The Secret Blog

Preparations for trip to England

2008-05-03T09:16:25-04:00

Just a few days to go! We leave on Monday, May 5th, flying out of the tiny but very, very likable Chattanooga airport. We couldn't face driving two and a half hours to Atlanta again; that airport is big and sprawling, and arrivals (ie, when we return home) have to collect their baggage not once but TWICE -- as if an eight hour flight in economy, plus the long wait to get through customs and the FIRST baggage claim isn't enough. Chattanooga airport is for domestic flights only though, so we have to make a connection -- in our case in Chicago -- but somehow the idea of a quick 30 minute drive to a nice, friendly local airport, then a short flight to Chicago and then on to London Heathrow, somehow outweighs the prospect of going anywhere near Atlanta for a direct flight to Gatwick.

Ever since I started flying to Georgia, way back in 1996, I've flown direct from Gatwick to Atlanta. And ever since I've been living here, every trip back to old Blighty has been direct from Atlanta to Gatwick. So this connection via Chicago is a first. Last year my parents made a connection in South Carolina, and it worked out well -- and of course at the end of the long flight there's just a short hop in the car to our house, instead of getting snarled up in rush-hour traffic on the interstate around Atlanta, and then having to cross over a mountain to get home. Two and a half additional hours on the road, after a long flight, is not much to look forward to! So my parents were happy bunnies with their last flight over here. It's just a shame that their flight home was a complete nightmare; they got to Charlotte and the connection flight home was cancelled! The online help desk wasn't very helpful. Overall it was a bad experience for them, and they ended up staying the night in the baggage area -- at their age! The next morning they flew back to Chattanooga, exhausted, and stayed an extra couple of days at our house while I made some phone calls to get some more convenient flights sorted out for them. Hence why we're not flying US Airways; we're flying United instead. Fingers crossed.

In the news lately there have been stories about American Airlines in Texas cancelling all flights to run tests on their planes. And meanwhile, at London Heathrow, Terminal 5 opened just a few weeks and was a complete disaster, with staff running around like headless chickens and everything going wrong. I heard stories of baggage weighing too much for the baggage machines, which caused the machines to stop dead -- so handlers simply removed bags to get it going again, meaning that many bags never arrived in the right part of the airport. I even heard that there were so many bags left behind that they were all dumped on a plane to Spain so that Spanish staff could sort them out. There's some logic there somewhere, but I can't find it.

Luckily we're flying United, not American, and we're arriving at Terminal 3, not the dreaded Terminal 5. Still, anywhere in Heathrow is considered bad, being the busiest international airport in the world... But, in my old office job, when I used to gallivant about the country visiting thirty-odd small regional offices, I used to fly domestic flights out of Terminal 1 to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Newcastle and even Manchester on a regular basis, and I can't say it was that bad -- certainly no worse than Atlanta. I guess we'll find out!

This will be our second flight with Lily. The first time she was barely walking, and she slept for five hours. Bliss. This time she's nearly four and doesn't have a great deal of patience. But, she enjoys TV, so as long as the little TV on the back of the seat is working, we should be okay.

See how optimistic I am? Nothing can possibly go wrong! *grimace*

I'm not sure when I'll be able to post here again, but will try to cobble something together during our stay in England. If nothing else, I plan to take photos at Enid Blyton Day and will upload them as soon as possible. Unfortunately, after the Day is over, I'm going from Twyford straight to a castle in the Cotswolds, so won't be able to upload them for a week because we won't have a computer!

Fun House in the Garden

2008-04-26T15:16:52-04:00

I'm building a "house" for Lily in our back yard. I started a few months ago, putting posts in the ground and cementing them in, one at a time... with a lot of pondering and cogitating between posts. (Hmm, sounds a bit like the way I write this blog!) It took me ages to line up the posts in a perfect square, what with the slanting terrain and all, but finally I had them firmly in place. From here on, it's going to be fun!

The idea was originally to build a fort for Lily. Every time we drive past a playground she starts yelling, "Playground! I wanna go to the playground!" and it takes a while to convince her that the playground we just passed is rotten and full of bugs and is about to collapse and likely to blow up and whatever other excuse we can come up with. (Okay, we're not really that mean, we usually just say we can't stop right now, we're in a hurry.) So anyway, last Christmas we bought her a slide and I installed it. She likes it, but we had to laugh when she confided in Mom and said, "It's not big and yellow though, like in the playgrounds." Apparently a relatively small 8 ft green slide just doesn't cut it.

So we decided we'd build her a fort. It would consist of four posts and a platform (with fence around) from which we could hang huge yellow slides, climbing frames, and all that good stuff. But, after I got the first couple of posts in the ground, ideas started to fly and our planned fort became a small house, with enclosed room at the bottom, deck on top, pitched roof above that, and a larger deck area to the side. We also decided that if anyone wants to buy things for Lily's fourth birthday in June, then they can chip in and buy playground-type stuff that we can install on the fort.

Let's stop calling it a fort then. Fun House is more accurate. Some of the ideas I had go back a year or so, when I thought it would be fun to build a small house that had secret passages and things. But in practice that's just too much hard work. So we'll just stick with a fun little house that will have a door, some windows, a little table and chair set... maybe electricity and air conditioning, with a plasma screen filling one wall and --

Sorry, getting carried away again. As you can see by this early picture, we have a way to go yet. But, time is now of the essence. We're leaving for England on May 5th, returning May 26th, and our deadline is June 30th (Lily's birthday) which gives me about five weekends after we get back plus any time I can find during weekdays.

By the way, when you dig a hole for a post and fill it with cement, you end up with a pile of dirt. What's to be done with it? Well, rather than spread it out across the lawn I decided it would be better to dig a hole to put it in. Trouble is, then you end up with another similar pile of dirt. Grr! Anyway, I now know how to get around the problem: this afternoon I'm going to dig another hole, only this one will be twice the size.

The Indian Mummy Mystery by Troy Nesbit

2008-04-22T20:40:05-04:00

Shortly after finishing Tom Swift and his Rocket Ship, I was in the mood for another non-Blyton, so I picked off my shelf one of the Troy Nesbit books. Whereas Tom Swift is the creation of the Stratameyer Syndicate (published by Grosset & Dunlap) and therefore subject to routine butchering by overzealous trimbots, the Troy Nesbit books are published by trusty, reliable Whitman and written by a real author with a distinctive style. Other books published by Whitman include the excellent Brains Benton series (6 books), and the not-so-good Power Boys series (6 books), all of which I have on my shelves. I don't yet have all the Troy Nesbits, but these are easy to find and I'll be getting the rest in due course, now that I know how good they are!

