely Uncle Quentin is all for an extra child around the place – but as he plans for the children to go camping on Kirrin Island an extra voice isn’t going to be bothering him. The boy – Roland – barely has a voice as he is a miserable, silent figure who derives no pleasure in Kirrin Island or anything it has to offer.

I have run completely out of time to write anything more this week, so instead of not posting anything I will post this part-review and do a part two next week.

The last point I want to make though is that although this is a flashback of George’s somehow she knows all the dialogue which happened even when she wasn’t present. It is also not written from the perspective of George retelling a story, as it says things like “The Five and Roland walked…”. I’m sure children won’t notice details like that, but these things annoy me. It was one of the things that annoyed me about Wuthering Heights (apart from the general misery and abuse throughout it) that Lockwood perfectly recounts Nelly Dean’s perfect accounts, which often contains a letter which perfectly recounts a conversation…

And that really is enough for tonight,

 

 

Posted in Book reviews, Other Authors | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Letters to Enid part 70: From volume 4, issue 7

Posted on May 14, 2025 by Fiona

Previous letters pages can be found here.

NB – a warning again for the use of wording that is considered derogatory and offensive in the UK (and potentially elsewhere) today. As I am transcribing these letters exactly as written by the child authors I will therefore be using it, though I wouldn’t be using it in any other circumstances.

Letters page from Volume 4, issue 7.
April 25th – May 8th, 1956

OUR

LETTER PAGE

A letter from Diane Scruton, Beverley High Road, Hull.
Miss Blyton,
My hobby is helping with our toy theatre. Daddy made it, and we call it the Rose and Crescent. It is painted green, and has little red and green foot-lights. A little while ago we put on Cinderella. Daddy wrote the words, and I painted some of the scenery; it was great fun. We sold programmes at a penny for the Spastic Children, but everyone gave more. With this letter I send £1 3s. od. which we earned. We hope to give more shows later, Yours sincerely,
Diane Scruton.

(I am always pleased to hear about any hobby, Diane-and yours is a most interesting one! It was very kind of you to send so much money. Thank you! I have awarded you my prize for the most interesting letter this week.)

A letter from Kay Hillmer, Luptonville, Waverley, North Island, New Zealand.
Dear Enid Blyton,
I want to tell you about our dog Fella. He is a big, golden Labrador. One day Fella was lying outside with his head on Dad’s boots.
Suddenly it began to rain, and Fella picked up the boots in his mouth, and put them on the porch out of the rain. Another time Dad was down the gully and when he came back he found he had left his shirt behind, so he sent Fella back to get it. Fella went right down the gully and brought the shirt back to Dad. We all love him very much. He is nearly three now.
Love and best wishes from
Kay Hillmer.

(What a very clever dog, Kay! I did enjoy reading about him-and seeing his photograph! I am sure all my readers will like your letter too.)

Dear Enid Blyton,
I was one of the lucky winners of the F.F. competition in the magazine. I wish to thank you for the prize that I received and also for setting the competitions. It is such fun puzzling them out and sending them in – even if you don’t win a prize!
With best wishes from
Terence Swift.

(Thank you, Terence-you sent a very nice thank you letter – and I agree with you-competitions are fun, even if you don’t win !)

Reading Diane’s letter my brain immediately produced an image of something like the puppet theatre from the Sound of Music, and I thought how extravagant it sounded. But then I thought it could have been more TV-sized and using dolls as puppets. Then again if it was home-made maybe it was huge.

Lots of children like to tell Blyton all about their (rather ordinary) pets, but Fella sounds extremely useful I have to admit.

No address given for Terence – though it doesn’t look like there was space to include it this week as the letters page is so full. I had forgotten that prizes were also sent out for solving puzzles and entering competitions – it seems like a lot of prizes were sent out so the magazine must have been taking in a lot of money through sales and advertising space.

 

Posted in Magazines | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Monday #629

Posted on May 12, 2025 by Fiona

As I write this the sun is beaming down, so I’m hoping to get this done quickly so I can head out into the garden to enjoy it, once I’ve hung the washing out of course. We’ve been having a run of nice weather for the past week or so which has been nice, and we had our first paddle of the year yesterday, no bathing though as we are not nearly as hardy as the Famous Five.

