These Foolish Things....

Mrs Miniver

She rearranged the fire a little,mostly for the pleasure of handling the fluted steel poker,and then sat down by it.Tea was already laid;there were honey sanwiches,brandy-snaps,and small ratafia biscuits;and there would,she knew be crumpets.Three new library books lay virginally on the fender stool,their bright new wrappers unsullied by subscribers hand.The clock on the mantelpiece chimed,very softly and precisely,five times.A tug hooted from the river.A sudden breeze brought the sharp tang of a bonfire in at the window.

The jigsaw was almost complete,but there was still one piece missing.And then,from the other end of the square,came the familiar sound of the wednesday barrel-organ,playing with a hundred apocryphal trills and arpeggios,the 'blue danube'waltz.And Mrs Miniver,with a little sigh of contentment,rang for tea.

 

Mrs Miniver by Jan Struther.

 

A little bedside reading....

I picked up this lovely little book at our local flea market on Sunday morning, This sort of thing just makes my heart sing! It is a Womans weekly Bedside book, each page has a little verse on it and sometimes an illustration,There is not a date on the book, but it looks like it was printed in the 1930s.Under a chapter titled "For comfort" I found this verse, named "After the storm" the words ring so true.

I

Enchantment.....

My last post about John Betjeman set me off thinking of how important books have always been to me,not just poetry,but a really good story.As a child I was raised on a diet of Enid Blyton, from Noddy to the famous five,the secret seven,the schoolgirls of St Claires.... I could go on and on! Enid Blyton fired the imagination of children everywhere, how I longed to go on adventures like the famous five,to catch smugglers,to ride off on my bicycle with bags of lettuce,heaps of tomatoes and lashings of ginger beer! it was sheer escapism for a child raised in the seventies in the suburbs of Newcastle! but I was bullied at school, for a long time, and this is where I found my haven, in a make believe world where the children were "awfully good sports" and the sun always shone as they rode off to smugglers top, or wherever.

I now collect old Enid Blyton hardbacks,such as the one above, I love the illustrations as much as anything, a few years ago all newly produced EB books were rewritten in a politically correct manner, which makes the originals all the more appealing to me! but for me ultimately they signify escapism, and a time that just does not exist anymore. I sometimes look at the books of my little one and feel a tad depressed! they are too realistic! or is it me? am I just too old fashioned? But show me a child who doesnt smile at the image of Noddy! and I must add, I am a member of the Enid Blyton society! and proud of it!