Sheds - as in SS and FFO

[Rob Houghton]

Fatty's shed also had a crocodile skin hanging on the wall!!

[Lucky Star]

Yes I think Fatty's shed was probably a bit bigger than Peter's. I saw Fatty's shed as being a jumble of old clothes and disguises with shelves laden with false teeth, cheek pads, wigs and greasepaint all around the walls. There was the tiger head rug on the floor and a series of mismatched chairs around a small table for the FFO's meetings.

The SS shed was a more humble affair with a series of boxes and flowerpots for seats, an upturned box for a table and maybe one small shelf containing a bottle of blackberry tea and some slightly stale cakes for the mid meeting snack.

[pete9012S]

I've always lusted after one of these heavy duty weather proof shelter/huts workman use to work outdoors.
I would have it erect somewhere peaceful, far from the hubbub and noise of the family.

I could sit inside it and read Enid Blyton adventures by the light of an oil lamp whilst drinking hot chocolate from a thermos, nibbling my biscuits.

[Katharine]

Pete, I'm not sure an oil lamp would be the best thing to have in there - it might make it go up like a hot air balloon.

[dsr]

Nicola Marlow and Patrick Merrick (Antonia Forest characters) once decided that when they grew up they would have a hut each on the Crowlands, which is some sort of moor in Dorset, where they could fly their falcons and live away from civilisation. Something like Pete's hut, perhaps.

I wonder if the child who was the subject of the OP, now presumably 19 years old, still occupies her shed?

[Snehalatha]

Both Secret Seven.and Fatty's shed are lovely
-- They are as Blyton says warm.and cosy
. I can almost see in my mind's eye the comfortable shed of both the SS ahd FFO-- both groups having secret meetings -- having hot coffee and cherry buns.

[Chrissie777]

What is it with sheds?! My daughter and I moved into our new house in October and because its a new-build and its been winter we haven't been out in the garden much......let the grass seed grow etc.
Now its nice we've been out a lot more and my daughter immediately announced that the shed is her, that its private and that I must keep out - all this said with hands on hips lol
Anyone else's kids do this? Or did anyone else do this as a kid?! Come on, fess!

This is a post from 2007. Nice topic.
I think we all wanted to have a space of our own when we were kids. A place where adults don't intrude all the time (as they do with our rooms) and where we can withdraw and not be supervised for a few hours.
My parents never had a shed, so I grew up shed-less. How I wished I could have escaped them once in a while, so reading the FF books was my escapism.

The very first time that I had access to a shed was in 1991 when my former husband and I bought a house in Hamburg, Germany. It had an enchanted large garden behind the house which was divided by a shed in the middle of the garden and a little pond with water lilies, reeds, amphibians (lurchs), frogs and sometimes ducks behind the shed.

With André I have a lovely shed in our small garden, but it's filled with the snow blower, leaf blower, lawn mower, Adirondack chairs. So there is no space to sit down and read a book plus our dog wouldn't let me have peace to do it.

[Chrissie777]

So, FFO Fans, I have two questions for you: 1) What does Fatty's shed look like to you? and 2) What would your own 'special den' look like if you had one at the bottom of your garden?

I must admit that I didn't read the FFO & Dog books as often as for instance the FF, Adventure or Barney series.
But my own shed would need a nice window seat with a thick cushion underneath for reading by the window. And also a sofa with a reading lamp (100 Watt) for curling up and reading on overcast days (I prefer reading when I have daylight though).
Several big book cases would line the walls. There would also be a rocking chair, a hummock (how I wished I had a hummock when I was little!) and little refrigerator to keep beverages, scones and clotted cream.

[Chrissie777]

Pete, I'm not sure an oil lamp would be the best thing to have in there - it might make it go up like a hot air balloon.

I think if the light is too dim, you cause harm to your eyes. For me it always had to be a reading lamp with 100 Watt.

[Anita Bensoussane]

As children, my sister and I used to have a shed. We absolutely loved it - I'll say more about it when I have a bit more time.

Almost 12 years later, here goes!

My sister and I enjoyed reading about the sheds in the Secret Seven and Find-Outers books when we were children. Sheds were havens of warmth and companionship – cosy dens where children could feast, play games, make plans and store the most exciting clutter, with no interference from the adult world.

