Saturday 25 August 2012

The Famous Five

My Dad, bless him, has kept the precious collection of Famous Five books that my brother and I read, re-read and re-read again several times, and so this week I have started reading them to A.  I think I was probably around seven when I read them for the first time, and I absolutely loved them.  I always used to wonder how they managed to find such a ludicrous level of mystery and adventure wherever they went.  Looking back, they were probably not actually written to mirror reality in any way whatsoever, but I remember always being slightly disappointed when the biggest excitement on our holidays was watching all the dads perform a dance routine to Star Trekkin' by The Firm.  No smuggling, buried treasure, spy rings, and a distinct lack of potted meat and ginger beer.  I think I probably would have hated potted meat (I am not even sure I know what it is - some kind of weird pate stuff?), but that's not the point.

A seems quite keen so far.  She is a little non-plussed about how the children interact with each other.  I was really quite thrilled that she noticed the casual misogynism with which Julian and Dick speak to the girls "Why do the boys think they're so important?"  I have decided to replace the word queer with "odd", as I don't really think it's a word I want her bandying about to mean unusual.  It's quite hard to do though, because the word comes up an awful lot. 

A is also amused that the children are allowed to go off all day and do whatever they want, with no parental input whatsoever.  I look forward to seeing her enjoy how the mysteries unfold, because at the moment they are still pretty much just remarking on how queer it is that George wants to be called a boy's name, and arguing with each other.

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