I've only read one so far, but one is enough to tell me these are worth having. In this particular case, I'm not sure "Mystery" is the right word; maybe The Indian Mummy Adventure would have been more appropriate as it's more akin to the Famous Five than the Five Find-Outers -- only not set in Devon or Cornwall, but in dusty Colorado. This the Wild West version of the Famous Five, with Joe Cutler playing the part of Julian, and Denny Grogan as Dick. Joe (15) lives with his mother and Grandpa on the Rocking O ranch, where they rent out cabins to visitors. Denny (13) spends a lot of his time hanging out with Joe and occasionally (reluctantly!) helps with the chores of tidying and cleaning the cabins. Then along comes Harold Hansen, or Huff (14), visiting with his mother. I'm not sure who Huff would be the Famous Five equivalent of -- perhaps George in a way, being an outsider and fairly independent. Huff has a keen interest in collecting old Indian artifacts -- pots, arrow heads, and so on -- and so Joe and Denny promise to take Huff to nearby "ghost town" Canary City.

There's not much left of this small town. In the late eighteen-eighties it had been a booming mining town until it had burned to the ground and never got rebuilt; today it's what Enid Blyton would call a "tumbledown" old place, full of memories. The only person living in there is an old hermit named Tom, a cranky old man who doesn't like visitors on "his" property. Actually the entire area is owned by Grandpa; he bought it all years afterwards and turned it into pasture. But he let old Tom stay in his shack.

The adventure starts when the boys dig around and find some old coins, and then a skull with a bullet hole in the forehead. This sparks a few memories in Grandpa, who tells the story of a robbery and a murder in days gone by. That explains the skull -- but part of the story involves a mummified corpse wrapped in blankets, that Grandpa found. This mummy was subsequently stolen from him by some rustlers, and it was never seen again. The mummy goes by the catchy name of Bellyache Bill, because the figure is doubled up as if suffering from a spot of indigestion. Where could it be today? There's good reason to believe it's still in the area, hidden away...

This is almost Blyton territory, and so is the hidden passage the boys find behind the ruins of a house in old Canary City. This old passage contains a safe (the Wild West version of a treasure chest in the smugglers' caves of Cornwall) and in this safe is some old papers and what appear to be an old Confederate coin. Normally Confederate coins are worthless, but this one turns out to be valuable. But it's the papers that interest old Grandpa and the boys, as there's a rough map scrawled on one of them. Without going into a lot of back story, it's evident that the mummy is hidden away in an old Indian dwelling in the nearby mountains.

The mountains were once home to Ute Indians. Set into these mountains are the ruins of old Ute houses -- basically caves and tunnels that have been walled up with flat slabs of stone and rock, with window openings and everything. Some of these caves look out over the valley, a sheer drop to the valley floor, with access via narrow ledges. The entire area has been turned into a National Park, run by rangers, but some of these old dwellings are so well hidden that it's highly conceivable no one has set foot in them for a hundred years or more. The map leads the three boys and Grandpa, along with some accompanying park rangers, to a cave-home on the side of a cliff. It's risky business, but Joe insists on being the first one to investigate, and so the rangers lower him down on a rope and he swings onto a ledge, crawls into the dwelling, and... finds the mummy!

There's a lot of back story to the adventure; a lot of hunting about, even some mischief when Huff stupidly hides the skull in the coolbox while out on a picnic. Naturally his mother faints with shock! There's a good scene in a diner too, where Grandpa faces off against a coin collector who tries to buy Huff's "cheap Confererate coin" for a measly few dollars. After a bit of bartering, the coin collector rapidly increases his offer from $100 to $1000... and then Grandpa makes a phone call and finds out the coin is worth at least $3000. Back in 1954, that's a lot of money!

There's enough length to this novel to really get into it. And there's enough room for the author to breathe. It seems that many non-Blyton children's books (especially American ones) are on a straight line from start to finish; they're not allowed to deviate from the plot, for fear of losing the young readers' interest. But Troy Nesbit is refreshingly casual in his approach, lovingly detailing many non-essential scenes. He also avoids the "pat" storytelling that normally means "boy goes for walk with dog, dog finds rabbit hole leading to passage, boy explores passage, boy finds treasure." Nesbit's version would more likely be "boy goes for walk with dog, dog finds rabbit hole leading to passage, boy explores passage, finds nothing, gives up, explores somewhere else, finds some coins that aren't worth anything, gives up, gets despondent..." In other words, you never quite know what's going to happen, which is nice.

One thing that struck me as odd was that, after an entire book searching for a missing mummy, and after naming the book "The Indian Mummy Mystery," the finding of the mummy in the penultimate chapter is treated almost perfunctorily. Joe's dangerous descent into the Indian dwelling is the culmination of all their efforts; once he's inside, he sits back to rest and leans against something soft -- something wrapped in blankets. He's found the mummy at last! But that's the end of the chapter, and the final chapter is like an epilogue; the mummy is in the museum, and the boys have made a great sale on the valuable coin they found, enough to buy them an old jalopy (a rickety old car). Somewhere before this epilogue, Joe has turned sixteen, old enough to drive. I suspect the next books in the series will make use of that!

A final word about the illustrations. I like them a lot. In fact I have two copies of this book, and the one seen here is probably harder to find. It contains "color" illustrations, or black and white illustrations with a tasteful sepia/brown overlay that I like (unlike the garish blues and reds that some of the old Famous Fives used). The illustrations themselves are different, and far superior, to the other version of the book I have. I haven't done any research on this yet, but if there are any Troy Nesbit fans with some information about the different available editions, I'm all ears!

Addendum: Having started into another Troy Nesbit book, I now realize that each in the series is a one-off novel, with different characters! This surprised me, but I'm finding this new one, The Forest Fire Mystery, even more enjoyable than the last, with a really nice brother/sister team, some excellent baddies, and truly mysterious goings-on. Why has it taken me so long to get around to these books??

New staff at EnidBlyton.net... Honest!