Letters to Enid part 70

and

Five and the Forgotten Treasure

Something Brodie said recently that make me quite thrilled:

I think I’ll have to read all the Famous Five books myself. When I get better at reading. Yes, I’ll read them all by myself, and then you won’t have to read them to me, Mummy.

I’ve loved reading them with him, but I can’t wait to see him enjoying them by himself too.

 

 

 

 

Posted in Blog talk | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Malory Towers on TV series four: Episodes five and six

Posted on May 9, 2025 by Fiona

I have not been hugely motivated to continue watching the Darrell and the First Years show but here goes.

The Kiss

There was no kissing at Malory Towers. Probably somewhat unrealistic as boarding school girls were not immune to crushes, but this already feels like an unnecessary padding to a fourth series that barely resembles the book already. But I haven’t watched it yet – it could be good.

Gwen’s determination to meet her new beau results in a surprising romantic encounter.

Gwen enlists Mary-Lou’s help to write a love letter to her new beau at Thackerton College, but when Mary-Lou gets in a muddle, it leads to a surprising romance.

From the description I’m guessing that Mary-Lou will be the one to have a romantic encounter. It could be kind of funny, if Mary-Lou accidentally attracts a boy’s attention when Gwen is trying so hard to do that herself.

The main plot is then, unsurprisingly about Gwen and her letters to Teddy. She is already referring to herself as his sweetheart and has trouble choosing between yours always or yours forever as her sign off. She is almost infuriatingly deluded over the situation, but her (unintentionally from Gwen, deliberate from Danya Griver) humorous delivery keeps it from becoming too much. And honestly – as silly as some of the plot in this episode is – it’s just nice to see the fourth formers!

Her first ploy is to get Mary-Lou to draw a picture of her so she can send it to Teddy and presumably let him know what he could be missing out on. I did lament the writers for giving that talent to Mary-Lou but it does come in useful occasionally and it’s nice that it’s not completely forgotten about.

“Please make sure you add my winning dimples.”

“But… you don’t have any dimples.”

“Well, it’s artistic license.”

(Sorry Gwen, I see no dimples.)

This conversation between Gwen and Mary-Lou cracked me up. Also funny was her literally dragging Mary-Lou away from her prep to help and Mary-Lou weakly crying But my woooooork… 

There is a major flaw in Gwen’s plans however, and that is that Teddy is categorically not interested. Of course instead of Ron and Mary-Lou finding a sensitive way to tell Gwen this they embark on a ridiculous scheme where Mary-Lou has Ron write a letter back from Teddy, gently letting her down.

It’s a weird letter as Ron clearly lets his own (rather sudden) feelings for Gwen get in the way. Instead of writing some excuse like I have a girlfriend he writes about how they are from different worlds. Poor Ron, as Gwen earlier said she couldn’t possibly hand her letter directly to the staff, even though she wanted him to do her a favour. She genuinely does see him as less than her.

Naturally Gwen just steam-rollers over the objections and continues to write, convinced she can persuade Teddy that she’s from his world, leaving Mary-Lou and Ron desperately trying to cover up what they’ve done. It all comes out in the end though, leaving Gwen embarrassed and upset.

It’s rare for me to feel sorry for Gwen, but I did feel bad for her standing waiting in the garden for a boy who never even got her letter.

Later Ron finds Gwen in the garden and they talk, and kiss. That’s not how I expected the episode to go from the description, but once I’d seen Ron writing his letter I could see it coming. Still not sure it entirely makes sense, though.

One side plot is Mam’zelle’s beau, and Irene’s father, who of course turn out to be the same person.

Mam’zelle brings Irene a birthday present from her father. A birthday tune, while Mamzelle herself has a new necklace. From her beau.

I can’t believe that someone as old as Mamzelle has a beau.

Harsh, Gwen!

