Five on a Hike Together

[Boodi 2]

Thanks Pete, I will be interested to hear the outcome!

Katherine, I know what you mean about the candles...in fact we are now so old that the cake would probably not be large enough to hold the required number of candles, not to mention the effort involved in blowing them all out! While we still have a birthday cake we gave up adorning it with candles years ago when our son reached the age of 14 or 15 (he is now 32).

[Bertie]

Boodi - I many be wrong, but I have a vague feeling someone's grandparents are mentioned in the Find-Outers.
Was it Fatty or perhaps Pip's?

I'm sure Eddie or Daisy may know!

Fatty's grandfather pays a visit in 'Holly Lane'. Fatty is very fond of him but it's inconvenient timing as it was just as Fatty was working out about the horse boxes and wanted to go and search for them.

[Boodi 2]

Thanks Bertie! My memory is obviously not as good as it used to be.

[Hannah]

I've got the Kindle editions of the Famous Five with three books in one which made searching easier. The words grandmother or grandfather (without "great-great-") mostly appear referring to other families or things like "grandfather clock".

But I've found one reference to a living grand-parent: In "Wonderful time" mother writes to George and reminds that it will be her grandmother's birthday on Saturday and that she must write to her.

Regarding the use of aunts/uncle: There were some older relatives (not real aunts/uncles) that were called aunt and uncle. My one real aunt has always been "aunt <first name>" until her death some years ago - and so is my godmother who is a close friend of my mother. I'd find it hard to change how I call them.
When we were children my mother tried to make us call her friends from school aunt but she didn't succeed and we just used there first names when we went to see them. (That wasn't very often as all her friends including my godmother had stayed in or near Hamburg while I grew up near the Swiss border.)

[Katharine]

I've got the Kindle editions of the Famous Five with three books in one which made searching easier. The words grandmother or grandfather (without "great-great-") mostly appear referring to other families or things like "grandfather clock".

But I've found one reference to a living grand-parent: In "Wonderful time" mother writes to George and reminds that it will be her grandmother's birthday on Saturday and that she must write to her.

I have a feeling that in the original book, it is actually her Godmother, but it has been changed to grandmother at some point.

I may be confusing it with a different book though.

[pete9012S]

That really is a great find about George's grandmother.
Quentin or Fanny's mother?????

[Wolfgang]

I checked out my edition from 1955, and it's grandmother there. But if the series had been serialised previously, it could be Godmother there. But that's just a guess.

[Katharine]

Thanks for checking Wolfgang. I doubt there would have been a change to the text so early on.

Thinking about it, I might be thinking of one of the school books. I've a feeling there is a story where there is a thief in the school and someone has a brooch stolen which had been given to them by their Godmother, which has been changed to Grandmother.

Or I might just have imagined it.

[Hannah]

In Second Form at Malory Towers Emily's brooch is stolen. In the Kindle edition it has been given to her by her Godmother.

[StephenC]

I've always rated Hike Together as one of the best of the FF series, and was one of the first FF books I ever read as a child. Published in 1951, it falls right in in the middle of Enid's golden period of FF books, that started with Get Into Trouble in 1949, and ended with Mystery Moor in 1954. One thing that I always thought stood out with these six books, was the cast of unsavoury adult characters that the Five encountered, and Hike Together was no exception with the likes of Maggie and Dirty Dick. The passage of the book, where Dick and Anne are separated from Julian and George, and have to find shelter for the night, was quite spectacular, and an example, I thought, of Enid's creative writing skill at its best, something that would peak in the next two years, with books like Five Have A Wonderful Time, The Rubadub Mystery, and Go Ahead, Secret Seven.

[Irene Malory Towers]

From some one who is very scared of dogs I was quite shocked with the ending of Go Ahead, Secret Seven, with them being locked up in the cage and ferocious dog guarding them menacing them with the threat of biting a finger off from what I remember. I think the ending is more suitable for one of the series aimed at older children, but maybe that just targets a particular fear of mine. Yes I agree with Stephen though, that there is a range of Famous Five books in the early to mid range which are fabulous. But Five go to Smuggler Tops is earlier than this great range I think it always deserves a mention, and in fact it probably is my favourite Famous Five as it has so many ingredients to make it a great read.

[GloomyGraham]

I've always rated Hike Together as one of the best of the FF series, and was one of the first FF books I ever read as a child.

One thing that I always thought stood out was the likes of Maggie and Dirty Dick.

I re-read it a month or so back and remembered why it was one of my favourites. Maggie being a very rare female 'villain' in a Blyton story.

Usually the only female villains in a Blyton book were cruel Aunt or step-mother types or just the wife of a male enemy.

The only other female villains I can currently think of would be the artist in the SS series and the spiteful letters cook in FFO.

[Hannah]

I'd count Mrs Stick as a villain too - she was very much involved in the kidnapping and stealing.

[GloomyGraham]

I'd count Mrs Stick as a villain too - she was very much involved in the kidnapping and stealing.

Yes - and though we didn't really have her in the book - the sister-in-law (I presume) who was the nurse/nanny involved in the kidnapping.

Probably even worse than Sarah Stick's involvement in kidnapping was her withholding of nice food from the permanently hungry Five. A truly heinous act

[Lenoir]

There was that woman in Five on a Secret Trail as well. She was a member of the flashing lights gang and was a smooth operator. Well, she had smooth hands anyway. Dick was quick to spot that.