2008-04-20T18:53:23-04:00

Big news! I've hired new staff to take over at EnidBlyton.net! Well, okay, maybe it's not "big" news, maybe not even "news" at all to most people, and I don't know if "staff" is the right word, or "hired" for that matter, and "new" is questionable in 50% of the personnel in question. And as for my use of the phrase "take over," well, that's not quite true either. So, I guess what I really mean is: ! I've to at EnidBlyton.net! Only that doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Well, I think you get the idea anyway. Basically I've badgered a couple of online friends to help out with the daily routine of approving messages and sorting through the Talk About Blyton comments. As you may know, sometimes it takes me a couple of days to get to this, which is not much good for anyone trying to maintain a conversation through the site. So my two new Helpers (for want of a better word) are a welcome relief for me. They're going to be especially helpful in May, when I leave for England -- otherwise it might be three weeks before I get a chance to log in!

I have to say the conversation in the Talk About Blyton section has degenerated over the last few weeks. There are some very good posts of course, raising interesting discussions, and these posts I'm only too happy to include. But there have also been a number of, well, less-than-interesting posts from certain young ladies who seem to do nothing but get angry at each other over trivial matters. I mean, do we really care if one thinks that "Dick is better than Julian" and that "George is better than Anne" and that "Anne is stupid" and so on? I hate to be rude about this, but I don't want that kind of childish chit-chat on my site. I think it's tailing off now, thanks to some ruthless editing and a few friendly but meaningful jabs.

When I step back and think about it, as I have done in the last few days, I initially created my site for adults. It may sound daft to some, but everything on my site is aimed at fellow like-minded adults reliving their childhood. When I first put the site online in December 2004, it was really just a page about the Five Find-Outers. And as I started writing reviews of each book in the series, I wrote them from an adult's perspective, for other adults to read and comment on. During that first year or so, I was lucky enough to "meet" many fellow fans of varying ages (but all adults) some of whom contributed reviews and articles. There was hardly a sniff of a child in those days, but I always welcomed messages and comments from the younger Blyton fans whenever they came along.

In recent months, the activity on the website seems to have been mostly from children. Now that in itself is fine, as long as there's some interesting discussion about Enid Blyton going on. Unfortunately there's been a lot of childish hissy-fits, and I've got to a point where I just delete any posts that contain "angry" or "hurt" feelings. I've actually had posts where one kid says to another, "See you in class on Monday!" -- and as I write this, I just deleted a message that asked if her classmate had finished her homework! What is this, a chit-chat forum for schoolgirls now?

I've tried to be patient. It's great that children are reading Enid Blyton, and I feel privileged that these same children are visiting my site and taking the time to write. But I have to draw a line somewhere, sometime, and I've just drawn it -- a big fat straight mark in the dirt, see? That line represents the difference between interesting, sensible, hopefully mature conversation -- and the inane drivel of a select few school kids. Now, by this I mean a select FEW -- I think they know who they are, and if they don't, they're probably going to find out soon. This kind of stuff is going to be nipped sharply in the bud.

Discussions are great. Controversial discussions are also great, such as the one where George Kirrin was accused of being gay. Everyone has an opinion, and everyone is welcome to voice it, even loudly and forcibly! -- just so long as one remains on topic and, above all, respectful of others. A fairly recent spate of bickering occurred briefly between adults, which surprised me; again, discussion is good and healthy, but silly name-calling and childish bating is pointless.

While on this subject... I have 280 "club members" who receive notifications of site updates. 254 are subscribed to receive notifications of blog posts only, although I've now stopped doing that as I couldn't shake the feeling I was shoving my rambles down throats! Anyway, the point is, of the 280 who receive notifications I wonder who actually welcomes them and goes to the site to read the latest stuff... and who groans and deletes the notification without even glancing at it. I'm not fishing for praise here! -- quite the opposite in fact, as I'd love to hear from those who might have lost interest in the site, or would like to unsubscribe, or whatever. Any feedback is good, even if it's bad. If I were to send out a notice to request a "renewal of club membership," I wonder how many of the 280 would actually renew?

I'm just musing here. Well, until a number of people tell me otherwise, I'll just keep on rambling...

The Pocket

2008-04-14T13:50:48-04:00

This weekend I took time off from the computer and went for a short "hike" with Wife and Daughter to a place known as The Pocket. Nessa (my far superior half) informed me that this place blooms like crazy once a year, and people come from miles around to see what seem like carefully arranged, lovingly planted displays but which are in fact completely wild. I'm not really into flowers -- I hardly know one from another -- but a secret part of me appreciates them although I rarely say so out loud. I'm not like Dick from the Famous Five, who shouts out the train window, "Look at all the lovely primroses!" Sorry, but that kind of exclamation should be reserved for girls. If boys are going to mention flowers, they should casually comment something like, "Hey, look at the bright colors, pretty cool, eh?" and then change the subject to something like fast cars or super-charged computers.

That said, I like nature and always like to see lush green grass, healthy trees, and dabs of bright color under a deep blue sky. Forests are my favorite places to walk, especially where there are ponds or rivers or, better still, clear mountain streams. The sound of burbling, gushing water is very relaxing to me, and I wish the stream we had out back was more substantial than it is; it only runs when there's a really heavy downpour, and then it's a nasty muddy color. No, I like ever-flowing, crystal clear streams that look good enough to drink, are shallow enough to wade in, and fast running enough that it churns and bubbles over rocks on its way down the mountain.

I was pleased to see that The Pocket had just that kind of stream. It's only about 30 minutes from the house, yet somehow we've never been there before. There's another similar place called Cloudland Canyon, which is a far bigger deal with much longer walks and truly impressive waterfalls, but The Pocket is neat because it's tucked away and not even sign-posted; if you don't already know it's there, well, you won't know it's there! If you follow the road out past La Fayette, there's a very quaint old barn on the right -- one of many such barns, but I thought this one was particularly old and quaint...

Past this barn there's a narrow turn-off called Pocket Road. This road reminds me a little of some of those lanes you find in England, the one-car-width picturesque lanes that wind between old thatched cottages and masses of tall hedges. In hillbilly country, there are no thatched cottages but instead a mish-mash of varying styles of houses; some old and beat-up, some new with gleaming white siding, and occasionally a brick house or two. But all have plenty of land around them, some well looked after with carefully mowed lawns and neat hedges, and others with piles of junk and various old cars rusting away.

