This Filling Certainly Looks like Nutella ...

I think I'm getting better at this "Promptness" malarkey. (I wrote this line two weeks ago, in grand hopes that it would prompt me to get this out within a week of the last post. Stop laughing.)

Well, I promised choc chips in this turd of chapter (and Facebook keeps emailing me to berate me for not posting more frequently, because you miss me?), so I present to you:

Part Two of the Extrantaganza: Things I Actually like in this chapter.

What is this? There is something to like in anything Enid put down on paper? This will not be absolutely negative about her work? NEVER! I came for the clutching of pearls! I came for mockery of outdated stereotypes! I CAME FOR BLOOD!

Sorry to disappoint, but I thought that, in fairness, I should present some positives in this story. I don't know exactly whether my opinion is that these qualities are true qualities, or whether I have just been lulled into lowering my standards so that I accept "house trained" as a cardinal virtue. But I'm going to follow this stream and hope I don't get stuck along the way without a paddle.

So what do I like?

Well, to start, I have begun to like Elizabeth, you know, under all the tepid rebellion and Ye Olde Englishe right-sorted-ness. The realisation that this book is Malory Towers with Gwen as the heroine has worked powerfully upon me. Really softened me up.

Or perhaps it was this:

"'You know, Elizabeth, it is strange that no one would go with you,' said Rita. 'Doesn't anybody at all like you?'

'No,' said Elizabeth. 'Don't you remember,  Rita, that I told you I was going to be as horrid as could be so that I could go home? Well, everybody thinks I am very horrid, so nobody wants to talk to me or walk with me.'

'And are you really horrid?' asked Rita.

Elizabeth looked up. She was surprised that Rita should talk to her kindly, after having found her out in disobedience.  But Rita did not look angry, only very understanding and wise.

Elizabeth thought for a moment. Was she really horrid? She remembered all the governesses she had had. She remembered that Miss Scott wouldn't stay with her. Perhaps she really a truly was a horrid girl. 

'I don't know, ' she said at last. 'I believe I am horrid really, Rita. I make myself horrider than I truly am - but all the same, I believe I can't be very nice.'

'Poor little Elizabeth!' said Rita. 'I wonder what has made you grow so horrid?'"

Now, what's to like in this? I know you are reading this thinking "But this is appalling!" And trust me, the last part of my rant revisits this very passage.  And I did say that my bar was pretty low by now. But there are a couple of highlights.

Firstly, I just love how few illusions Elizabeth has about herself. She doesn't talk about how she knows how to behave really, and is just pretending;  she doesn't talk about how she would like to be good but doesn't know how; and she doesn't venture into the realm of self pity. No. When asked whether she really is horrid (which is worse than naughty, as it includes an implication that there is something about her personality that is lacking) she thinks about it and says "yeah ... I probably am." I thoroughly enjoy the lack of ego in that moment. It's just a piece of unflinching honesty, if not to say an epiphany of self-insight.

Added to that, I like how un-Enid this seems. It distinctly lacks any Rah Rah stiff upper lip-ness (lip-ity? lip-nacity?) This is almost freudian for Enid, this self-intropection. Never fear, I stopped the quote just before Enid drifted back into Enidness, and it backslides straight to "you look like such a nice girl" after this extract (so those of you who read Enid for her utter superficiality can breathe a sigh of relief). But for a moment, just one shining moment, someone is asking Elizabeth "what's going on with you?" rather than telling her "you need to do this". Low bar or not, it is a little moment of beauty.

And that's the thing. This moment, it's  the first time anyone has tried to get to know Elizabeth at all. And I don't mean the usual Enid snobbery of getting to know a person (i.e. who mummy and daddy are and are they the right sort of people - because we can't associate with the nouveau riche ...). The focus on Elizabeth's naughtiness and how she doesn't fit in, this masks the utter lack of social conscience on the part of all the oiks she shares a class with. You know, the ones so set on perpetuating the system that they forget to be human. They forget even why the system is supposed to exist, yet cling to the facade that it has created to protect itself from intruders. The problem is, there IS NO INSIDE to Enid's system. It's just a bunch of children clinging to the outside like barnacles and pretending they are on the inside ... or believing that they are.

Rita asks why. Why don't the others like you? Why are you acting like this? Is this the real you? Why is not a question asked enough in Enid-topia. System blindness is mandatory - no questioning of the way things are is allowed. I'll admit that I am reading WAY too much into this, but I'm pulling this string as far as it will take me!

I'll also give Rita credit for good intentions for her stratagem in throwing Joan and Elizabeth together. See my previous for my dislike of the actual stratagem, but the intention to foster kindness is praiseworthy (she does lose points for assuming Elizabeth is nice because she looks nice, though ...). And it must be remembered that Rita is not only a product of this system (the flaws of which I am still to get to), she is also only old in Elizabeth's eyes. And Elizabeth is ten years old. We're dealing with a teenager trying to develop a sense of kindness in an unsympathetic environment. So kudos to her.

Aaaaaaaand that's it. All I got on what I like. Let me know: am I being brainwashed by Enid into lowering my standards? Are you lowering yours? Actually, I really do want to know that - does the Enid effect work second-hand??? Iiiiiiiiiintresting ...

Next time on the final part of the extrarantaganza, we venture into the next chapter. And look more at these poor children clinging to the facade of the system.

Poor Joan My Fat Foot!

This has taken me a bit longer than I expected, mostly because it is hard to get back into the swing of indignantly recounting of events. You'll forgive me if my ability to reach the heights of outrage is a little impaired ...

So this rant thing has expanded somewhat. What was meant to be a standalone rant on a subject has blown out into a three blog post extrantaganza. THREE SEPARATE POSTS.

No wonder I balked at writing it the first time around.

So I decided to turn it into a rant sandwich, because there are parts of this chapter that I do like, or rather, that I COULD like, if it weren’t wrapped up in all the Enid-ness, that niggling wrongness that creeps through the story like yeast through bread.

The three posts on this subject will be as follows:

• Poor Joan my fat foot;
• Redeeming qualities; and
• Why the regime really fails those who most need its benefits.

The chapter itself is just two short scenes. When last we left our (not so) intrepid heroine, she had just been caught going down to the shops by herself by no less a personage than the HEAD GIRL!!! (Dun dun DUUUUUUUUNNNNN). Rita, being one of the Keepers of the Zoo that is Whyteleafe, does what no one else has thought to do and actually TALKS to Elizabeth about why she is doing what she’s doing (I told you I actually like some stuff about this chapter). Then she goes and ruins it by appealing to Elizabeth’s sense of superiority and asks her to take pity on poor friendless Joan and to try and make her life a little easier. So Elizabeth tries – and Joan essentially tells her to @#*! Off, she didn't want Elizabeth lurking round her to laugh at her some more.

