30 lane

There was a lane at the back of our old house in Queens Road. It ran up from Auntie Anne's in Baldwin Road, up past our houses, then round to the right and out into Queens Road further up. We used to call it The Alley. Right outside our house was a bomb shelter, a square, red brick building - but as I think about it now, it wasn't under ground so what use would it have been? There was a small bit of open ground next to it, where my dad used to keep his old car and where all the neighbours used to contribute regularly to bonfires. That's where I found the letter.


page 31 word 30 lane
The Wishing Chair Again 
Enid Blyton  - 

And appropriately, to echo this childhood memory, here is one of my beloved childhood books by my most beloved author Enid Blyton. Quite a few years ago some idiot educationalists decided that Blyton was a terrible influence on us and banned her books from public libraries and not because of the Golly. No. Because those of us who read and loved and lived and breathed  the Famous Five were exposed to dangerous upper class values which might have given us poor working class children the impression that the majority of other kids had parents who owned small islands off the coast of Cornwall, went to boarding school and loved it, had boats and endless holidays and adventures and drank only ginger beer and ate only thick ham sandwiches  and chunks of home made fruit cake cut by plump and kindly farmers wives, and had ice cream all the time, except Timmy the dog because it was a waste of time giving an ice to Timmy as he just gulped it all down in one and went off camping in caves where they made wonderful beds out of armfulls of fragrant springy heather and feasted off tinned sardines and tinned peaches and ....it is Enid Blyton I have to thank for my lifelong love of books and what they can be to us. Hurrah!