Pocket Road turns into a gravel track that goes for maybe a mile before ending at the foot of a mountain. From here on its walkies only. As soon as we started walking, we crossed a slow-moving stream and I immediately thought, "Mmm, looks almost good enough to drink." The trail actually meanders around and ends up following the stream all the way up to the top of the small mountain. It starts off as simple, gentle slopes of forest, with all the wild flowers people come from all over to see. I wasn't all that impressed myself. Perhaps I'd just got the wrong mental image in my head, a Blytonesque canvas of brilliant color... but the reality is quite a bit more mundane. Nice, yes; if we hadn't known about the flowers, we'd have thought, "Gosh, what a lot of flowers!" But spectacular? Hmm, not really. Although Dick might have said, "Ooh, how lovely!"

Still, it was a nice walk. The boarded walkway (for wheelchair access) soon ended and became your average dirt track, which in turn became a steep, far more difficult path. It followed the stream all the way up, twisting around trees and roots and rocks, sometimes right on the bank of the stream where one foot wrong could mean soggy pants. I like this kind of walk, but we had Lily with us and she needed a lot of help -- because for some reason, three-year-olds don't look where they're going!

The waterfall at the top came gushing over the cliff onto a number of rocky "steps" that would be ideal picnic ground if you deliver the picnic hamper ahead of time by helicopter. Lily of course loved the water, and being a kid had to crawl around in it and get wet. (She's wearing a football kit because we'd just come straight from a soccer field where she'd played her first actual game.)

I did take some pictures of the waterfall, but they came out rubbish, sorry. The brilliant sunlight glinting off the sparkling water was evidently too much for the camera and it all looked a bit Chernobyl-ish. Oh well. Perhaps it's best to imagine it for yourselves though. Just think of a hundred foot high cliff face, with ledges all the way up the side that you can climb up onto (if you're stark, staring mad) and a waterfall pouring down into a churning rock pool. Behind that waterfall is probably a cave with a moss-covered floor, but I couldn't see the entrance because of the curtain of ferns. However, I thought for a moment that I saw four kids' faces peering through the gushing water...

Enid Blyton and her Rocket Ship?

2008-04-05T11:05:13-04:00

A little while ago I finally picked up a Tom Swift book. I found it at an antique mall (these places are gargantuan places and there are always collections of secondhand books to be found) and I took the plunge and paid $4.00 for it. It's a million miles from the likes of Enid Blyton. Published by Grosset & Dunlap and part of a very large series that started way back in 1910, to date there are over a hundred novels in the series -- or to be more accurate, over a hundred novels over several series. But that's not much of a surprise when you consider that the original Tom Swift was created and penned by the Stratameyer Syndicate, the gang responsible for the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries.

As usual I've learned the "hard way" that it's downright annoying to read a book written by ghost writers and edited by the Stratameyer Syndicate. Anyone who knows or has read my previous ramblings about this group of literary monsters will immediately understand what I mean. I don't know the full history of the Tom Swift books, but I do know that my copy was written in 1954 and the Syndicate's radical trimming of all their published works started in 1959 -- so it's not a great leap of logic to assume that Tom Swift and his Rocket Ship was cut to bits by unfeeling trimbots.

Even without prior knowledge of the wholesale butchering Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books (during which around five chapters were cut from each book in an effort to streamline them and bring them all down to a uniform twenty-five chapters) it's pretty obvious to me that the New Tom Swift Adventures have also been subjected to this treatment and excess fat removed. The thing is, I like excess fat. For me, the best chapters BY FAR were the last two or three, and I believe it's because they were too action packed to be trimmed. That last portion of the book was a very satisfying, evenly paced read -- but the rest is erratic, sometimes slowing down for a detailed scene "as-it-happens," but most of the time rushing through as if the author is simply paraphrasing everything. Rather than showing us what was said, the author (or the editor) simply sums up what was said in a short sentence. If this were a Secret Seven book, one of the secret meetings would go like this:

As the last of the Seven whispered the password and entered the small shed, Peter closed the door. "Now, let's discuss what happened last night at the gang's hide-out. Who wants to start?" The Seven talked for fifteen minutes and then broke for lunch. That afternoon they went to the railway station to see if they could question the porter. The porter wasn't very helpful. The next day they met at school...

This is what the Stratameyer Syndicate do to their books. They suck all the life out of them. It's a great shame. It's also annoying when I don't know who characters are. Okay, so maybe it's not fair to complain when I'm picking up a single book midway into a series -- serves me right! But you see, most authors go into some detail about characters and situations on the assumption that the reader might be a newbie. So it's not fair on the reader to have that important material removed by some scissor-wielding editor. I know hardly anything about Tom Swift other than the fact that he's eighteen and a genius inventor... and he apparently has endless amounts of money at his disposal with which to invent and build. But I know nothing about him personally. He's completely faceless.

So anyway, Tom Swift has money, and lots of it. Not only that, but he runs an entire organisation called Swift Enterprises, located on Fearing Island, a top secret base with security personnel, scientists, and the like. Heck, in this book, Tom builds a rocket ship, for heaven's sake! This is, as I said earlier, a million miles from Enid Blyton!

Despite being a mere eighteen year old, young Tom Swift (son of the original Tom Swift, who made his debut in the no-doubt-superior series that started in 1910) has a number of flying machines to hand. He's an expert pilot, of course, as is his friend and colleague Bud. Halfway through the book, Tom and Bud manage to crash land not one but two airplanes in succession. Such is Tom's unlimited resources that, at one point, he enlists the help of the Navy in an effort to trick the enemy. Oh, and did I mention he has a rocket ship?

While Fatty and the Find-Outers fork out to get on a bus to Sheepsale, Tom Swift jumps into his Flying Lab. This Flying Lab is a mystery in itself. There's actually an earlier book called Tom Swift and his Flying Lab, and I'm sure the Lab is described in ample detail there; but poor me hasn't read that one, so I have to rely on the descriptions in the book I have. Unfortunately there aren't any descriptions. There might have been at one point, but there aren't now. So I imagined a big square portacabin with rocket boosters -- a silly image, but hey, the Lab apparently possesses VTOL (which, if you know your Jump-Jet Harriers, is Vertical Take-Off and Landing). Oddly enough, on one page there's a picture of the Lab, shown as an ordinary but large airplane. I'm not sure what to make of that, since this plane doesn't look like it has any vertical thrusters. Maybe the artist didn't know what the Lab looked like either, and couldn't be bothered to read Tom Swift and his Flying Lab to find out.