Gotta say, in that moment, I really liked Joan. I also have to say that part three of this rant-a-thon will come back to that ...

But herein lies my rant. Who is Joan? She’s a name that has popped up a few times in the book, one of the girls in the same room as Elizabeth. You don’t know much about her except that she is a bit obsessed with checking the post, and the other children mock her for this rather benign obsession.

So why should Elizabeth be friends with her? Rita explains

“She hasn’t a happy home, and she comes back to school very miserable each term. She worries about her father and mother all the time, because they don’t seem to want her or to love her. They never come to see her at half term.”

They don’t come at half term? The horror! That can mean only one of two things: either her parents are poor, or they are monsters! Either way, Joan clearly must have a rough trot of it. We’re expected to presume it’s the latter because Rita continues.

“ ‘Nobody knows except me,’ said Rita. ‘I live near Joan at home, so I know.’ “

Oh, so she knows the family? What a relief. That’s all right then – it’s fine that they are monsters, as long as they are the right sort, and not … *whispers* working class.

Rita continues

“I am telling you this, Elizabeth, because if you really do mean what you say about not wanting to make other people unhappy, you can just try to make things better for Joan. She hasn’t any friend, any more than you have – but for a different reason. She is afraid of making friends in case anyone asks her to stay with them for the holidays – and she knows her mother wouldn’t bother to ask any friend back to stay with Joan. And Joan is very proud, and can’t bear to take kindnesses she can’t return. Now – there’s a job for you to do! Can you do it?”

At first glance, you might be reading this and thinking “Fen, are you thick? Can’t you see that Rita is trying to encourage Elizabeth’s good qualities by focussing her on being kind to another person? Can’t you see how admirable that is?”

Others might say “WTF is she doing giving out personal information to an admittedly naughty child? Doesn’t she know what sort of damage could be inflicted by the untrustworthy being given confidential information?”

And I’d agree with you both – hence the rant sandwich.

But here’s my true problem with this: What reason is Elizabeth given to make Joan her friend? Pity. And while that is not a dreadful reason to befriend someone, it becomes problematic when it’s the ONLY reason to befriend someone.

You see, Elizabeth, being naughty in the Enidverse, is not permitted to have a friend with any redeeming virtues. She cannot make a strong friend, or a smart friend, or anyone with any social capital that may increase her social position. No, she has to have the ugly three legged dog with a flatulence problem as her friend.

So here are Joan’s Character traits:

• She has red hair;
• She has freckles;
• She’s quiet;
• She’s not smart – demonstrably bad at French and arithmetic;
• Her parents are strange;
• Her parents don’t write to her;
•  Nevertheless, she writes to her parents;
• Children laugh at her for this inequity of letters between herself and her home.

Basically, Joan has no redeeming virtues, according to Enid. She has nothing to offer except to make Elizabeth look good. She won’t challenge Elizabeth for brains or spirit (or looks, it’s implied – she never says Joan is ugly, but red hair and freckles are a marker for Enid. The freckles more than the red hair – In Malory Towers, Clarissa has red hair, glasses and braces, but becomes pretty in an ‘unusual’ way once the latter two items are gone). She can’t offer anything to Elizabeth on this reading, as Elizabeth is about to become her teacher and protector and superior. 

The only feature she has is that she appears to have is loyalty, which is praiseworthy, but which is also what you would attribute to your dog.

And She really is written as Elizabeth’s pet. She’s given no character, no agency, nothing that could teach Elizabeth anything – even the fact that she is pitiable doesn’t rouse any new feeling in our naughtiest girl – Rita brings the subject up because Elizabeth says she doesn’t like to see other people upset. You might argue that Rita was enacting a cunning plan, one which would put benefit both girls, and that her heart was in the right place. You might well do that. But she never says anything like "you could learn a lot from Joan" or says one single positive thing about Joan. No this is all about  Elizabeth and her doing a good deed for the day. 

I loathe this characterisation. I abhor it. I am willing to get a thesaurus out to detail how much I dislike it. Truly and passionately dislike it. I mean, really: She’s unattractive and stupid and not even her parents like her? THAT’S the girl you’re going to go with, Enid?

In Malory Towers, you had Sally and her jealousy about her new sibling, and you had Marylou and her timidity. But what they had was one isolated characteristic in an otherwise independent character. Sally is smart, Marylou is liked by other people. They are rounded characters who are part of the machine and accepted despite their negative characteristic.

With Joan, you get this piling on of (apparently) negative characteristics, with an underlying sensation that this is her fault. It is HER fault for expecting the basic level of communication from her parents, and the fact that she does not receive it is a point of mockery from the other children. Her red hair and freckles are noted by Enid, which is significant because she uses physical characteristics as personality markers (see Irish Nora, Fat Ruth, and pretty Elizabeth). Joan is part of the system, but is set apart by the others. She causes no trouble, she does all the right things, but the children ostracise her, with the reader invited to join in the mockery. 

To accept this description of Joan makes the reader complicit in this warped hierarchy within the school precinct. She doesn't fit in and it's her fault. Point at her and laugh, everyone. This underlying meanness, which underpins all of the “Rah Rah” decent Enid Britishness of the school, really leaves an icky feeling under my skin as I read. Enid has created this Lord of the Flies institution, one which on the surface is all about decency and fairness, but which, as you look at Joan and her treatment, exposes its rotten core at its heart. 

And the oddest thing about that core is that I don't think that the establishment can see it. They are too young to think it anything other than part and parcel of the whole Rah Rah thing. I think that irks me the most.

So much for part one of the rant-sandwich. Next time I shall tackle the chocolate chips in this turd cookie.

Well, Look who Finally Decided to Grace the Internet with Her Presence

... Far too many of my posts start with an apology of this nature.

Anyway. Good Intentions time! As a sign of good faith - AN ACTUAL POST

Book recaps coming back soon. Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die. 

So here it is:

I have been pondering lately the wisdom of reading the latest line of Famous five books, those new novels revisiting our favourite celebrity quartet and dog as adults as they battle grown up issues – like gluten intolerance and alcohol dependence. On the face of it, this is something that would be right up my alley: it’s a mix of Enid and snark that I certainly appreciate, and it harks back to the comic strip production “Five Go Mad in Dorset”, which my sisters and I still quote at one another.

