Evacuation

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

There is a new series of Evacuation showing on Thursday & Friday this week at 5pm on BBC1.

The idea is that modern kids are taken back to September 1939 and given the full treatment - ending up in a stately home for the "duration".

The last series - where they spent the time on a farm - was excellent. They actually became children again. This is a good insight of the lives of Blyton's first readers.

Viv

[Kitty]

I remember seeing some of this last series - it was very good. Thanks so much for this reminder - read it just in time!

*edit* I think Sam is channeling Snubby already!

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

Here's a thought - Evacuation meets Sandbanks....

Can you imagine the reaction of a WAG on recieving the news that a number of unknown children are coming to stay for a few years

Viv

[Lucky Star]

Here's a thought - Evacuation meets Sandbanks....
Can you imagine the reaction of a WAG on recieving the news that a number of unknown children are coming to stay for a few years

Viv

They would probably put the poor kids to work as unpaid servants to impress their stupid friends.

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

BBC1 this afternoon

4.30 Summerhill (part 2?) is a drama but based on a real incident
5.00 Evacuation (part 3) modern kids get the full 1940s treatment - good fun!

Viv

[Kitty]

Still liking Evacuation - but I think they single out Sam for criticism a bit too much, it is a children's programme. Today's episode makes me crave Malory Towers as a Sunday evening drama serial. Maybe the BBC would commision it if Emma Watson would agree to play Darrell as a Fifth-former! They did a very good job of Ballet Shoes over the festive period.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I enjoyed Ballet Shoes as well.

I'm glad they've resurrected Miss Young for the second series of Evacuation - she's great! Just the sound of her voice makes the children quake with terror!

Anita

[Moonraker]

I'm glad they've resurrected Miss Young for the second series of Evacuation - she's great! Just the sound of her voice makes the children quake with terror!

I LOVE her, she is great! Oh that the standard of teaching was the same today. Maybe then, people could string a sentence together without like, know what I mean and all the rest of the dross that people speak.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I thoroughly enjoyed this series once again, as did my children. We missed Thursday's episode, having forgotten that it was on early, but we managed to watch it online on the CBBC site. It's a pity that some children barely got a mention - the girl with the long fair hair, for example, who wore a yellow coat. I don't even know her name!

On Wednesday we visited the "Britain at War" Museum in London and learnt a bit more about rationing, evacuation, air raids, digging for victory, etc. It's a good museum for children - my son got to try on gas masks and we took cover in an Anderson shelter during an "air raid." There was a man there who had been evacuated from the East End of London to Oxfordshire as a boy and he spoke of how he learnt all about farming as an evacuee, never having seen a cow or a sheep prior to being evacuated.

One thing we learnt was that couples getting married during the Second World War often had to do without a wedding cake because many of the ingredients needed were rationed. For 5 - 10 shillings, the bride and groom could hire a cardboard cake decorated with plaster of paris, which looked the part even though it couldn't be eaten. A little drawer in the bottom tier held a token slice of fruit cake!

Anita

[Moonraker]

It's a pity that some children barely got a mention - the girl with the long fair hair, for example, who wore a yellow coat. I don't even know her name!

How I agree. I send Jane mad by keep saying, "Why don't we see and hear from the little blonde girl?" It seems that it is always the same few kids that have all the camera time. How Dan (I think) is how I imagine Fatty to be. The little cockney type reminds me so much of Pip Hilton, too! (Sorry, I can't remember their names!) How I want to clip Nish round the ears as well! He really is a boring little squirt!

A great series. What a plonker Miss Young looked in the Run Rabbit bit!

[Belly]

Puddles in the Lane by Alan Parker (probably now out of print) is a good read about this sort of time, also Goodbye Mister Tom which I am sure most know well.

Slightly on a tangent I help & am part of an organisation called GITRACE who reunite the chlidren of WW2 American Serviceman with their fathers. The more than 100,000 children born to American service personnel were another consequence of the war. My grandfather was one of them. I have been looking for him for years now for my mother but we think we have the spelling of his surname wrong (Arthur Revers).

[Julie2owlsdene]

Anita's post about the wedding cakes, not being available etc, was very interesting. I'd never really thought along those lines before, even though I knew they had rationing. Even when I was born, some rationing was still going on.

My parents were married during the war, when Dad was home on leave from the navy. They only have one photograph, Dad in his uniform and Mum in just a plain dress, holding a few flowers. No reception, and obviously NO CAKE. I'd never thought before to ask about such things.

So many people's lives disrupted, being taken away from their family's either for their own safety, or like Dad's to fight at sea. I only hope that school's these days teach the children about these wars, and the suffering many had to go through.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Yes, it's incredible how people coped with it all, Julie.

I read Puddles in the Lane when I was about ten - don't remember much about it now but it's a nice title. I was fascinated by books about evacuation and World War II. Carrie's War by Nina Bawden is another one I recall, and When the Siren Wailed by Noel Streatfeild. I only discovered Goodnight Mr. Tom as an adult, as well as Robert Westall's The Kingdom by the Sea which is a Second World War story with a twist. There's a thread here which might interest people who missed it the first time round - it starts off discussing war references in Blyton, then turns to a discussion of children's fiction set in the Second World War.

http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/foru ... t=magorian" target="_blank

It's interesting that the "evacuation" theme was brought to the fore in the latest film version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. In the book, it's only mentioned briefly. And I'd never thought before about the irony of the children being called upon to fight and kill, and risk being killed themselves, when their parents had sent them away to the countryside to keep them safe.

Anita

[Belly]

The kingdom by the sea I'll have to read, I haven't come across it before.

I think Goodbye Mr Tom was only written recently (in the 1990s)? It seems like it is much less recently written. Thanks for including the thread, that made interesting reading.

[dsr]

Bernard Ashley - Johnnie's Blitz. It doesn't really tell you the typical life of a child in the war, but it's a good tale.