The Enid Blyton Society

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An interesting account of how Enid cleaned out her round pond - but what's the betting that it was really Dick Hughes who did most of the work?!

Bobs' letter is wonderful this week, with his insistence that everyone has hung up flags in honour of his birthday (which falls on Empire Day) and his observation that it's a good thing dogs grow "longways" instead of "upwards" because it means their noses are nearer the ground and they can sniff things easily! Of course, Enid Blyton would have had to write the letters in advance so she must have been thinking back to past birthdays.

Happy Birthday Bobs! And being Queen Victoria's birthday too, a (belated) happy Victoria Day to any Canadian readers of the forums too. (Does that come from Empire/Commonwealth Day perhaps?) It sounds like Gillian had a bit of a tantrum in her pram, I dare say she would have loved to help clearing out the pond but Enid, Nanny and Dick Hughes would think otherwise. Another lovely snapshot of life at Old Thatch.

What is it with Enid and pigeons?

I hope Enid remembered to keep some of the pond water to put back in. We cleaned our two ponds the other day - such a satisfying job, and they looked so good when the job was done. I wonder how many children were upset to hear of "frogs freezing to death"?

Happy Birthday, Bobs!

Moonraker wrote:What is it with Enid and pigeons?

I love pigeons!

We have two really beautiful wood pigeons who visit our garden every day. They've even learned to balance on a bird feeder and eat grain from it!

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Rather a subdued letter this week as Bobs is away at the "dog-doctor's" with a bad leg and Enid's lovely new goldfish has met with a horrible fate.

It's nice to hear of the moor-hens on the long lily-pond though.

Sandy has had to write a letter instead of Bobs and I like Enid's comment that "He doesn't write such good letters as Bobs does, because he has much smaller paws and the pencil keeps slipping out!"

Poor Bobs and poor goldfish too. No doubt Bobs will be back next week to tell us all about his stay at the dog doctor's and probably with a plug for his new book. I would have loved to get the Society reprint copies but I missed out on those. Never mind it's a pleasure to be able to read the letters every week in the TW.

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Bobs is back, the fields are golden with buttercups, Old Thatch is overrun with chicks and ducklings, and the yellowhammer is calling out all day long for a "Little bit of bread and no CHEESE!" Idyllic!

Enid Blyton's description of the shorn sheep conjures up a delightful picture - she says they look "bare and thin, rather as if they were wooden sheep from a Noah's Ark, instead of the fat, woolly sheep that had baa-ed in the fields all the spring time."

The 'Bumble Bee' poem is fun!

Thanks as always to Tony for making these letters available.

Old Thatch certainly sounds idyllic, and a very busy place with all the ducklings and chicks. I very rarely hear Yellowhammers or Cuckoos nowadays, the most common birds where I live seem to be Wood Pigeons and Ring-necked Parakeets. A super poem this week, I love The Enid Blyton Poetry Book where this poem also appears, I'm so lucky to have a copy.

Kate Mary wrote:the most common birds where I live seem to be Wood Pigeons and Ring-necked Parakeets.

That sounds amazing to people who live further north. I've never seen a Ring-necked parakeet in the wild!

We do have magpies, Jays, crows, wood pigeons, collared doves, robins, blue-tits, great-tits, hedge sparrows, house sparrows, nut hatches, wagtails, wrens, black birds, thrushes etc -- but no Ring-necked Parakeets!!

This year is the first I can remember not hearing the cuckoo by now.

Sorry you haven't yet heard the cuckoo, John. I remember you mentioning hearing it in previous years.

Rob Houghton wrote:I've never seen a Ring-necked parakeet in the wild!

We don't get them where I live in Essex either, though I have seen them in the wild in parts of London - especially Greenwich and Kensington.

One bird I've never seen or heard is the yellowhammer, even though I've read about it in so many Blyton books and articles!

Think yourself lucky Rob that you have no parakeets in your area, they have beautiful plumage but they are very noisy and destructive. We had a pair that broke in through our bathroom extractor fan vent and tried to nest in our loft. We had to have steel vent covers fitted.

(Sorry off topic.)

An amusing incident at Old Thatch this week with Gillian and Sandy in the play-pen. I don't put much beyond Enid's imagination but it's likely this really happened. A good puzzle this week too, I still have a few to solve.

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Like Enid Blyton, I love seeing all the flowers, bees and butterflies at this time of year - not to mention the birds.

Regarding the puzzle about English counties, I had trouble thinking what numbers 8 and 11 could be. In the end I cheated and found them by looking up a list of English counties on Google! Readers couldn't have done that in 1933, of course, though they could have consulted an atlas. I notice Dorset wasn't included in the puzzle!

Lovely letters again. I enjoyed reading about Gillian and Sandy's antics, the birds in Enid's garden (I love her comment "I am glad my roof shelters small bird-creatures as well as human beings"), and Bobs being a "humbug" with his now-not-quite-so-injured leg!

I've never had sparrows nesting in the roof, but when I was little our parents used to enlist us to help shoo away the swallows from our eaves and knock down the beginnings of their mud nests if they tried to build any, just because they make a lot of mess. I'm sorry to say it gave me a bit of a prejudice against swallows until I was somewhat older and glimpsed them flying around over our local beach and saw how beautiful they are, with their shiny blue-back backs and red faces. (Our Australian swallows are almost identical to British ones, except they don't have the black stripe around their throats.) Now that I live in the UK, I've seen house martins nesting as well — they're also lovely to watch.

I got all the county names without having to look them up (although some were harder than others), but that probably comes down to the fact that I love studying maps!