When I was a little boy I absolutely loved Enid Blyton adventure
stories. Read them all over and over and I think that I can guarantee that it
was these books that started my passion for reading. As I got older I lost
interest in these wonderful stories and moved on to a different sort of book,
but I never threw away all my old and very well-thumbed copies.
I have been
unpacking some boxes here and discovered all my old Enid Blyton books, safely
stores away and I just spent a happy hour browsing through the various titles
of the ones I loved, The Island of Adventure, The Secret of Moon Castle, The
Famous Five. I could go on and on.
Anyway, one of the
things that I remember so well about the books was the fantastic descriptions
of food the children all used to eat. So I looked in one and very quickly found
one of the typical descriptions:
'It wasn't an
ordinary afternoon tea, it was a high tea. A fresh ham, glistening pink, a veal
and ham pie smothered in green parsley, like the ham. Yellow butter in glass
dishes, a blue jug of thick yellow cream. Honey. Home made strawberry jam. Hot
scones. A large fruit cake, as black as a plum pudding inside, egg sandwiches,
tea, cocoa and creamy milk.'
I used to get
hungry when I read these descriptions and always wanted that sort of
tea myself.
Now I get thinking
about my nephews and how they would turn their noses up at a spread like that,
picking at things and preferring a mcdonalds or KFC for a treat.
There would be cries of 'I don't like egg', or 'this bread doesn't taste like
the one from the shop', or ‘I don't like the fruit in the fruit cake’. They
don't like jam, they don't like ham, they don't like scones. All in all they
are a nightmare to feed. Times and eating habits have changed beyond
recognition and, ok, Enid Blyton may have been old fashioned, even when I was
reading them, but one thing never changes - quality food wins the day, is home
made and doesn't need to cost much! If you make it all yourself, then that
spread up there would not cost much at all and would keep you going for days
with leftovers! And what nicer tea to come home to!
I hope I am not alone in my fond memories of Enid Blyton. Anyone
else?
I completely agree - I love Enid Blyton. I want to collect all of them now as only read them from my school library as a kid. Most kids are picky - when I was a kid if I was picky I didn't have a choice - ate what was on the table. I hate to say it but sometimes parents are too lenient on letting kids be picky about food. And now, I am off to make a late Sunday breakfast as your blog made me ravenous :)
ReplyDeleteYes, my nephews are prime examples. From early age they were asked what they wanted for tea rather than presented with it, and now they are used to only eating what they want. Their diets are so limited! I want to collect the ones I am missing, as I don't have a complete set of the famous five any more - wonder where they went to? But I want to collect the old editions like those I read in the 70's.
DeleteI loved Malory Towers by Enid Blyton. The idea of going to a boarding school was completely alien to me and GOSH! the girls were frightfully posh in the books but I loved them anyway.
ReplyDeleteI also remember descriptions of high teas and loved the idea. Mum did used to put out something similar (ish) on a Sunday night which we'd tuck into after bath time and the Top 40 on the radio. Completely brilliant memories.
Everyone was frightfully posh! except the occasional nice, but dirty gypsy girl. My grandma used to make me tongue sandwiches just like the famous five liked. Can you imagine if you tried to serve that to a child now!
DeleteOh my goodness, I agree with you so much here! I remember getting a whole set of Famous Five books from my Nan when she arrived on the train for a rare visit when I was very young. I think I read the words off the pages. Mine were handed down when I got older and even now (over 40 years later) I miss them. I once came across the exact copy of one of them in a second hand book shop but it was over £20 and sadly out of my price bracket - but one day I'll find them again fingers crossed. xx
ReplyDeleteI think some of the first editions are worth hundreds now. Mine are mostly editions from the 60's handed down from my sister, I think they have all been changed now, to make them more politically correct, such a shame, because as children, we never noticed any of the incorrectness!
DeleteOh I am with you here!
ReplyDeleteI loved the packed teas they would get from some Farmer's wife AND THE FACT THAT THEY WERE SO INDEPENDENT! No one seemed to be looking after them and they would get involved in all kinds of scraps.
But I loved their adventures and wished I'd kept my copies too.
Treasure them!