Huzzah! I thought when I saw them. More reading material for me!

Then I thought about it some more.

Part of the joy of rereading Enid as an adult comes from the fact that Enid is the straight man in the joke. One laughs and rages at Enid BECAUSE what she says and the opinions she espouses are honestly held and earnestly stated. She’s not in on the joke with the snarky reader. You can like or dislike the characters because Enid’s Earnestness separates the characters from the author. The joy of Enid is that you can enter into her sympathies to whatever extent you want. The power is in your hands. Enid writes children’s books for children, so adults can take away different things than was intended.

So when it comes to a snarky modernisation, I run into the issue of a change of perspective. Writing a children’s book for adults, you have to walk a fine line. Anne of Green Gables does it – the perspective of the narrator is clearly an adult voice, and the view taken of the child characters is fondly derisive.

Having not read any of them (I should point this out), the idea of the books that comes to me is that I’m being expected to enter into the views of the writer. I am expected to be complicit with the mocking of characters who have been re-rendered to be universally unpleasant. The characters and the opinion of the author are so intertwined that the reader cannot separate the story or the characters from the snark.

But I’ll admit that I might be a bit biased.

I’ve been burned by such literary retellings before – Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was (to me) a crushing disappointment (both the book and the film). Other than the seminal “Lizzie Bennet Diaries”, vlog classics retellings have rarely lived up to their initial promise. Stephenie Meyer tied sparkly vampires to romantic and gothic classics because … well, you gotta borrow storylines from somewhere.

Yeah, I may have had some bad experiences with non-canon material.

Even within the realm of Enid has this modern take on a classic burned me. Being a young naïve reader in the late 90s and early 2000s, I was overjoyed to learn that Enid had written 10 Naughtiest Girl books. Now, that number in and of itself was not a matter of suspicion to me at the time – the prolific typewriter basher Enid went more for bulk than nuance in her work. However, once I moved beyond “Here’s the Naughtiest Girl”, there was a change. The writing … improved. It was still mawkish and sentimental, and it carried something of the same cadence and vocabulary, but it was better. I felt betrayed.

THEN, I noticed:

•         that the stories had become more toothless, while the dramatic  stakes apparently became apparently higher.
•        Conventional and cohesive storytelling arcs were used.
•        “Modern” issues like bullying, the environment, and dealing with underlying psychological issues sensitively became more apparent.
•         Teachers became figures of overt authority in Whyteleafe school, which had previously flaunted its Lord of the Flies ambience as being the main selling point of the school’s non-traditional system.

I’d been “Sweet Valley’d” (you know, where one name is used to sell the work of a ghost writer – VC Andrews is another example).

Having realised the error in my understanding of the authorship, I was left feeling betrayed. How Dared they replace Enid with a competent alternative? How DARED they replace school fetish drivel with actual stories?

NO. I won’t have it. And although the grown up famous five might be funny and clever and much better than I expect, I’m not having anything to do with them either.

I’ve got enough to get through with the original …

Oh My Stars ...

 

So, I was on the plane to Dubai, and on the inflight entertainment was a film called "Funf Freund 4". And it name checked Enid. So OF COURSE I had to watch it.

So as far as the characters are concerned, our core group is much as it ever was (although I'm not sure how old each of the Kirrin siblings is meant to be - and how far apart they were born - they all look about the same age). But after that, well, not so much.

Because I love you all, I just had to share the whole ordeal with you.

Story

We start with a Kitschy scene in an Egyptian market. There’s a street rat street ratting, and a nice fruit stall owner who goes for a walk and gets kidnapped by men in black robes, because DRAMA. And apparently he’s to be used as leverage to make someone do something.

With the three Kirrins’ dad Bernard for the hols (this being film four, the actor playing Uncle Quentin may have been done with this crap – I don’t see any reference to Bernard in the previous films), the kids see a preview of his new Egypt  exhibition with his pretty assistant Elena (and Dick and Julian flirting with the pretty lady is bad acting even if I don’t speak a word of German), including a 5000 year old mummy king. After locking the museum (with a plain handonmyheart house key) Anne forgets her glasses and they go back to get them, only to find a black hooded figure cutting  the mummy's  head open. The figure gets away, but the kids dig into the head  (I swear  I'm  not making this up - they dig into the head with their fingers) and find a legendary  amulet. One of three such amulets, presumably all inside brother mummy's heads. For some reason, it becomes imperative for them all to go to Egypt. By the way, no one is upset about the desecration of the mummy, they just congratulate the brats on finding the amulet …

So off they go. At the antiquities place, they find the head guy Farouk, who has one of the two other mummies said to have an amulet inside, and when he quite reasonably object  to cutting a 5000 year old mummy open, Bernard sends the kids off for his portable ultrasound which he always carries (and WHYWHYWHY DIDN'T YOU  DISCOVER  THE FIRST  AMULET WITH YOUR HANDY PORTABLE ULTRASOUND DEVICE?) The kids get pickpocketed by a street rat their age, and when they go back to the antiquities place, they find someone already cut the mummy’s head open, stole the amulet and framed Bernard, who is arrested for it.

Apparently, their only hope is to find the amulets, and also somehow they end up on the lamb from the German consulate (apparently - one handy thing about this story is that all the baddies either wear distinctive hoods or an item emblazoned with this HUGE ugly stylised bull – no one ever explains why a bull) who want to (quite reasonably) send the unaccompanied minors home. They go to pretty assistant Elena's house (she's Egyptian? When did anyone ever say she was Egyptian?) and find out her father is on holidays before the consulate dude shows up and chases them across rooftops, with Timmy barking inappropriately loudly.

They get away. They team  up with street rat kid, who has a crush on George, sneak into a billionaire's  party to steals the third amulet (wearing the worst disguises ever) only to have black robe people  steal the amulet first. Street rat picks the black robe’s pocket, and they scram, only  to be caught by the police, who are also in league with the bull people. They hand over the amulet and then set the police van on fire with the kids and Timmy in it. And sit back to watch the barbeque, laughing. Because they are all evil like that.

