Quote: Aaron @ March 29 2009, 10:31 PM BSTA bunch of kids being independent and adventurous and that. Simple.
Exactly! I used to sit in bed with my tea and Marmite sandwiches and was taken along with the kids on their (admittedly very middle class) adventures. Escapism is always popular, all I was was the equivalent of a childhood Harry Potter fan thesedays after all.
Lashings of ginger beer.
Still don't know what the f**k ginger beer is.
I have had ginger beer tonight. Its available in all good newsagents.
Well I don't necessarily want to try it. What does it taste like?
Well.... sort of gingery really. That must come as a shock I'm sure. I'm not sure where the 'beer' element is though.
Its sort of sharp but not in a lemoney way.
Why 'lashings' though?
T'is what they say in the Famous Five.
Don't you read Enid Blyton? You should get out more! 
Quote: zooo @ March 29 2009, 11:20 PM BSTWell I don't necessarily want to try it. What does it taste like?
It's very dry. I always need a drink after drinking some. Not that I've drunk any for years.
It's an outrage how very dare him, he should be ashamed of himself, in fact he should be put in jail for racial hatred.
What a terrible man he really is, let's ban all David Jason's shows.
No stone him to death or bury him with Jade Goody or paint him brown.
Quote: zooo @ March 29 2009, 2:41 PM BSTI used to read Enid Blyton aaaaaall the time. I don't actually remember anything overtly racist, maybe they'd all already been edited out.
Her books were not edited (changed for the worse) until the 1990s, so anything published before then was still the original text. Many of the changes are absolutely absurd. Last year I picked up a recent edition of Five Go Down to the Sea and was amazed that a Cornish shopkeeper's colourful accent had been entirely exorcised. The original text went like this:
The four children found the general store and went in. 'Any ice-cream?' said Julian hopefully. But there was none. What a blow! There was orangeade and lemonade, however, quite cool through being kept down in the cellar of the store. 'You be the folks that old Mrs Penruthlan be having in?' said the village shopkeeper. 'She do be expecting of you. Furriners, bain't you?' 'Well, not exactly,' said Julian, remembering that to many Cornish folk anyone was a foreigner who did not belong to Cornwall. 'My mother had a great-aunt who lived in Cornwall all her life. So we're not exactly "furriners", are we?' 'You're furriners all right,' said the bent little shopkeeper, looking at Julian with bird-like eyes. 'Your talk is furrin-like, too. Like that man Mrs Penruthlan had before. We reckoned he was mad, though he was harmless enough.' 'Really?' said Julian, pouring himself out a third lemonade. 'Well, he was a scientist, and if you're going to be a really good one you have to be a bit mad, you know. At least, so I've heard. Golly, this lemonade is good. Can I have another bottle, please?' The old woman suddenly laughed, sounding just like an amused hen. 'Well, well, Marty Penruthlan's got a fine meal ready for you, but seems like you won't be able to eat a thing, not with all that lemonade splashing about in your innards!' 'Don't say you can hear the splashing,' said Julian earnestly. 'Very bad manners, that! Furriners' manners, I'm sure. Well, how much do we owe you? That was jolly good lemonade.' He paid the bill and they all mounted their bicycles once more, having been given minute directions as to how to get to the farm. Timmy set off with them, feeling much refreshed, having drunk steadily for four minutes without stopping. 'I should think you've had about as much water as would fill a horse-trough, Timmy,' Julian told him. 'My word, if this weather holds we're going to look like Red Indians!'
The expurgated edition has stuff like: "You're foreigners, aren't you?" Ridiculous.
Quote: Aaron @ March 29 2009, 2:44 PM BST*flicks hair nonchalantly*
I'm not often given to bragging, but my hair is too long to flick, unless wearing plaits or pigtails.
Quote: Jack Massey @ March 28 2009, 9:30 PM GMTAlso on the subject of this, look at the one Tintin comic you cannot purchase in childrens sections 'Tintin in the Congo' as the black characters in that all look quite 'gollywoggy'. Yet I say again, Herge may have been in the wrong for such work and in some places it is unacceptable, but again he to was bought up in a different generation and let us to remember his creation of Tintin is one of the greatest works of the comic book world.
<wades clumsily into Tintin in the Congo blather>
Thanks for the information about the removal of Tintin in the Congo from the children's section (in US and UK bookstores). I'm lucky to have a copy of the 1931 edition, as well as the revised 1946 and 1975 editions. Not only do the Africans in the book look 'gollywoggy' but they are also depicted as being lazy and stupid. Congo was only the second Tintin adventure, when Herge was still under orders from the editor of the right-wing Catholic newspaper in which the strip was published. He was also still developing and experimenting with his drawing style, so the art looks rather clumsy and all facial caricatures are heavily exaggerated. Herge was later embarrassed by the book and said: "For Tintin in the Congo, the fact is that I was fed on the prejudices of the bourgeois society I lived in. It was 1930. The only things I knew about these countries were what people said about them at the time. Africans were no more than big children. 'It's lucky for them that we were over there,' and so on. I drew Africans along these lines, in the purely paternalistic spirit of the times in Belgium."
According to Tintin biographer Harry Thompson, Tintin in the Congo is most popular in Zaire (the Democratic Republic of the Congo), where children consider it an honor that Tintin chose to visit their country. Wikipedia's entry says the media coverage over the removal of the book from children's sections caused its UK sales to rocket by 3,800%, climbing to 5th place on Amazon.co.uk's best-seller list.