Sft x
I do treasure them, for sure. I am so pleased to find them. They were always off by themselves and no-one seemed to mind letting them go off on their bikes for a week, even though they had all been kidnapped or trapped or in massive amounts of danger in the past. haha
DeleteI was a Willard Price reader His adventure books had no girls in them!!!!!
ReplyDeleteLOL, I liked Willard Price too, and Alfred Hitchcock and the three investigators (no girls in those either)!
DeleteI always fancied Hal!
Deletehow sad was that?
I loved Enid Blyton and some of the other old authors too. I used to go to the library and take out a book and sit and read another one whilst I was there. I also loved books about girls boarding schools, I wish we could still get them now......I would read them all again. Noel Streatfield's books were also a good read.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember reading any Noel Streatfield. Must have passed me by! I would read them from the library too, but then I would save up my pocket money and buy my own copies of the ones I was missing.
DeleteI've got all the Famous Five and the Secret Seven plus the Mystery Stories. I used to like the title The Rubadub Mystery. I also liked and have the Just William books. I've still kept certain children's books from when my 2 were little. They'll all have to go sometime. Not yet though!
ReplyDeleteLove from Mum
xx
The Rubadub mystery was great, there was a circus boy called Barney with a monkey, looking for his father. No, don't get rid of them yet!
DeleteIt was always the adventure stories for me. Longed to have friends as good as they were and to be able to go off in a horse drawn caravan together or something like that!
ReplyDeleteFood was food was nourishment in those days. Today - it barely fills a tummy for more than half an hour.
ReplyDeleteGive me tea like that any day :)
And Enid Blyton rules - Secret Seven, Famous Five and original Noddy books (Golliwog) included. But my best was Mallory Towers :)
Give me a tea like that any day too Dani. In fact, I have some fresh bread baking now, so maybe some hard boiled eggs, yellow butter, salad, home made cake and a big glass of creamy milk for my tea tonight!
DeleteI loved Enid Blyton books too - Binkle and Flip, The Adventures of the Wishing Chair, The Enchanted Wood with Monnface, Silky, and the Saucepan Man - how I longed to find the Faraway Tree and climb through the clouds at the top for an adventure. We used to have teas like that on Sundays until I left home to get married! My younger daughter's favourite cooked meat was tongue. She doesn't eat meat anymore but loved it from being very small. I used to cut it into small pieces , with cubes of cheese and bread and butter when she was still in a high chair.
ReplyDeleteI remember the faraway tree very well, I loved that when i was a little. I get a bit annoyed by those who criticize Enid Blytons writing, because for me, it sparked my imagination and made me into a first rate reader, even before i went to school/
DeleteMy mother taught me to read from those books before I started school. My children read my old Dean and Co copies my mum had saved. I also get hungry reading Dickens, Chaucer, Austen and Woolf - I learnt to make Beef en daube after reading 'To the Lighthouse. On another note, my mum fed us on 'shut up and eat it' which was her answer to 'what's for tea mum?' I wasn't quite so harsh with my own children, but if they didn't want it then there was nothing else. If they didn't eat it was genuinely because they were not hungry. Consequently, my children (now 19 and 25) can and will eat anything. I hated their 'friends' (whiney spoilt brats) coming to our house and never had an alternative if they didn't eat what we had, most would eat what their parents said they wouldn't touch. children should be fed what's good for them and left to go without if they are not hungry. Love Froogs
ReplyDeleteThere is something about reading about good wholesome food that makes you want to cook it. The way she described a hard boiled egg made it such a feast. You did your children a massive favour by not catering to their whims. That is what gets me about people who think they are doing a kindness by not making their children eat what they provide. In the end the children lose out with restricted unhealthy diets.
DeleteWell, dont blame the kids, it the way we have raised them, blame the parents and society, we are the real culprits.
ReplyDeleteThere was less food around when we were kids and everything pretty much was home cooked and the quality of food was somewhat better. Also we never snacked except perhaps an apple or a slice of bread and jam if we were really starving so we came to mealtimes quite hungry. Also we were far more active physically - no car and long walks to the shops and bus stops and school and if it was half way decent we played outside.
Enid Blyton gave a very simplistic uncomplicated view of childhood and was very middle class, harking to a better time. It was nt better it just seems like it.