Speaking of the artwork, there's also the issue of the windows in the rocket ship. In the book, these are described as small round portholes, so designed for safety reasons. Yet the cover art shows an enormous sheet of glass that couldn't possibly work in real life. So I don't really trust the artist with his depiction of the Flying Lab.

There are drones in this book too. These are automated planes that (somehow) guide enemy planes in. How, I don't rightly know. Frankly the text is so badly edited that its confusing.

Now, I know I sound pretty negative about the Tom Swift series. On the contrary I want to read more. But, as usual, I want to find the originals from 1910-1941, in which Tom Swift Senior is more down to earth. The first is called Tom Swift and his Motorcycle -- I'm guessing a souped-up machine that appealed to the motor cycle enthusiasts at the turn of the 20th Century. The next is about a Motor Boat; the next an Airship; then a Submarine Boat; and so on. I like the titles of the "speediest car on the road," Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout; and the next one, Tom Swift and his Wireless Message. Lovely! It all sounds so quaint and I can't wait to get my hands on them... if I ever do.

The original series ran from 1910-1941, with 40 books, but the book I have is actually from a later, newer series that started in 1954 and ran until 1971, with 33 books in all. Many more have been written since, but let's not even go there. If you're interested, Wikipedia has a very nice listing here.

Did I mention Tom Swift has a rocket ship? My mind is still boggling over this. Being a clever inventor is fine; after all, Brains Benton is one, and so is Jupiter Jones, but they're fairly ordinary kids. Tom Swift is far from ordinary. This is Thunderbirds in the Fifties. In fact, that old British TV show Thunderbirds is about the closest comparison I can make. Think clever machines; think unlimited (and inexplicable) funding; think baddies with huge mustaches; think little hover-scooters to travel about on just so the puppeteers don't have to bother plucking strings...

If you can get over the sheer outlandishness of the Tom Swift series -- that an eighteen year old apparently has free reign to do as he wants with Big Bucks and Dangerous Equipment -- then it's all great fun. The potential is enormous, which no doubt explains the longevity of the series. The next book after Tom Swift and his Rocket Ship is Tom Swift and his Giant Robot. Now that's a kid with too much money on his hands!

But all this inventive stuff pales into insignificance when you realize that there are actually Martians involved. In this book, there's talk of "receiving messages again from the space people." I blinked rapidly when I read that. What? As if outlandish inventions aren't enough, we're now into aliens as well? To be fair the Martians (as they're called here, and as they were always called during the Fifties) are played down; there are messages from them, sure, but they're mathematically coded and the little green bug-eyed men never actually show. At least not in this book. If there's a story arc in this series, I'm sure it's to do with these Martians. Does Tom Swift ever meet them? Maybe he does in Tom Swift and The Cosmic Astronauts. Or in Tom Swift and The Asteroid Pirates. Or in Tom Swift and The Galaxy Ghosts.

Great fun though. Badly edited, but what a concept for a children's series! But I have to say that these books are probably for older readers, as there are a LOT of technical terms -- the sort of scientific mumbo-jumbo that I love to read in Stephen Baxter's hard-core sci-fi books, only with a quaint Fifties feel. You have to admire the ghost writers. Writing about space travel -- even a quick orbit around the Earth -- is quite an achievement when the first manned flight in space wasn't until 1961, seven years after this book was written. Oh, but I couldn't help chuckling. During take-off, Tom and Bud had to lie flat on wheeled trolleys to counter the effects of G-force. These trolleys weren't even fixed to the floor!

All this has got me wanting to try something. As Tom explained, you can see the effects of G-force by standing on a set of scales while riding up in an elevator. As you start to rise, the dial will show you as being heavier, as we've all experienced. If the dial shows you as being twice as heavy, that means you're experiencing 2 g. Humans can handle 20 to 35 g for a brief moment, but only about 9 g for sustained periods of time. A ride in a theme park can reach 4.6 g. A tornado in Texas was recorded as 6.7 g.

Surprisingly, astronauts only deal with about 3 g when taking off in the Space Shuttle, less than a theme park ride! But then, they have to be able to reach for controls. Can you reach for make-believe controls while riding the Super Alien Twister?

All in all, I do yearn for more Tom Swift, but it has to be the originals. As usual.

(My next book is The Indian Mummy Mystery, one of the Troy Nesbit books. Looks great so far, and a huge notable bonus is that it's published by good old Whitman, and NOT Grosset & Dunlap!)

April Fool's prank over, EnidBlyton.net restored to normal

2008-04-02T21:50:13-04:00

Well, I confess that I didn't really hire anyone named Sarah to run the site. As many of you guessed, it was all a silly prank. I didn't expect anyone to take me seriously, but I have to say I had a lot of fun answering messages in a really dumb way, regardless of whether the person I was responding to believed it or not. I tried hard to get all my Enid Blyton facts wrong, and to generally come across like an airhead from Alabama. Now, just for the record, I have nothing against Alabama, or airheads for that matter (especially pretty ones), and although I've never actually met the lady whose photo I used, I'm certain that in real life she's very smart and not in the least bit interested in hair.

Actually, scratch that last comment. It turned out that "Sarah" -- or Candace Bailey as her real name is -- is in fact very interested in hair, but this was pure coincidence. I went looking for a picture of a nice young lady and typed in "alabama girl" because I had some twisted hope of finding someone "Alabama-like"... but actually I just picked the first nice girl I came across. Afterwards I dug deeper, went to the site the picture came from, and found to my amazement that she'd been in a hair contest or something.

So, after introducing Make-Believe Sarah, let me now introduce you to Very Real Candace (scroll down the page to the second picture). Assuming Candace is still on this page when you view it, I hope I haven't caused her any offense in using her picture. She's an actress (born in Alabama) and has appeared in episodes of The Sopranos. As I write this, apparently she's dating Seth Green. So there you go. You never even knew you were talking to someone so famous!

