Play and little boy reading

The week after all the D-Day stuff and as I'm typing this out weather appears to be very much all over the place as I headed out into the park during a sunnier dry spell in the proceedings.

Uniform continues to be a topic but another kind of uniform tends I feel to forgotten about and that what we wear for play as we didn't spend all our time sat in school as much as you might of felt that by Friday morning.

Unlike today where there's a massive market of casual branded clothing for life beyond school back then it was second bests and maybe the odd t shirt as schools then didn't accept them as uniform

Thus I was out in short charcoal short trousers and a red top and grey socks very much a seventies little boy.

Moving on, while on the other blog and the odd time here I've talked about reading  I do sit in a streamed children's reading session where books from peoples childhood are read and people do chat between and we finished one book on Sunday.

Although Enid Blyton was and remains all over children's literature in the UK, it remains a adult game to find every ism and -obic in all she wrote which reflected the world a child back then lived in when often little was meant and let's be honest how will today's children's favourites be seen in eighty or more years hence?

Her more recent publishers have had chunks rewritten to fit various agendas but when we read Noddy And Tessie Bear this didn't have references to gollies, and Noddy having a spanking removed.

After all it was written in 1952 and such things existed as indeed for me they did in 1972!

A bit like the comics we loved such as the Beano, everything is set in children's world - instead of Beanotown we have Toytown where things mirror in a way the world you are in - with the pleasures and disapointments of everyday life.

The story concerns a  playful adventure gone awrywith Noddy and Tessie not realizing what was about to happen unto it's too late and the consequences.

It was fun and I was able to get a fairly early copy free from alterations for my own story book collection as I read Noddy but was seldom bought any and those I'd of had were, like my childhood toys often handed to others on the basis "You a big boy now, you don't need them".

The "Barney" Mysteries

The old adage "You can't but a good book down would seem to apply around these parts of late  as some more new to me books by Enid Blyton arrived recently.

These copies are actually editions from the very early nineteen-seventies where while still in hardback form they have been cheapened by printing the frontspiece and spine direct to the jacket and missing off the rear of what would of been the back of the paper dust jacket the original hardbacks had.

 There are six novels in this series of mystery adventures that feature Rodger and Diana Lynton and their cousin Peter, ophaned, who goes under the name "Subby" in the series and his dog Laddie who are also joined by Barney an motherless circus boy who has been on a quest to find his absent father and who has a money called Miranda.

The "Barney Mysteries" is the title these usually are grouped under although some use "R Mysteries" with the "R" coming from the R in the names of all the titles.

The children visit sleepy villages and seaside towns that it transpires are riddled with intregue and it's that they look into.

One of the strengths of this series is the stories are full of atmosphere and good humour, the strong characterization making for much more depth  than most of her work and more sophisticated language that made it the only series Enid herself recommended just for those of eleven years and upward.

The Secret Seven and the missing words

One of things I have made a bit of a start on is getting replacement hard back copies of my Secret Seven books that I originally wrote a bit about on here a few years ago with the bulk of them being modern edition but with good original illustrations and the other five being 1970's paperback ones.

This series is for me a link of that nine through thirteen period where  having moved from the first 'proper' reading books I had from around  six with Mr Twiddle, I was looking for something a bit more 'grown up', a bit challenging both by the style of writing and also use of a wider vocabulary and that of older children.

It's an adventure series of a group of children who meet up having adventures while trying to solve mysteries and in it we see their personalities such as a somewhat bossy Peter, club leader.
In many ways it touches on that sense of longing to be long to a group, a circle which as a child of that age  you sure felt and in the series we see Susie, one of more quick thinking children kept out, perhaps more that she might undermine Peter than anything else.

They have a scottie dog called Scamper who rather like George's dog Timmy in the Famous Five plays a big role, big enough to be counted as a member even!

Actually it is the similarities that invite comparison between both of Enid Blyton's adventure series usually to the the detriment of the Secret Seven in which two later stories do clearly reference Famous Five books almost as if she was saying "If you read this, please consider reading the Famous Five!" but that's negate the point which is this is a self contained series aimed at younger children or children with a lower reading age which was probably why I got them given my reading issues when I did.

The series was started in nineteen forty-nine  and concluded in nineteen sixty-three and like the Famous Five editions later copies were subject not just to things such as changes in currency but also in dress where the girls generally wear pinafores rather as I do now but these were again changed for jeans or shorts and the boys wore jeans unlike boys even in the early to mid nineteen-seventies in school who wore tailored hard wearing lined shorts.

The text also was altered in recent copies to 'reflect' modern social ideas so where in the second novel, Secret Seven Adventure, Peter says to Jack as he is being scolded for allowing his sister Suzie to have his  Secret Seven badge she should be smacked for it and a grown up says to the children  the girl at the circus should be spanked for her constant fibbing, that is removed. Given it was written in nineteen-fifty that would of happened and I can well recall when I did something like that in the nineteen seventies I and my peers sure  were smacked or spanked.

It's small details like that, the references to things in 'shillings' that set the backdrop of this adventure as are things like the circus acts a child of that era saw, regardless of our own views on that today and why apart from the feel of having the hard back I'm slowly building up a collection of them hopefully all with dust jackets, to read and enjoy as I did back then.

Alternative presentations in the Famous Five

I do enjoy reading not least the books written by Enid Blyton although over the years they have suffered from Bowlderization as social mores have changed, ill judged attempts at modernizing to make them more "relevant" to today's children and that applied to how the children were dressed.

The Famous Five series suffered from that with children of the 1940's being put into jeans and modern bright t shirts when boys would of worn above the knee short trousers and girls typically dresses with "George" alias Georgina showing her rebellion by wearing boys shorts and only answering to George.

This really it undermines a big part of the story beyond the adventures.

The 1978 adaptation for Tv followed that ill advised  alteration but the 1995 ITV Tyne Tees series kept more of a period feeling including as shown in this picture the very attire Enid had in mind.