Now, you know law enforcement  has a problem when 4 kids (interestingly, George sits back and doesn't  help) can kick open the door to a paddy van. Baddies watch it explode from the front, kids disappear from behind. Fortunately, street rat knows a) super secret location of where shit is going to go down (which they conveniently overheard) and b) that Elena's father is missing, not on holidays (which seems to have no bearing on things right now).  He gets them camels to travel to super secret location, which they manage to lose in an hour or so, and so instead of heading back to the city and getting alternative  means of travel, our blockheads walk into the desert with no water. I swear, the best moment of the whole damn movie was when they decided to lay down in the desert and die. Timmy pulls a lassie and gets help from two old guys in a jeep, who take them to super secret location (which is only an hour away).

They get to super secret  location, and there's  this ritual going on. So at this point I though this was going to be actually interesting – like Famous Five go supernatural. I thought this whole conspiracy  was all about raising a mummy or something mystical like that. But no, the whole shebang, the robes, the rituals, the chant (yes they have a chant) is just so they can loot the tomb.

WTF?

There's  unnecessarily dramatic  revelation  that Elena was involved, because of course it was her father kidnapped to get her help in finding amulets. Then they're  all left in a room with a stone roof descending  to squash them.  They get out, trap the baddies, save Timmy (who was in a cage about to be fed to the spirits – again I say ???), then get away with the amulets to save Bernard, who was being tried 2 days after being arrested.

Look, I know some people have a dim view of Egyptian justice, but really?

Oh, and it turns out that Bernard's lawyer was also a bull person. They catch the baddie, blah blah blah, George  has a romantic moment  with street rat, everyone goes home.

Thoughts

I think I died a little on the inside.

Here's  my problems.

1. Modernising Enid  is not a terrible idea per se, but this was ridiculous. If was modernising without all the pesky modern things like mobile phones or other relevant  technology. Only street rat had a mobile, super secret location was well known and in all likelihood was on a map app. Security all round was pretty primitive, which was often handy for our intrepid heroes. I hate when modernising stories leaves out reality for the sake of plot. Modernise or don't; you can't have it both ways.

2. It wasn't  a good Famous Five story.  It was way too sentimental (Enid would definitely not approve of the emotion, and certainly not anything like a love interest), the Five were way too stupid to live, and there wasn't  enough glory at the end for the Five. Not to mention that it takes place OUTSIDE ENGLAND! How could it betray the motherland like that?

3. It wasn't  a good NOT Famous Five story. As a story it made no sense, it was painful to watch and i hated  it. And I  know it's  a German kid's  movie, but why did EVERYONE have to speak German?

4. It was bad Enid. The goodies were GERMAN! Black mark right  there. Not a single solid Englishman in the whole thing. It was ALL foreigners. And it was set in Egypt, which is probably very unhygienic. And Egyptians  were goodies AND baddies ... I  think Enid's head would explode from such a break  in stereotype (nuance – what is that?).  And a foreign  love interest? Not to be thought of.

I'll  have to look this series up now ...

... yeah

So ... been a while, right?

It's unbelievable. You blink and nearly three years pass. My current Blyton under review followed me around like Banquo's ghost, silently accusing from bedside tables, suitcases and bookshelves, until I buried it somewhere in amongst my books.

However, as my books have been in storage for the better part of the past year, I have had to concede that if I want to continue to the end of this book (as has always been my intention) I would have to bite the bullet and get a new version. So I bought one on my tablet.

My whole being revolted against it. Even as I confirmed the purchase my Blyton-loving soul recoiled from the modern cover. I mean, really, the book is littered with these modern artist renderings of scenes in the book, while the prose remains steadfastly set mid-last century. It's jarring and hurts my poor little sense of the fitness of things.



Anyway, this post is just a heads up that I am coming back to this - and I'll finish it. AND I'm taking requests as to what to read/review next. A very kind friend has promised me a box of Blytons ... is it ridiculous that this is some of most exiting news I have had this year?

How the socially undesirable gain acceptance in Blytonia

Yep, I managed to disappear again. Well done me. I’m full of those damn good intentions, in that I prop my copy of Blyton on my desk (where it will shame me for not writing up the next chapter) and SWEAR that I will write it TONIGHT … then decide at 10pm that I really couldn’t do the chapter justice and I really should watch the next episode of the latest K-Drama I’m hooked on. Life is tough when there’s K-Drama about …

So anyway, I left you on something of a cliff hanger last time, what with the dreaded school meeting coming up and everything. This meeting IS the entire chapter. And I can tell you – I would never send my precious spawn (should they one day exist) within ten miles of this hell-hole.

So, it’s a school run by children – and what do they do? Adopt the trappings of their lost grown ups (three teachers sit up the back during this thrilling chapter, but “did not seem to be taking a great deal of notice of what was going on.” Of course not – why do the job you’re paid to do if you can get minions to do it for free?). Two judges (merry-eyed William and grave-looking Rita – William sounds like a bit of a smarmy git, just from that description), a bunch of monitors (we’ve met them before), and a gavel (because you can’t be an official without a wooden hammer – I like to think it’s a meat tenderizer nicked from the kitchen …). To be honest, it’s one conch shell away from a desert island.

 And they have RULES! You HAVE to obey the monitors (with no explanation as to the limits of their power and what they can order you to do), and all bad behaviour is reported and dealt with at these meetings – trial by mob. OH! But wait – reporting any person is encouraged with these words:

“Please be sure you understand the difference between a real complaint and telling tales, because telling tales is also punished”

I’m not sure I understand the difference. Given the casual acceptance of institutionalised bullying and violence, how do you suppose a whistle blower would fare in that environment? This place sends shivers down my spine – SHIVERS I tell you!

On another note – Elizabeth is an ovine-minded moron. The girl doesn’t talk, she bleats! Take this little gem, for instance: there’s a sign up for the meeting which says “Bring all the money you have” (I’ll get to this little rort in a moment), and Elizabeth does! She tells herself that she won’t hand it over, of course, but then why take it at all? The girl is just plain dumb. Seriously, you take your money somewhere where you know it’s going to be taken? Good grief, I want to send the idiot an email telling her that I‘m a Nigerian prince. Although, she might not go for that particular line … all foreigners being evil and all.

As for the rort – well here’s where we get to the fun bit – and the title

of this post. It turns out that this place is not a school, it’s an

extortion racket. All the kids are forced to put all their money into a box and it gets doled back out to them in set pocket money. A tad commie for comrade Enid there, but it’s ostensibly and egalitarian idea. Until you learn that no-one seems to be responsible for the accounting of this slush … er trust account. I bet merry-eyed William gets his grubby little paws all over the dosh and gets his ciggies and gin on these proceeds of extortion.