As I said above, I never really expected anyone to take me seriously, but some of you folks did. Without naming names, it was mostly the younger ones that were fooled, and I know they're going to be mad at me. Especially as they actually liked the purples and pinks better than my dull greys! There were also a few adults (at least they seemed like adults) who appeared to be taken in; these visitors weren't regulars though, so they can be forgiven. For the most part, though, I just had fun answering questions in a scatter-brained way... and if I annoyed or offended anyone along the way, well, I'm sorry.

Just to clarify something: I was David Preston, the very first poster on April 1. I just wanted to kick it off and test my pink writing. I was also Jessie, Sarah's friend. (Jessie is probably the first girl on that website link above.) And, needless to say, I was also Sarah's mom. Anita Bensoussane was Miss Grayling, with a clever hint about Zerelda and her pranks. Everyone else was real, although some played along and others were fooled.

What surprised me was the amount of fun I had answering as someone else, and deliberately getting it all wrong. I like and appreciate all the messages I get to the site, but occasionally I'm asked questions I can't possibly know the answer to, like the value of a poem, and although I usually answer "sorry, not sure," in a polite and respectful manner, sometimes I feel like shouting, "How the heck do I know??" As Sarah I felt that I could be slightly less than respectful, because I wasn't "me" but someone else. I hope I wasn't outright rude to anyone, but if so, I blame Sarah completely for that.

This is what it must be like for actors. They immerse themselves in roles and in the process -- even off camera -- say and do things they would never normally say and do. Some people also do this "alter-ego" thing for real -- wearing costumes and fighting crime using fanciful, mysterious monickers guaranteed to spark exciting newspaper headlines, while during the day holding down ordinary jobs as reporters or photographers or -- sorry, I digress.

My thanks to those who joined in the silliness. And my apologies to those who were simply taken in. Oh, and just so we're clear, I'm afraid there's NOT going to be an online chat session this week entitled "George Kirrin Girl Power vs. Anne the Weedy Wet Limp Lettuce Leaf." Furthermore, there's not going to be a new page entitled "Hair Fashions in Enid Blyton." Sorry to disappoint.

I'll be keeping all the messages written by Sarah; they'll be distinguishable by the pinkness of the font. I'll also be storing a screenshot of the purple-pink site for posterity, in case I ever decide to dip into my feminine side and actually go that route. Don't hold your breath though. In the meantime I guess it's time to say goodbye to poor make-believe Sarah. I'm already missing her. *sniff*

England here we come!

2008-03-18T20:53:05-04:00

At the end of last week, I booked flights to England. My wife, daughter and I are set to arrive in England on May 6th, and we'll be there about two and a half weeks, returning on May 23rd. Yay! This naturally means that I'll be heading over to Twyford on May 10th to attend Enid Blyton Day. Yay again! I've only been once, in 2006. Luckily I got to meet Gillian Baverstock (one of Enid Blyton's daughters) before she passed away in 2007.

Adding to the excitement (for me anyway) is that fact that we've booked to stay a week with my parents in a castellated mansion, in the heart of the Cotswolds. I would say castle, but that brings to mind... well, a castle. This place is more of a mansion than a castle, but it happens to have castellations (made up variation of the word) to the roof, giving it that castle-like appearance. I would have liked to book the tower room, but that wasn't available; shame, because the thought of staying in a real tower, in a real castle, is a smashing thrill -- but never mind, we're staying in a very nice apartment (two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a living room) in a mansion. But hey, I can still imagine, can't I?

I think I'll search for secret passages though. I'm sure there's probably some smuggling going on, so I'll keep an eye on things and look out for flashing lights in the night, or the low drone and thump-thump of secret planes dropping mysterious packages on the moors. Hmm, perhaps at night I'll hear the stealthy footfalls of the deaf servant as he sneaks about the place... I wonder if there's a window seat? I'll look. Perhaps there are some catacombs below the building.

Back to Enid Blyton Day. I'll be taking plenty of pictures because I need to update the Society website as soon as I get back, and I expect I'll write something or other for both the Society website and this blog. So in that sense it'll be a "working holiday," and therefore I'll be billing Tony at the Society for my plane tickets. Tee hee!

I hope he doesn't set Barney on me when I arrive...

The Duck Pond of Manor Park

2008-02-29T20:32:23-05:00

Gosh! It's been a little while since my last post, and I wanted to get another in before the month end just so my February tally reaches an astounding three instead of a measly two. I actually started this post a while back, but lost it accidentally due to Human Error. Anyone who has lost work in this way knows that it's hard to muster the enthusiasm to write the same thing again! But, with a great strain of effort, here we go...

In the Five Find-Outer section on EnidBlyton.net I've mentioned Geoff, an old mate from school. Not seem him in years, but anyway, he was my Enid Blyton buddy. We collected and shared the books, in particular the Five Find-Outer mysteries, and virtually lived the lives of Fatty and his gang in the best way we could. Nothing is ever quite the same of course. We lived in Aldershot, which is not exactly your quaint, picturesque Blyton village. We didn't have a river nearby, so in our world the River Walk to Marlow became the Duck Pond of Manor Park. We never found an ice cream shop, but instead frequented a cafe called The Gorge. We didn't know any kind, high-up policemen, or any hot-tempered bobbies (although I did once get told off for riding my bike on the pavement). And as for mysteries... well, as Pip used to say, they just don't grow on trees.

Going back to The Gorge for a moment... This place was fascinating to us. It was a two-storey cafe in the middle of Aldershot town, and the staircase and upper floor were made to look like caves. Literally, you'd walk up the staircase and duck around the protruding "rock" walls and ceiling, and make your way to a booth table that sits in a carved out hollow. Very cool, except that for some reason the owner had painted the cave walls bright orange. Still, this was "our place," where we sat with cups of tea and discussed all manner of things -- usually in lieu of a good juicy mystery.

Part of the fun of being "in a club" is having badges. Thinking back, I guess we had a Secret Seven period where all we wanted to do was form clubs and make badges, just for the sake of it. Being the "artistic" one in the class, it fell to me to create the badges. I actually created some flip-open types; when you held it up, the bottom half fell open like an FBI agent's ID. Unlike the FBI though, my badges were made of paper and all the identification details were scrawled in ink. Still, in our school days, nobody could reproduce these advanced badges in the same way, so owning one was enough to grant access to our club. And the club's name? Well... all right, if you must know, it was simply Lion's Club. There. Yes, go ahead and laugh. But the last laugh is on me, because Geoff and I were co-founders of the best secret club in Aldershot.