Maybe in the future Mr Bean will be banned for portraying Englishmen as clumsy, bumbling imbeciles (nmlp).
Quote: zooo @ March 29 2009, 4:00 PM BSTF**k me, if you look at her Wiki page, she wrote about 30 books/stories a year, Jesus. Prolific old cow.
Just going off-thread for a mo' (well Kenneth has above, anyway it's late, no one will notice) - yes she was prolific, and whilst alive an entry in the Guinness Book of Records identified her as THE MOST prolific author in the UK.
- 'Over 600 books, (wiki estimates 800) many songs, poems and plays, RAN MAGAZINES and clubs ALL at the same time - (note the plural S in magazines). She was the most prolific, widely translated and avidly read of all children's writers'.
Out of breath yet?
Additionally she wrote thousands of articles for her magazines, all-in-all 600 million books sold worldwide.
Yep, she was prolific alright. Anyway, Wiki credits her as I mentioned in an earlier post as STILL today, being the 6th most translated author IN THE WORLD - yet she died way back in 1968!
I can't find the appropriate page in my old hardback copy of Barbara Stoney's biography of her, Stoney herself died just a few weeks ago, (£1 at a secondhand bookshop years ago, and regarded by many as the definitive biog of Enid Blyton) - I have the red covered copy, now maybe a collectors item in its own right; the reprints being in pictorial jackets.
But briefly, from memory it goes like this: Asked where she gets her jokes from that her characters tell in her books she replied that until the very moment the character tells the joke she had never heard it at all! And often stopped typing to laugh at the joke her character had just said. As wiki calculate that her prodigious output meant 10,000 words per day, every day, therefore I can only surmise, it must be true.
(EDIT: Found it - it's at the end of the passage I quote from below).
Of the many letters she wrote, those in response to professor McKellar still exist; he wanted to know more of her thought and writing process. Here is a portion of one letter that shows the spooky 'automatic' writing process in action -
"I shut my eyes for a few minutes, with my portable typewriter on my knee - I make my mind blank and wait - and then, as clearly as I would see real children, my characters stand before me in my mind's eye. I see them in detail - hair, eyes, clothes, expression - and I always know their Christian names, but never their surname. . . More than that, I know their characters - good, bad, mean, generous, brave, loyal. hot-tempered and so on. I don't know how I know that - it's as instinctive as sizing up a person in real life - they talk and laugh (I hear them) and perhaps I see that one of them has a dog or a parrot, and I think -'Ah - that's good. That will liven up the story.' Then behind the characters appears the setting, in colour of course, of an old house - a ruined castle - an island - a row of houses.
That's enough for me. My hands go down on my typewriter keys and I begin. The first sentence comes straight into my mind, I don't have to think of it - I don't have to think of anything.
The story is enacted in my mind's eye almost as if I had a private cinema screen there. The characters come on and off, talk, laugh, sing - have their adventures- quarrel - and so on. I watch and hear everything. writing it down with my typewriter - reporting the dialogue (which is always completely natural) the expressions on the faces, the feelings of delight, fear and so on. I don't know what anyone is going to say or do. I don't know what is going to happen. I am in the happy position of being able to write a story and read it for the first time, at one and the same moment. . .
. . . Another odd thing is that sometimes something crops up in the story which I am sure is wrong, or somehow out of place. Not a bit of it! It rights itself, falls into place - and now I dare not alter a thing I think is wrong. I have never yet found my 'under-mind' to make a mistake, though I make plenty myself in ordinary life. It's much cleverer than I am! . . .
. . . I don't pretend to understand all this. Sometimes a character makes a joke, a really funny one, that makes me laugh as I type it on my paper - and I think 'Well, I couldn't have thought of that myself in a hundred years!' And then I think. 'Well, who did think of it then?' . . .
- Can't wait for the film to come out.
Quote: Danny K @ March 31 2009, 12:09 AM BSTBarbara Stoney's biography of her
Many thanks for the illuminating extract. I'll be tracking down a copy of the book after work this week.
Quote: Kenneth @ March 31 2009, 12:21 AM BSTMany thanks for the illuminating extract. I'll be tracking down a copy of the book after work this week.
You're welcome Kenneth. The book is simply called: Enid Blyton a Biography by Barbara Stoney.
That's THE biography to get. (Only reprinted in paperback these days though, but that's okay.) Here's what that Blyton fan-based website I mentioned previously has to say about it:
http://www.enidblyton.net/barbara-stoney-enid-blyton-biography.html
"Barbara Stoney's Biography of Enid Blyton
It's back! First published in 1974, Barbara Stoney's highly regarded Biography of Enid Blyton is considered by most to be the best of the bunch. Sadly, for years the biography has been unavailable except via secondhand bookshops, but now, finally, the revised edition has been re-released in paperback form and is available to online from either Amazon.co.uk (UK) or Amazon.com (USA)."
Bet this is the base book used for much of the info in the forthcoming film.
Woo hoo! Just been on Amazon to have a looksee at the new jacketcover, (a black and white photo of Enid Blyton), and clicked on the for sales by other book sellers. It shows just one used copy at £143 !!! That must be my red hardback copy then - £143? Who'd pay that much?
Quote: Maurice Minor @ March 29 2009, 11:06 PM BSTI have had ginger beer tonight. Its available in all good newsagents.
Strangely, I too have had ginger beer tonight. It's best with lashings of vodka I find. It's my new favourite tipple - a generous slug of voddie mixed with ginger beer and lots of ice. Mmmmm.