And you remember fat Ruth – of course you do, her main character trait is that she’s fat (remember, this is Blyton – and in this book we also have Nora, who is Irish). Anyway, it struck me as odd that Blyton would allow such an obviously undesirable person to be part of the right minded majority – Enid being supremely superficial and all. In this chapter I figured it out. She volunteers to do the dirty work. Who volunteers to prod Elizabeth when she doesn’t stand up and sit down with the other lemmings? Ruth. When someone has to shake Elizabeth down for her money, guess who jumps at the chance to do the shaking down? You guessed it. “Nice” people don’t stop to scuffling over a few shillings – it’s undignified and vulgar – they just leave it to the eager underling who yearns for nothing so much as acceptance … AND they’d have to have some horrific physical deformity such as Ruth’s to be qualified to do the job. Ruth’s overwhelming subservience to the regime is what marks her as acceptable – she knows her place and doesn’t presume to aspire to the big table … but everyone needs a flunkey …

Anyway, Elizabeth refuses to hand over her cash (until Ruth forks her purse and dumps it by the box), and states that she thinks the idea is silly and will not be complying. Well, you can almost hear the chant of “kill the pig” starting up in the mob. Elizabeth also announces that she’s going to run away home, at which point her money is placed firmly beyond her reach into the slush fund – and she’s denied pocket money for the week. With, of course, the threat of further punishment to come. Because it can always get worse in Blytonia.

So now our heroine is trapped like Jonathon Harker in Dracula’s castle (guess what I’m reading right now) and is doomed to spend at least another chapter being stood over by the Boarding school Gestapo.

To be honest, I have to say I’m glad she stands her ground in public. It’s the first actual rebellion you see from the girl, and if she could just keep it up, I’d love her forever. Alas, I feel social conditioning coming on ...

First Day Disappointment

All of a sudden it’s been 6 odd months. Good work me. Seriously, I have been looking at this book on my bedside table for the past six months (no matter where I have been – I took it to Europe and the middle-east with me in January) thinking “I’ve got to do some work on that ... I’ll do it tomorrow”. But of course I never do. Such is my life.

 I'm not promising much with this chapter - it's a bit blah (filler before we get to the next chapter), but I'm back online, so one miracle at a time is all you can expect right now!

 Anyway, to recap the story thus far: Elizabeth is a pretty normal child (by which I mean self-centred and rather bratty – and don’t get up in arms over that, you know I’m right) who has been accustomed to accepting that she is some sort of devil spawn. She has become a burden to her hard-living parents who want to go on a cruise. They ingeniously decide that it’s time to indoctrinate the poor girl in the time-honoured fashion of packing her off to school and having someone else do the actual work of raising her. So she goes to school. Said school turns out to have reverted to some sort of Lord of the Flies meets 1984-esque scenario in which Elizabeth is deemed persona non grata on the first day. We left our intrepid heroine on the cusp of sleep, vowing vengeance and declaring that she’ll be home by half-term.

 We open the scene with some bell indicating that it’s time to get up. Nora the enforcer tells everyone, rather unnecessarily that it’s time to get up; Elizabeth “cheekily” decides to stay in bed (she is such a rebel!). Of course Irish Nora doesn’t like this, so she and Fat Ruth (I’m not making this up – she’s called “plump Ruth”) pick up E’s mattress and tip Elizabeth onto the floor – because that’s not at all an overreaction. When Elizabeth objects, Nora threatens to do an unnamed form of violence on the girl because “Monitors do that sometimes, you know”. I love how Whyteleafe rolls: do what we say or we’ll kneecap you! I can just picture Nora waiting in the dorm with knuckle dusters.

 Elizabeth, of course, decides that as open rebellion is not feasible, guerrilla tactics are advisable. So she decides to wear socks instead of stockings down to breakfast. Ooo-er. (just on a side note – I’m not even two pages into this chapter and already they have set times to get up, eat breakfast, rules as to appropriate footwear – what sort of child perpetuates this arrant nonsense? Seriously – you can’t wear socks???). But just when you think Elizabeth has finally given one to the man (or child), she is shamed into the stockings. Sigh.

 School-wide roll-call comes up after breakfast. In this strange event, boys and girls are segregated (why bother with a co-ed school if you're just going to split them up?) and formed up into rows before the roll is called, then the children march out to music. Yes, MARCH. I bet it's not even normal marching - I bet they have to goose step out of the hall. The school strikes me as that sort of place. I wonder whether they have to salute their glorious leader while they're at it?

 This school really gives me the heebie-jeebies: violent monitors, children doling out punishment to one another, lives lived according to a series of bells, no socks allowed, and a vaguely militaristic assembly? THIS is a progressive school? I’d hate to see what Enid thought was old-fashioned. The more I read about this school, the more I’m in E’s corner, willing her to some drastic feat of naughtiness that will release from this hell-hole!

 And it seems we may finally get the chance see such a feat, as class finally begins (and Elizabeth gets a seat in the back row, which she likes because you can be naughty there. How she knows this, having never gone to school before, puzzles me a little). At first we are disappointed, Elizabeth being high on the fresh paint fumes in the classroom to such an extent that she gets a “VERY GOOD” on her dictation. She soon comes to her senses, however, and embarks on her first deed of the mischievous variety: flicking paper at various people in the room.

 *headdesk*

 Really, I despair of the idiot. Go hard or go home, Elizabeth; if you want people to take you seriously as a delinquent, hike up your skirt and do some serious damage. Throw a child through the classroom window, get into a proper fight, trash the teachers’ lounge. Don’t flick freaking PAPER!

 I suppose, in her defence, she does talk back to the teacher, but as the chapter ends with E knuckling under AGAIN (and promising to behave), you can’t really give the girl too much credit. Another disappointing episode in Elizabeth’s school career.

 One thing to note: we learn that Elizabeth likes music in this chapter. It should be noted, as it comes up later in the book, as there is nothing the regime won’t do to ensure the loyalty of their adherents.

 This chapter feels a bit like a filler chapter, and I suppose it is. But the next chapter ... school meeting time! I shall be updating you on that little gem anon (less than 6 months this time – I promise!)

Shrimp paste and bullying

Blast Enid – she’s gone and annoyed me again.

You may well be thinking well there’s a news flash, but you have to understand that even though I may rail at the old girl, even though I am fully aware that I am not going to agree with a thing she says, even though I read the books with an eye to ripping their guts out, I still open one of her books hoping that this book will not disappoint me. I’m all grown up and I still want to believe Enid when she tells me that if you do this and this and this you will be pretty and successful and everyone will like you ...

So then, when I open a book and read something as stupid as I read in this chapter, I just get annoyed.

Chapter 4 is called “Elizabeth gets in to trouble”. And it annoys me because it’s so very very stupid. The basic outline of the chapter is Elizabeth trying to break every rule that happens to come her way, or to make herself obnoxious, and coming up against the Irish bouncer Nora each time (mixed in is the obligatory oohing and ahhhing over classrooms, but classroom decor porn is more Enid’s thing than mine – seriously, only food is described in more detail). She does things like put too many items on her dressing table (apparently punishable by drawing and quartering) not sharing her food (which sends a person to food Coventry), and having messy hair. I mean, the scope of this girl’s villainy is beyond compare.

Of course, she doesn’t like doing any of these things, and she’s quite upset when she gets punished for them. When bouncer Nora takes her stuff, she instantly wants to redeem it, and she belatedly tries to share her food (but being in food Coventry, she’s turned down ...) and she’s horrified that her hair is messy. You really get the impression that she’s really not trying too hard (and, being a Blyton character, she is smitten with the classrooms – what is it with Enid and big square rooms with desks in it? They aren’t really that exciting ...), which of course gives you the SUBTLE hint that perhaps Elizabeth will stay ...

Seriously, the girl is trying to get expelled and she’s making a fuss over food sharing? If it were me, I’d be sneaking around trying to find what I could burn down. Or perhaps I would look at a fake bomb threat, or taking a classroom full of students hostage. I’d be home again in a day or two – a week, tops (you know, once the police got through with me). Problem solved.

Of course, Elizabeth's problem with disobedience may have something to do with the entirely unexpected form of discipline. I think I mentioned in an earlier post about the bullying aspect of this school. Nora the Irish does like to ‘shove’ her way past a recalcitrant student in her charge, but more insidious is the fact that the students go straight to ridicule the moment someone steps out of their pre-conceived notion of good behaviour. They mock Elizabeth over EVERYTHING she does. And remember, Elizabeth has been at the school for perhaps two hours at this point. She’s tired, her parents shipped her off to school with no notice and no proper goodbye, and ridicule is the most appropriate way to deal with her? Welcome to Blytonia people: this is where sanity comes to die.

I got to the end of the chapter thinking that there was very little that a box of matches wouldn’t solve at that school ...

I forgot to mention the food, which is the only redeeming feature of the chapter. It appears that first day is the day all the students eat the ENTIRE swag of food sent on by their parents. There is an orgy of chocolate cake, jam, shrimp paste, currant cake and other assorted fish pastes. I kept imagining that the fish pastes were contaminated with some sort of salmonella – that would have made the story soooo much more interesting.

The greatest disappointment

I went shopping today.

I was going clothes shopping, but as invariably happens I got sidetracked by all the pretty books in the bookshop. And then I remembered that there is a new Jasper Fforde book out this month and the clothes were forgotten ...

Anyway, I came across the most wonderful sight whilst I was browsing: A large picture-book hardback version of the Magic Faraway Tree.

I was instantly besotted. It took me right back to a similar version I had growing up (I think that they just changed the cover and re-released the version I had as a child). I grabbed the book, all ready to buy it and put it aside for the grandchildren (perhaps not my own grandchildren, just some poor benighted souls who may not be exposed to the glorious wrongness of Enid) when I had the foresight to open it.

I was instantly confused. The story was about Joe, Beth, Frannie, and their cousin Rick. For a moment I thought that this was a new story or one about characters I had not come across before - I mean, Enid DID write well over 800 books, I may well have forgotten one or two. But then I realised what the abomination really was: it was a re-worked version.

Joe, Beth, Frannie, and their cousin Rick were the updated versions of Jo, Bessie, Fanny and Dick. Dame Slap became Dame Snap and no longer hits people (thus losing all of her menace).

It was terrible. My beautiful picture book had been vilely defaced. I'd heard about such a travesty occurring, but to see it was worse than heart-breaking. I departed that place, the burning gall of disappointment threatening to choke me as I went ...

Let me know if you have had similar disappointments with the works of the great lady.

who do you blame when your kid is a brat?

OK, this has been shamefully late in coming, but I have an excuse – I have been busy bettering society. Really, I have. I have a new job, and it involves dispensing JUSTICE!!! (at least, that’s what I put on my census form, I couldn’t figure out a better description of my job. It gave me this awesome feeling of power just writing it). What with all my making the streets safe to walk again, Amelia Jane got dumped in a box in my room and forgotten. So it's time for a new story.

Anyway, I was going to do a Famous Five thing, but I ran into a problem: I don’t have the first book in the series. It’s a grave oversight, one which I intend to remedy at the earliest possible moment. In the meantime, I’ll give you the gems to be found in another of Enid’s school time classics:

The naughtiest girl in school.

Chapter 1

Enid has this fault of blaming all of the behavioural traits of a child on its disposition. The title ‘the naughtiest girl in school’ conjures up images of untold horror, a right little cantankerous ... sandwich, who is attacking the other children with her lacrosse stick and trashing books in the library because she feels like it. The reality, as you will soon see, is not so grave. Remember kiddies, we're dealing with Enid-esque naughtiness here: this is upper-class naughtiness ...

So here’s the set up. Elizabeth is a spoilt little rich kid, who has had a number of governesses to look after her. What her mother has been doing, no one knows (because of course she wouldn’t be working, that’s only for nasty common mothers) but she obviously needed help to look after her one child. Anyway, governess number six is going to go, and mummy’s at her wits’ end to know what to do, because, you see, mummy and daddy are going away on a holiday, and mummy can’t possibly be expected to look after the little brat while they’re away.

The solution? Pack her off to boarding school. Not just that, don’t tell her until you’ve organised the enrolment, got all her uniforms, given the staff notice and booked your non-refundable holiday tickets ... you only tell her when there’s less than a week before term starts. Then goad her when she, quite understandably, says she doesn’t want to leave the one place she has ever lived. That will show her how much you care.

I mean seriously, her parents are abandoning her to go gallivanting off ... somewhere. (They never say where they’re going, and as they’re grown-ups, Enid doesn’t much care. That’s not important: JK Rowling may kill her parental figures off, Blyton just packs them on a boat and hopes that they drown.) AND, they’re only going for a few weeks (they’re going to be back before half-term). How do you jump from “I need someone to look after my child while I’m away for a few weeks” to “let’s send our pre-pubescent child, who has had little to no contact with other children, to boarding school”. My own theory is that the parents attacked this issue while they were looking for accommodation for the family pets: the horse gets stabled, the dog is sent to a boarding kennel, the child goes to school where she’ll be fed and watered (presumably) and the parents can pick her up if and when it suits them ...
Wow, and we wonder why the kid is messed up?

Things to note:

Elizabeth is pretty, which means she’s set for Enidificaication (or indoctrination), because Enid cannot bear to have an ugly good person. People’s characters are determined by their looks.

The things Elizabeth will miss at home: Her dog, her canary, her pony. Some people have it tough. Show some sympathy for the poor dear.

Mummy: completely helpless. Looks to others to raise her child. Primary emotion is despair: when Elizabeth shows how naughty she can be by pinning stockings to the governess’ skirt, mummy despairs – “what are we going to do with her?”.

Daddy: mentioned, but completely absent – obviously he doesn’t want to deal with the brat either. Like most of Enid’s father figures, he wouldn’t dream of getting involved in a family cat fight.

The Slap

Sometimes I really don’t get the way Enid’s mind worked. After reading this story, I have to conclude that she had some very odd notions of discipline (I already knew that, but Enid is the one person whose odd notions never fail to exasperate me – it’s like trying to teach my grandmother how to use a mobile phone: surely she’ll get it one day …). Her un-ironic grasp of the Orwellian concept of "Might is Right" seems to completely miss the point he was trying to make.

In this second story, we get an idea of how discipline works in the nursery. Amelia is playing pranks on everyone. She throws water at the other toys, then chases them around a bit, threatening to poke them with a pin. The toys decide to punish her by waxing her shoes so that she slips and falls while wearing them. This "harsh but fair" treatment apparently does the trick: Amelia suddenly realises the error of her ways after the toys effectively dance around her yelling "nyer nyer, we got you!" and promises to be good.

That’s it in a nutshell.

Let me repeat: Amelia pulls a prank, the toys pull a prank back, Amelia realises the error of her ways. Huh.

I know we’re not meant to have any sympathy for old AJ, but this stretches the credulity just a little. I fail to see the difference in behaviour of the two sides. Pulling a prank to punish a prank just isn’t really all that smart. If you think about it, someone pulling a prank on you is more likely to cause you to pull a prank on them, which in turn will make them pull a prank … you get it.

Maybe I’m a little slow, but I fail to see the moral in this story. It sounds like it’s meant to be "be nice to others or they’ll be mean to you" or something along those lines, but I’m just not feeling it. What this story is really about is peer pressure. This is not a story about the evils of prank pulling. No. In Enid’s world, pranks are the measure of a person’s intelligence (unless of course, Enid doesn’t like the person, then it’s just a matter of them being wicked). This is a cautionary tale about upsetting the moral majority.

Let’s look at the two sides:

Amelia Jane:

Amelia Jane is doing what she always does – she plays. It might be not to everyone’s taste, but nonetheless it is what she was made to do. She’s pretty open about it; it’s not her fault that the other toys aren’t fast enough to dodge the flying water or avoid the big toy with the pin. AJ just doesn’t really know her own strength – that comes with having no physical brain …

The Toys:

The toys, on the other hand, connive, sneak into a dark cupboard to carry out their dastardly deed, and then congratulate themselves on their cleverness. It annoys me because it is so smug and self righteous and I just can’t stand the smug way in which the toys carry out their social cleansing. They give no justification for their actions other than the fact that they don’t like AJ – but is that a good reason?

You know what it’s like? It’s like killing Osama bin Laden (look at me, bringing current events into Enid!). Organising a hit on a wanted criminal is not "bringing someone to justice", no matter how many times the President says so. No matter how much he might deserve to be brought to justice, execution in that manner is an abuse of the Rule of Law. I did not hear a word that indicated that the US was trying to apprehend him and he died in the fire fight – this was a hit. Even Nazi leaders got a fair trial and due process. (Sorry – but this is something irks me – how can you fight for a system of governance by breaking one of its fundamental rules?)

Similarly, playing a prank to "teach someone a lesson" does not allow for due process for the accused. It was simply the self-righteous and extra-judicial actions of the Teddy Bear and his cronies. I don’t trust that Teddy Bear: he seems to me like a sinister sort of figure. He’d push you off the toy shelf to get the prime spot, I just know it.

There is no point where they say "See AJ – this is what it feels like to have a prank played on you". I’m fine with the idea of an object lesson if it is explained – you know, you hurt our feelings when you throw water on us kind of shtick. Cloying, but instructive. Humiliating for humiliation’s sake? That’s just bullying.

So I don’t really like this story very much.

By they way, one small point: the toys are afraid of being pricked with a pin? They’re TOYS. They don’t have nerves, they can’t feel anything. Amelia Jane is a hand-sewn toy herself – so presumably needles went into her construction. Was there a point in time when needles went from being part of her creation to an anathema to her? It doesn’t add up. I'd go into it more, but I have a whole post saved up just on how toys are not really people ...

The question of appeasement in the nursery

Amelia Jane was published from 1937 (first book in 1939), on the cusp of WWII. Enid was famous for never EVER referring to the war, but re-reading the first AJ story, I couldn’t help wondering whether AJ sprang from the idea of an anarchic outsider threatening “Our Way of Life”. Though unschooled in the ways of polite society and a nuisance to “Our” day-to-day life, AJ (the outsider) mayn’t be all bad in enid’s eyes ...

The Plot of the story: Amelia Jane is running around the toy room with a pair of scissors, cutting holes in everything she finds, including bunny’s tale. The toys get angry and get the brownies to lock her in the toy cupboard until the toys feel like letting her out. After a while though, the brownies get attacked by goblins and only Amelia Jane can fly the toy plane to attack the goblins and save the brownies. When she does so, she promises not to be naughty again …

Where’s the politics? Well, I found it on Wikipedia. What’s happening in Europe when Enid writes her first story of the naughty doll? It’s 1937, and Europe is gearing up for WWII: Hitler is building up the German Army in the Rhineland, Spain is degenerating into civil war, and Ideology is the governing principle of the day.

I will note that the Anschluss and the occupation of Czechoslovakia did not happen until after this story was written, but the remilitarisation of the Rhineland had (an event in 1936 that pretty much did what it said on the box. Germany armed itself; Europe debated it but eventually stood back, lacking funds and/or will to demilitarise them again).