The fact that we only had two long-term members is neither here nor there. Several other friends (some of them random kids from class) wanted to join, just for a piece of the badge-wielding action, but nothing really came of it and there was none of the loyal camaraderie as experienced by the Secret Seven. It was more like when Susie and her friends wanted to join in, just for a laugh. But Geoff and I didn't care; at the end of the day, we only needed two in our club to imagine mysteries.

But one day, two friends indicated an interest in joining in with whatever it was we were concocting. Colin and Jason wanted to be part of it. This might have been because Geoff and I had hinted about being involved in some mystery or other; it was a surprise when they believed us, but this is where The Mystery of the Hidden House got a sudden revival in our heads. Colin and Jason were a real life version of Ern Goon, and our mystery, though utterly made-up, needed some fleshing out.

We sought the help of a kind, elderly lady next door to Geoff, and asked her if we could tape an interview with her. She was happy to help, and so we asked all sorts of questions about a "burglary" that had taken place a week before. I wish I'd kept the notes for that recording, and especially the tape itself; what I'd give to hear that now! In any case, although I don't remember this at all, we must have played that tape to Colin and Jason and had them goggle-eyed with eagerness to be involved, because the mystery moved on to the next step: Arranging a meeting with the suspect.

Okay, so this was where we fouled up. We should have stuck to laying false clues like sweet wrappers and bits of grey flannel cloth. But no, we were so chuffed with ourselves that we went straight for the jugular... and missed. You see, Geoff was always the tallest kid in the class -- way taller than anyone else -- and that made him the prime candidate for pretending to be an adult. We arranged an "innocent" meeting with the burglary suspect, and at the last moment pretended that Geoff couldn't make it due to some chore or whatever. This meant that Colin, Jason and I would meet the "suspect" and surreptitiously interview him about his whereabouts. The suspect was Geoff in disguise; his father's thick-rimmed glasses and long green coat (with hood pulled up in suspicious manner), together with his natural height, made him look like an adult... Well, from a distance anyway. But as soon as he got close, Colin and Jason (who had been nervous up until now) just groaned, called us losers, and went home. And that was that. Our mystery ended abruptly.

Who needs unimaginative types anyway? Lion's Club was just fine with its two founding members. We laid on a number of treasure hunts for each other, one of us laying clues for the other to follow and puzzle over. Although it was more a case of one being just a step or two ahead of the other. Today this would have been much easier, what with mobile phones; but in those days we had no such thing, and so it meant using telephone boxes and other mundane methods. On one occasion I was in the process of laying clues for Geoff. I went to good old Manor Park (at a spot right next to the duck pond) and dug a hole to bury a suspicious tin containing Secret Documents. Once safely buried, I hurried to the telephone box (just outside the park gates) and phoned Geoff to give him instructions. As I left the kiosk, a gang of unknown kids confronted me. With horror I realized that the leader had gone and dug up my precious Secret Documents, and was poring over them with great interest.

"What's this?" he said -- not in an unfriendly manner, but in a way that led me to believe he was not going to let me have them back.

"Nothing," I responded. "None of your business."

"Is it a treasure hunt?" he guessed correctly. "Is it? I want to do it! So do I have to solve this puzzle? Is the next clue already in place?"

Groaning inwardly, I just told him no, it's not, and would never be now that the Secret Documents had been infiltrated by the enemy. (Not in those words exactly, but you get the idea.) That was the end of that particular hunt. I had to phone Geoff and tell him the cat was out of the bag.

And finally, in this little walk down memory lane... The Duck Pond of Manor Park. I discovered that "unimaginative Jason" was not so unimaginative after all. In fact he became one of my best friends for a few years, in my post-Blyton days. We became Star Wars buddies, and, as we grew older, Dungeons & Dragons buddies. But Jason had family issues. I didn't really understand it so well back then, but I learned that his parents weren't the happiest couple in the world, and his older brother was pretty mean and contemptuous at the best of times. Plus, Jason was overweight, and at school that's a pretty serious matter. He was "the fat kid in class." Oddly enough I hardly even noticed that he was overweight, but once his mother took me aside and quizzed me about other kids, asking whether they made fun of him or not, and I think that was when I realized how serious it was and how inwardly unhappy he was.

Where does the Duck Pond come into this? Well, the pond in Manor Park is still there today; it's fairly large, with a railing fence around it, and to one side lies what can be described as a small island. Technically it's not an island, as it's connected at one small point, but it looks like an island all the same. One day Jason seemed very unhappy and he was discussing the possibility of running away. In my innocence I was actually excited about the idea, but told him (almost sadly) that I had no reason to run away. But if we did, I continued, this little island in the middle of the pond would be an ideal place to hide out. It's heavily wooded, you see, so there'd be plenty of cover. The fact that we'd have to cower down behind bushes all day long to avoid the prying eyes of passers-by never seemed to occur to us. Or perhaps it did, and we thought only of the free bread we'd be able to feast on, if we could wrestle it away from the ducks.

Ah, such innocence. Of course we didn't run away; this was reality after all. In Blyton's books, children who ran way had a very good reason and everything turned out well in the end. In real life, children who run away get into very serious trouble indeed, one way or another.

For anyone interested, you can see The Duck Pond of Manor Park here -- looking down on it, the park doesn't look very big, but trust me, it's huge. The pond, which has a squiggly path running all the way around, looks a funny muddy color here; but it's not really. The island is hard to spot, but it's there, hidden below the trees. Do you see Daisy the cow?

Those crazy Americans

2008-02-12T18:48:38-05:00

Suggestions for the Silliest Book Cover continue to come in, and there are some corkers! But I think we're only scratching the surface so far. Anyway, I finally received the book that started me off on this. The Secret Seven and the Case of the Stolen Car may be a better title than Good Work Secret Seven, but otherwise I feel nothing but scorn and contempt for this American edited version. Actually, part of what I feel is indignation -- the feeling that Americans are so wrapped up in themselves that they always feel a need to Americanize everything. If it's so important to have American kids in an American town saying American things, then why not just stick with American authors?

For instance, are Stateside children really incapable of comprehending such un-American celebrations as Guy Fawkes Night? Within the first few pages, the Britishness of the book has been thoroughly stamped on (not stamped out, just stamped on) and our familiar chilly November the Fifth has been replaced with July the Fourth.

At least they chose a suitable replacement, one where fireworks can still be included in the story. But while we Brits understand that Americans celebrate July the Fourth, apparently American publishers think their children aren't smart enough to figure out that their English cousins have a holiday of their own. Why change such a thing? What's wrong with just letting them learn something new about another country? I'm sure they'd appreciate going to school the next day and announcing to their friends and teachers, "Say, did you know the Brits have a holiday in November, where they build a bonfire and burn a guy?"

Hmm, well, perhaps that's not a good example. "Burning a guy" might invoke shocked expressions in a classroom of imaginative kids. But still, how cool it would be to learn something interesting about a faraway land! I know that when I moved to the States, everyone was startled to hear about our November 5 celebrations. "You build a bonfire?" one relative asked, puzzled. "And put a mannequin on top? And set fire to it?" When I explained that Guy Fawkes was a man who came close to blowing up Parliament with barrels of gunpowder, and the bonfire and fireworks represent a celebration of that close call... Well, in truth, I realized then how silly it is that we commemorate an event that nearly happened. But still, it's part of English tradition and shouldn't be so readily excised from English-written books.

It makes me wonder (again) just how many cultural changes there are in overseas Blyton books, especially those that have been translated. For instance, I know that Blyton's oft-used fall guys, the Gypsies, have in some foreign editions been replaced by other, more relevant "local baddies" that better represent that country's stereotypical butt of "dodgy characters." I can understand why, too; the term "Gypsy" is pretty common throughout Europe and many other parts of the world, usually used in a derogatory way to describe untrustworthy traveling folk. But I doubt the good, hard-working people of Central and Eastern Europe would enjoy reading about "themselves" in this way, and in this sense changes to the text are inevitable and sensible. For instance, I'm fairly certain that Enid Blyton books printed in Romania would include a sordid bunch of traveling lager louts known as Blighties. But aside from these political changes, I think the origins of the book should be left well alone. If kids want to read books about kids from their own neck of the woods, there are plenty of other books on the shelves. If kids want to read books by a famous author, surely they should be allowed to read the books as originally written?

That said, I'm not a publisher and have no idea if what I'm saying makes good business sense or not! Let's move on to some of the Americanisms that have crept into The Case of the Stolen Car...

So the story starts out with Susie being annoying and saying she's going to start her own club, since the Secret Seven don't seem to be having many meetings anymore. Well, as it happens the Seven have a meeting the very next afternoon -- but what on earth is the password? Why, it's "Independence," of course. So the Seven show up at the meeting, loaded with decorations to go on their float for the Fourth of July parade. (Jack is very proud of the Uncle Sam costume he's going to wear.) At the meeting the Seven (eight, including Scamper) enjoy chocolate cookies, apples, ginger cookies, doughnuts, peppermint candy, and peanuts. And lemonade. Colin is a little late arriving, and Peter says, "Nuts to him. Say, what a spread we've got!"

Need I continue? Hmm, yes, this is swell...

The reason Colin is late is because he heard a scuffle in the bushes and found a notebook. It contains a list of items such as silver candlesticks and cups, and a cigarette box engraved with the initials A.G.B... and Jack immediately recognizes this list as something his father read in the newspaper that morning -- goods stolen from a famous tennis player named Bedwall (as opposed to a famous cricketer).

I think the editors got tired of Americanizing and left the next few chapters alone, apart from mentions of "Mom" and more exclamations of "Say!" But then Peter and Janet go to their Aunt Rose's house for tea. At eight, their father arrives in the car outside to collect them, and off they set for home. On the way, their father makes a slight detour. "I've just got to call at the railroad station for some packages they're holding for me," he says. "I'll leave the car in the parking lot with you in it. I won't be more than a minute."

So follows the most exciting scene in Secret Seven history, when a pair of thieves steal the car and drive across town. After a brief conversation, and a clumsily dropped item down the side of the passenger seat, the thieves ditch the car and make off, leaving the Seven with a case to solve. There's an ample supply of food to scoff during meetings -- George's grandmother is an absolute peach for handing out delicious chocolate bars, but there's an even better spread at Colin's house, with hamburgers, hotdogs, french fries, a luscious cherry cake, and more. When the Seven are in the summer house and Peter notices Scamper is missing, the original book says, "He's gone into the kitchen to make love to our cook," meaning he's gone all soppy because the cook is baking something tasty. This somewhat eyebrow-raising line has been replaced in this American edition with, "He's gone into the kitchen to see my grandmother, who's visiting us from California."

It's a shame Scamper didn't stay in the kitchen, because when he returns to the summer house, he knocks over a candle and sets the fireworks alight. Popbang, popbang-bang, pop, whizz! go the fireworks, and the Seven take cover. "My Uncle Sam outfit!" wails Jack. "It cost me five dollars!"

I think that's enough for now. Despite this rant, the book is pretty much unchanged other than the Americanisms. At first glance anyway. Only a direct comparison tells the truth. I was surprised at how many incidental changes there are between the original and this edited version -- on the very first page, when Susie asks when their next meeting is, Jack says, "That's nothing to do with you!" whereas the Americans decided it would read better as "That's none of your business!" The phrase "Good gracious!" is changed to "Golly!" in one place but left alone in another. And calling Susie a story-teller apparently isn't as effective as calling her a fibber. Oh, and the sign on the Seven's door reads S7 rather than SS.

So it seems very faithful in a line-by-line study, just tweaked here and there, perhaps a word or two every other sentence -- which is a LOT of editing work. But it's not like it's been re-written from the ground up to include a high-octane police chase around the streets of New York. The Seven still hold meetings in a little garden shed rather than an enormous basement, and there's not a single mention of a yellow school bus (although I can't speak for other books in the series, in which certain scenes occur at or on the way home from school). I was also pleasantly surprised to note that none of the names have been changed; I half expected Peter and Janet to be Johnny and Mary-Sue.

A final word, though, about the illustrations. The cover is abysmal, in my opinion, and the internal black and whites aren't great either. Not the worst in the world by any means... but not exactly Blyton either, as you can see by some of the examples on this page!

I'll leave you with this stunning interpretation of Scamper...