Enid Blyton is responsible for this!

When I was 10 years old I wanted to be a spy. I wanted to dress up in disguise and spy on people and take down number plates and have suspicions about the next door neighbour, and write coded messages in invisible ink. My friends and I even made up a group called the "SIA". The Secret Investigation Association. We had exclusive identity cards, a password, and scanned the newspapers looking for mysteries to solve. It was a lot of fun.We did get into trouble once for making annoying phone calls to unsuspecting people in the Blenheim phone book, and we got into huge trouble at school for writing up our own SIA newspaper when we were supposed to be doing our studies.

These obsessions with spies and mysteries I credit wholly to Enid Blyton. She is responsible.
Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Trixie Beldon and others were added, but Enid Blyton started it all.

She also started my obsession with children's books. When I got married, I nearly added, "and all my books' to the end of the 'worldly goods' part of my vows.
I collect old children's books. I have done since I was a teenager and earning my own money. My Dad used to despair everytime I came home with bagfulls brimming of old books from second hand shops. I still collect them, I just don't have so much time to get to the shops now.
Because we've had so many moves in our married life, the majority of those books have remained stored in cardboard boxes in the attic.

Until now.

Until I gave birth to a boy. How well do I remember those days when I agonized if he would ever learn his ABC's, let alone how to read. Well, something has happened in the last year, and he now has a voracious appetite for reading. He'll go through a book in 2 days. And I can't keep them coming to him fast enough.

And suddenly I find that history has repeated itself. Lying in reading in the mornings. Staying up late reading under the bed covers, and funny looking characters are starting to appear in my yard. I mean, who are these strange-looking people....? And what funny looking eyebrows they have.

At the weekend I got Robin to climb those steps into the attic and bring down those old boxes that haven't seen the light of day for 13 years. And we dived into a ton of Enid Blytons, much to Hugh's delight.
It was like meeting up again with old familiar friends for me. All those trips into those second hand bookshops were worth it.

I suspect we're going to be seeing more of these strange-looking characters hanging around until the Enid Blyton mystery series is used up. I do get a good deal of pleasure knowing that my investment of years ago is getting good use again and reliving some exciting times of my childhood through my children, who are repeating it.

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