Enid could not have failed to hear about the debate. In the UK, the Rhineland topic was much debated (understandable, given recent history). Further, Enid’s first husband, a WWI veteran, was working on a book with Churchill and becoming increasingly depressed by the prospect of a new war (he began drinking as a consequence, which was part of the reason the marriage ended), so it would have been a topic that interested him, particularly in light of another crucial event taking place ...

In a nasty foreign country that Enid never visited, there was a civil war going on. Now, children, we all know that the Spanish are fiery people who are sometimes very badly behaved (Carlotta in St Clares anyone?), but some of them were almost good enough to be considered English (or at least they would be if they weren’t so Spanish). The bad Spanish people won an election, so the good Spanish people under a man called Franco decided to take over the country and make sure all the people were part of the right-thinking element. Well, the bad people didn’t like that at all and so they started a war in Spain. Nasty, unwashed people from all over the world went to help the good Spanish and the bad Spanish, and there were lots of newsmen covering the story too. Even that strange little artist Picasso painted a picture with a foreign name about the people dropping bombs in the war (the Guernica was displayed in 1937).

That charming German fellow, Mr Hitler (the Germans are so very orderly and clean and white, aren’t they?) sent the good Spanish people help: he sent planes to bomb the bad Spanish people. And that was after everyone got so annoyed at him building up his army the year before … wasn’t it silly of them to worry?

I think you have an idea bout where I’m going with this. Look at the significance of the imagery in the story: AJ, the perennially naughty doll, has armed herself and is playing with her new weapon = Germany arming itself. The toys and magic brownies (side note: magic brownies sound like something from Amsterdam) disarm her and lock her up: one option for the international community (alternately, these two elements symbolise WWI and the consequences for Germany. Brownies attacked by goblins? Well all good international people think like Enid, and bad ones are … communist (communism was fearfully on the nose). Amelia Jane rearmed and sent in to help … do I need to spell the whole damn thing out for you? This is not a children’s story, this is as close as Enid could get to joining in the grown-ups’ discussion.

What do I draw from this? Well, it’s not a big leap to say that Enid had fascist tendencies. Xenophobia, Uniforms and Discipline (or at least, marching)? Totally up her alley. Aryan race over foreign looking people? Give her a black shirt and introduce her to Oswald Mosely. If Hitler had made her books required reading, she would have led the army across Europe.

Enid was famous for not ever mentioning the war in her stories. She drew a lot from her own life, however, and so it isn’t surprising that there may be hints of the world around her in the stories she writes. After all, you can’t divorce yourself entirely from the era in which you live.

Or I might just be reading too much into this. I really do like the idea of Amelia Jane as Hitler …

When the revolution comes, the teddy-bear will be the first against the wall

I’ll admit that I’ve been lazy, but that ends now. I have a shelf of Enids to get through (and more coming in every week, not to mention the possibility of more lost Enids to play with), and a big red-dressed doll breathing down my neck.
So

Amelia Jane.

The text is double sized, there is an over-abundance of exclamation marks, and brownies are name checked in very the first paragraph. Enid has told you in 50 words that you are 5 years old and will be ready to swallow any pap that she deigns to tell you.This is a book for younger readers, dressed up to look like a novel (my version is a hard back thing of about 180 pages with about 100 words per page and an illustration every 3-4 pages).

This series of short stories was first published in Sunny Stories, EB’s magazine, then bundled up into a book in 1939 (there are three sequels, and a wanna-be sequel written by someone else). Europe was plunging once more into war and our Lady Enid was starting to work on securing enough printing paper as she could from as many publishers. So she cobbled together some stories about a big red doll in a nursery.

Who is Amelia Jane?

“This was Amelia Jane, a big, long-legged doll with an ugly face, a bright red frock, and black curls. She hadn’t come from a shop, like the others, but had been made at home. Shop-toys nearly always have good manners, and know how to behave themselves – but Amelia Jane, not being a shop-toy, had no manners at all, and didn’t care what she said or did!” (page 1)

Oh dear, boys and girls. AJ does have some problems. She’s a working class doll stuck in an upper-class world! She lives in the nursery of the house, and with all the references to the nanny, the nurse and the maids - well, it’s no wonder she’s an agent of anarchy. Disbarred from being either feminine or clever in one fell swoop, AJ is relegated to a grotesque caricature, the charity toy with delusions above her station.

Three things to look out for in this passage:

- Enid’s trick of making appearance indicative of character
- Enid’s insistence that institutionalisation is the only path to social success
- Enid's insistence on the maintenance of social class system, even in War-time England

So why is AJ so very naughty? Good question, I say. And there’s a simple, very Blyton answer: because she did not come from a store. You see, store bought toys all know how to behave, but Amelia Jane was made. Enid’s love of institutionalisation runneth over, subtly indoctrinating those impressionable minds as to the joys of hair brush spankings and behaviour modification. I've spoken before about Enid and brainwashing children - she's just getting in early with AJ.

Further, Enid’s indoctrination has a hidden motive. Note that it’s the store bought toys that are acceptable. Enid is instilling a sense of consumerism in her young audience, which is self serving – particularly as she had a living to make from selling things to children. There was her books, the newsletters, magazines, two fan clubs ... so she had to get the little darlings to go all Aldous Huxley - you know, ‘spend don’t mend’ and all that. I think it’s a reasonable argument to make that all the evils of advertising to children can be laid at our lady Enid’s door. She raised, in effect, a generation of institutionalised spenders.

Amelia Jane is stuck in the middle of all this fascist web of ideology and indoctrination. She feels the effects of the regime, bowing to its harsh dictates from time to time, feeling the heat of its wrath (being sent to Coventry is a severe blow to anyone...). And yet! Time after time she manages to fight her way through the mire of the moral majority and return to her true calling of exposing the hypocrisy of the nursery by reducing it to anarchy ...

What I do like about this story is that, to the invisible children who own the toys in the nursery, Amelia seems to be a prime favourite. She gets played with a lot, is taken on holidays, and generally is shown favour. I love this, as it shows good taste on their part. They are unswayed by appearance or any idea of consumerism. This does seem to not fit with the story, as in a true Enid story, AJ would have been a present from your working class grandmother (whom your social climbing mother takes good care not to associate with) made by her own work-roughened hands.

I also adore Amelia Jane. She sees the self-righteous toys of the nursery and lifts two seamed fingers firmly in their direction. If there were to be a revolution in Blytonia, Amelia Jane would be the Che of that land. Truly she would. And then ... there would be blood ...