Mam’zelle also has a tune which she is humming. From her beau. It takes Irene playing both tunes, and Jean’s help, to realise they are the same and that therefore her father is the beau, but we do get there in the end. Irene is mortified and doesn’t want the other girls to find out.

The other side-plot sadly involves the first formers. June has a trick that her brothers have taught her. It’s… humming. Everyone can hum. Humming is not a trick.

They play it on mam’zelle first and she falls for it – as Irene has stupidly told the class to take turns at humming so the sound is hard to pin down. Even so June risks taking it too far and physically drags Mam’zelle around hunting for the sound.

Somehow Mr Parker turns out to be the more competent of the two teachers and he rumbles the trick straight away when they try it on him. Mam’zelle then puts it to Darrell to punish June.

Initially Darrell and June bond, talking tricks and Darrell tells her to tidy the dorm as her punishment. That sounds like she’s been let off fairly lightly to me but June isn’t grateful. In fact she looks surprised to still be getting punished.

The Midnight Surprise

Felicity and June’s search for adventure leads them to an amazing discovery.

When Felicity and June accidentally smash a window during tennis, they uncover an astonishing secret! Meanwhile, Alicia organises a midnight feast in the garden.

We get to see tennis being played which is nice – this might be the first time it’s been shown, actually. Tennis at malory Towers usually means the the lacrosse season is over, so we’ll see if they stick to that on TV.

Unfortunately it’s an extremely brief moment of tennis between June and Felicity, where June wildly wallops the ball for some reason and smashes a window in the school.

The school wasn’t shown in the scenes, but looking at pictures of Hartland Abbey you can see the tennis court right out front. Perhaps a bit too close (for a school) but as you’re supposed to be hitting the ball across the net and not at a 90 degree angle, it’s probably quite safe normally.

What doesn’t make sense is that they are convinced that the broken window is on the same floor as Darrell’s dorm room. None of the windows on the front of the school match Darrell’s dorm with its sloping roof (plus Darrell’s room and the corridor outside have rectangular windows, nor arched ones), so how could the tennis ball possibly have hit either of those windows?

It took me until today to realise that they digitally added towers to the school, in real life Harland Abbey is towerless!

Things get even sillier when June and Felicity explore the broom cupboard next to Darrell’s room. The cupboard is half the depth of the dorm room so clearly there’s something hidden behind it. This turns out to be a flight of stairs leading from it UP to another floor.

With a huge amount of noise that nobody (not even Gwen sleeping next door) hears the girls open the secret door and head up to this fourth floor room which is where the broken window is. It seems impossible that June, standing on the tennis court could have hit the ball four stories high and hit a window behind her – assuming they are in the tower room, which is the only place up there. Even though the room they are in is far too big to fit in the tower, and the windows still don’t match…

The room is OBVIOUSLY to do with the captain – there are lots of nautical things around but the girls take two visits before the stumble on this. They never say Oh, we must be in the tower room, or anything either, which seems strange. If the tower was known to be locked/hidden surely the girls would forever have been trying to get up there?

The secondary plot is the midnight feast the fourth formers have. I’m pretty sure in the book this is the one they have down at the pool and a couple of North Tower girls “accidentally” join them having been well-tipped off by Alicia. It then starts to pour with rain and the girls hurry inside and end up using the first form common room as it has windows. June and Felicity then join them, and later it all means big trouble for Darrell as head of form as she “let” girls from different towers and forms meet up at night.

The TV episode sort of sticks to a few of those elements. They do plan a feast at Alicia’s behest. They do have it outside (not at the pool though) and it does rain, meaning they have to dash inside. They do run into June and Felicity, and they do have guests they shouldn’t have. And Darrel does get into trouble.

Yet it’s also wildly different. It’s Fred and Ron who come along – Alicia makes a deal with them they they’ll bring fish and chips in order to join in. It’s only the four of them that actually have a feast, and there is no indoor feasting as everyone separates once they get inside.

Darrell gets into trouble – serious trouble – from Matron. She isn’t punished though, as Matron doesn’t want anyone to know that Fred and Ron were meeting the girls at night as they would get the sack for that.