You are absolutely right, childrens dietry whims are catered to these days. I wouldn't have dreamed of asking my mother to cook more than one meal because I didn't like what was on offer, and yet I have seen my sister cook 4 different meals in one night for her brood. Absolutely her own fault, but I wonder how it came to this.
DeleteI was into the Famous Five books, too. But, mine were in German at the time. My mum was always on the look out for these books for me. I devoured adventure books when I was a kid. I was a bit of a tom boy and always fancied adventure books more than any others. Later, as teenager I read Mark Twain and other adventures. Then it was travel journals and
ReplyDeletesuch like. I still remember those inocent days of reading about adventures and dreaming of having them myself one day.
They were caracter and imagination building, just great reads. I haven`t got my books anymore. But the memories of those stories are still with me. The food discribed in them was rather healthy and wholesome. Just what we yearn for nowadays. Cucumber sandwiches and Victoria sponge cakes with hot cocoa. I`d love to be a kid again and able to re-read all those adventures, wouldn`t you? Kids of today have no imagination anymore as they never read those books. A great loss to them and a shame for mankind.
It would be kind of cool to reread some of them, re-live those innocent days.
DeleteI've never read those books but they sound wonderful! Is there an age limit? LOL! And yes, it's SO sad to see how young people eat these days. If you can even call it that. A nice cup of tea, some fresh bread, butter, boiled eggs, sounds DELISH to me!
ReplyDeleteYou missed a treat! They shaped my childhood really. They are rather dated, though I never noticed at the time, and very middle class and slightly racist, but, wow, when you are a kid, you don't notice any of those things. I just remember how good and honest and honourable the children were - and of course the wonderful picnics and tea spreads they had at every given opportunity. If we ate as much as they seemed to we would all be massive!
DeleteI absolutely adored Enid Blyton books and have a small collection. My favourite was 'Valley of Adventure' - I still wonder at it now, decades later. I suppose the books were a little racist, and a little elite - I never knew anyone who had a cook, and I didn't know what lacrosse was (I read all the girls' school book too) but the kids were adventurous, independent, had great morals and the settings were good too.
ReplyDeleteRegarding food, my kids eat French at school and with their friends, and British with a little Italian thrown in at home (nothing fancy, just spag bol or lasagne). They often have hot chocolate and cake in the afternoon called 'gouter' ie tea, and their main meal is at lunch - 3 courses usually. We prefer the evening meal so they get another when they come home too. Poor kids - it's a wonder they aren't like Billy Bunter, but then, they don't eat between meals either and that's probably the secret why the French are mainly slim.
Loved Enid Blyton and, thankfully, I've got old-fashioned boys who would much prefer that kind of feast than a KFC. Wonderful descriptions. x
ReplyDeleteHave you heard of Jane Brocket? She's a blogger and has written a book about food based on Enid Blyton and other stories that describe food in great detail. X
ReplyDeleteI'm going to check her out now!
Deleteyes, I loved the adventures of the wishing chair also.... not only Enid, I loved Aurther Ransom's Swallows and Amazon... they were the days! I too had a feral childhood and loved every moment of it!
ReplyDeleteAnother old post but can't resist commenting on this one either since it reads a bit like someone writing about me! I think I even know which book that's from, although I can't remember the name of it, definitely a farm in the title though and it's about town cousins who have to go and live with their country cousins after their mum gets sick (or maybe is in a car accident?). Then there was a second book where the parents have decided to move down to the country and it's all about the townie delicate mother having to adjust to rough, burly, country life (complete with pigsty and bread that comes in inch-thick slices). Oh the memories. Loved them all and spent some time thinking about them again a few years ago when someone on a forum asked what books influenced people to pursue the simple life. There were the obvious ones like John Seymour, River Cottage Cookbook and so on but when I really thought about it, I realised it had really started so much earlier. What about Island of Adventure - self-sufficiency at it's best!
ReplyDeleteLoved Willard Price and the Hitchcock books, too. And even Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. I can read a book over and over again as well but unfortunately my step-mother was one of those people who only reads a book once and then gets rid of it so lots of books mysteriously vanished during my teen years after she had moved in. I've bought a few at jumble-sales and that since so I have a nice shelf of children's books now. Just in case any of my nieces or nephews come to visit, you understand. :)