As it happened, we had a wooden shed of our own complete with a battered table, four stools and an old toy-box. We draped a red shawl over the table and arranged flowers from the garden in a vase so it looked bright and welcoming. The shed had a homely feel to it and featured in many of our games, including games revolving around our best-loved books and television programmes – Little House on the Prairie, Robinson Crusoe, Doctor Who, Heidi, Tarzan, The Red Hand Gang, The Diddakoi/Kizzy and, last but not least, Blyton's Famous Five and Adventure books (not to mention the Southern Television Famous Five series). In our imaginations the shed was transformed into whatever we wanted it to be – a caravan, a cave, the cabin of a boat, a Tardis, a schoolroom or a hut situated on an island, up a mountain, on a prairie or in a jungle.

Inspired by Enid Blyton, we formed a detective club with two friends (they were sisters too, of around our own age) and the shed became our headquarters. In emulation of the Secret Seven, we simply had to have badges and passwords. Hampered in our mystery-solving by the fact that our parents didn't allow us to go anywhere alone except "round the block", we were at first unsure how to occupy our time. We remembered that the Secret Seven and Find-Outers sometimes practised being detectives while waiting for "a nice, juicy mystery" to turn up so we decided to spend meetings honing our skills so that we'd be prepared if "a sniff of a mystery" should come our way.

It was around this time that I came across The Young Detective's Handbook by W. V. Butler and How to Be a Detective by Mick Loftus, both published in 1979. I also bought books devoted specifically to disguising and to cracking secret codes. They were chock-full of projects to turn us into super-sleuths. We put together a crime-tackling kit consisting of handy items like a notebook and pencil, a tape measure, tweezers, a magnifying glass, charcoal sticks (for making fingerprint powder) and envelopes (in which to store clues). Most of these things were easy enough to find and we bought the charcoal sticks from an art shop. Once we had crushed the sticks into a black powder we had fun dusting our fingerprints with it and transferring the results on to strips of Sellotape which could then be stuck on sheets of white paper, though the images we obtained were dreadfully smudgy. My desire to be properly equipped even prompted me to march into a hardware shop and ask to buy a skeleton key, only to receive a stern and penetrating stare in return!

As well as practising taking fingerprints we made an identikit or photofit using pictures of faces from magazines (the results were rather Picasso-like as the images were of different sizes!), made a periscope from corrugated cardboard and dolls' mirrors, invented secret codes, sent messages to each other in Morse code, wrote notes in invisible ink (orange juice) as the Find-Outers do, escaped from a locked room using Fatty's newspaper trick, played games designed to sharpen our powers of observation and deduction, and swotted up on detective-related words and phrases like "modus operandi", "dabs", "alias" and "alibi" (a term Fatty introduces in The Mystery of the Pantomime Cat).

The art of disguising caught my imagination as a child because of the fascinating array of gear and props involved – wigs and eyebrows, beards and moustaches, cheek-pads, celluloid teeth, greasepaint, an assortment of clothes and even, in The Mystery of Tally-Ho Cottage, "a gadget to make large ears." My sister and I were delighted when our nanna (our dad's mum) gave us an old wig (just a fashion wig) she no longer wanted. I had long, straight, fair hair, so the wig of short brown curls changed my appearance dramatically. One Monday I wore it to school, claiming to have had my hair dyed and styled over the weekend. My friends were unanimous in their verdict – it looked fabulous, far better than my usual style. How disappointed they were when I revealed the truth!

Aged nine or ten, I disguised as an elderly lady by drawing wrinkles on my face with an eye pencil, sprinkling talcum powder on the wig to give it a grey tinge and covering it with a gauzy headscarf. Then came some glasses frames (horn-rimmed), a touch of pearly lipstick, a long dress and a shapeless cardigan. Tan-coloured tights, clumpy shoes and a handbag completed the look. All that remained was to stoop and shuffle slowly round the block, leaning on a friend's arm for "support", speaking in a quavery voice. As it happens, I don't think we encountered a single soul! With hindsight that was fortunate, as I was absolutely certain that I didn't look a day under eighty-five and I'd have been devastated to be disillusioned!

Reading Go Ahead Secret Seven encouraged us to do a spot of "shadowing". However, when my sister and I tried shadowing a young man he stopped, turned round and gave us a dressing down for "pestering" him. We fled, red-faced!

Another popular activity was devising treasure hunts for each other, with clues (scrawled on slips of paper) leading from one location to another all over the house and garden. The "treasure" consisted of penny chews (Black Jacks and Fruit Salads), as gold ingots were in short supply!

With mysteries so disappointingly thin on the ground, we eventually came to accept that we would never solve any crimes and, after about a year, our detective club morphed into a Book-Lovers' Club. Every week, we each put 5p in a box and we took it in turns to buy a book when funds were sufficient. We still had badges and passwords and even "club songs", one of which was Toyah Willcox's It's a Mystery. We wrote and shared our own stories and poetry, reviewed and swapped books, made book-related jigsaws and board games, designed bookmarks and performed plays for friends and family (including Enid Blyton's The Currant Bun).

Happy times! I find it incredible when some critics claim that Enid Blyton's writing is bland and of little value beyond getting children to learn the basics of reading. She inspired me in so many ways and enriched my childhood immensely.

[Daisy]

Thank you for enlarging upon your promise of so many years ago, Anita. Your exploits would make a book! Reading this, I am reminded that I was part of a small group who had rules, passwords and secret codes. The other members were boy and girl twins of my own age, (about 10 or 11) whom I remember quite well and at least 2 others who I can't even picture now! I remember going on a picnic with them to some nearby woods - a bus ride away and hiding our wrapped up food at the foot of a tree, covering it with grass to disguise the fact we had any rations with us. Not sure of the motive now but somehow we thought if we were questioned we had better look as if we were about to depart. Happy days! We made various things like lavender bundles from ideas in the Holiday Books and I don't ever remember being bored. Messages in secret code were always good fun too. The group disbanded some time after we went to different schools after the 11 plus exam and I moved away from the area the following year. I wonder how many more of us on the forum can recall how their leisure time was spent at that lovely carefree age of pre-high school years.

[Moonraker]

We took delivery of a new shed back in October. It was painted and is still being stored in our garage. We need help in assembling, and as my neighbour is going to help me, it has to wait until he is allowed in our garden! As it is very wet underfoot, maybe it will have to wait until April or May now.

We will definitely be holding a shed-warming party once it is up!

[Lucky Star]

Great memories Anita. Thank you for sharing them in such detail, I thoroughly enjoyed reading them. I also bought books on How to be a Detective and on dressing up etc although alas I never got very far. We didn't have a shed so I had to wait until we visited my Grandparents who did have one but it was chock full of clutter and tools so no place for a club to meet. Some of my schoolfriends were bookworms like me and liked Blyton, Crompton etc so we would usually meet in the school library and discuss in whispers our favourite books. Apart from that all I could do was daydream that I was on Kirrin Island searching for a Great Auk.

[Chrissie777]

I find it incredible when some critics claim that Enid Blyton's writing is bland and of little value beyond getting children to learn the basics of reading. She inspired me in so many ways and enriched my childhood immensely.

Anita, thank you for sharing this wonderful story with us.
It would be worthy of being published in a future EBS Journal!

EB was banned from many school and public libraries in Germany in the mid to late 1960's.
Thanks to my best friend Katti, I found out about the FF and Adventure series.
My parents were anti-Blyton and no matter how many EB titles I listed on my birthday and Christmas wish lists, I never received more than one EB book at a time.

Thanks to EB I survived growing up in a dysfunctional family. And it's also because of EB that I always longed to travel in England. EB was an inspiration for me in many ways. Becoming resourceful was one of them.

[Chrissie777]

Happy days! We made various things like lavender bundles from ideas in the Holiday Books and I don't ever remember being bored. Messages in secret code were always good fun too. The group disbanded some time after we went to different schools after the 11 plus exam and I moved away from the area the following year. I wonder how many more of us on the forum can recall how their leisure time was spent at that lovely carefree age of pre-high school years.

Thank you, Daisy.

Same here, in my childhood I was never bored from the moment on I could read.
When it was sunny and dry, we did bike rides and explored the near-by woods.
When it rained, there were so many books to read or board games to play. Or we created treasure maps.

I feel bad for todays youngsters who grow up with laptops and cell phones. What a drab childhood that must be!