And as in the books it’s June being an absolute beast.

Tell [Matron] it was your feast, or I will.

It’s fair enough if she was being blamed for nothing, but she WAS out of bed wandering around at night, so even if she’s suspected of the wrong thing, she was still in the wrong. It’s also stupid as she doesn’t seem to realise that she will still get into trouble for being out at night if she goes to say she saw Darrell too!

It doesn’t help that Darrell is silly enough to admit that they were outside at first, and when confronted with the fish and chip wrapper instead of admitting that Fred/Ron brought it for them, she lets June say that Fred and Ron were in the school.

The whole Ron/Fred thing makes what was a fairly harmless (if rule-breaking) feast into something a lot more serious.

Side notes – weirdly at times Alicia’s Canadian accent disappeared. Gwen refers to the kiss as an unfortunate incident so it doesn’t look like she and Ron are about to declare their love publically. But we may be in for a will they/won’t they which is likely to culminate in Ron losing his job if they’re found out. Also, a lot of this episode is filmed in the dark making it rather hard to see what’s going on!

 

 

Posted in Blyton on Screen | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

April 2025 round up

Posted on May 7, 2025 by Fiona

What I read

As I said in the Monday post I read a lot of fan fiction recently, which I guess counts as reading, but sadly doesn’t count towards my Goodreads goals. I’m “only” 5 books ahead now. One of this year’s challenges, though, is to read more books than the previous year, which means I’d have to read 157…

Only two BABALs this month so not terrible, but I did borrow a couple of books from the library in order to complete two of the reading challenges in time.

So I read:

  • The Pole Star Family
  • The Women – Kristin Hannah
  • White Silence (Elizabeth Cage #1) – Jodi Taylor
  • Dark Light (Elizabeth Cage #2) – Jodi Taylor
  • The Vanishing Bookstore – Helen Phifer
  • Women in White Coats – Olivia Campbell
  • The Seaside Family
  • Long Shadows (Elizabeth Cage #3) – Jodi Taylor
  • Black Candle Women – Diane Marie Brown

I ended the month still working through:

  • Cherry Ames, Student Nurse (Cherry Ames #1) – Helen Wells
  • The Paris Bookshop for the Broken-Hearted – Rebecca Raisin
  • Grave Peril (Dresden Files #3) – Jim Butcher
  • The Secret Seven

What I watched

  • Given that Supernatural is 15 seasons long, unsurprisingly we are still watching it. Currently on season 3.
  • I finished All Creatures Great and Small but haven’t chosen what to watch next, apart from infrequent episodes of Malory Towers series 4. I also watched The Secret Garden (the 90 version, naturally) as I just happened to spot it on Netflix.
  • My sister and I have continued to watch The Flatshare on Tuesday nights.
  • With Brodie we watched the first Pirates of the Caribbean film. He found it part scary and part boring, but watched avidly all the same and at one point turned to me and asked which do you think is the better pirate? The options being Jack Sparrow and Barbosa. I answered with Jack Sparrow – of course!

What I did

The rest of our week off landed in April so we:

  • Visited Arbroath for a wander along the beach/waterfront and spent a bit of time at the arcade.
  • Went to Craigtoun and walked into St Andrews via the Lade Braes.
  • Visited Fife Zoo where Brodie was “attacked” by a Lemur (meaning one tried to take a toy out of his hand).
  • Took part in a big build at a library to build a scale model of Claypotts Castle.

Aside from the holiday:

  • I finally finished my book shop scene by gluing all the little books and other bits onto it.
  • I restuck all my Famous Five postcards to the wall again as the blu-tack had given up yet again. (Annoyingly even though several cards kept falling down the blu-tack still took off chunks of paint elsewhere!)
  • I 3D printed a cute little book box, in fact I printed three, but two got given away so I’m back to only having one. My goal is to print a bunch of them with different coloured covers.
  • I treated myself to a couple of Lego flower sets so I’d have something to put in my Secret Garden vase all year round.

How was your April?

Posted in Personal Experiences | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments