Heathersblytonpages.com
Title
Heather's Blyton Pages
Description
I am a 27 year old married mother of two, and I work in administration in a small software company. I have never left my homeland of Australia (not yet, anyway), and I was born and bred in Victoria. I am currently living in Melbourne's Eastern suburbs.
I first came across Enid Blyton books as a six year old when my parents bought an old school house in a remote part of Victoria. The town had been deserted when the gold ran out (I think around the 1960s), and the school house was still intact—as if the children had gone out to play and never come back. The writing was still on the blackboard, the inkwells were full of dry ink, and there were old books in a huge book cupboard. Some of these were Enid Blyton's Secret Seven. I read them several times, and over the years compiled more and more of the older style cloth-cover books from the 50s and 60s, from op shops (they cost about 20 cents then, back in the 80s), including mostly Secret Seven and Five-Find Outers books. I also had one or two Famous Fives and, from memory, a Brer Rabbit, Tales of Toyland, and The Enchanted Wood. Not a huge collection, but I did love them. I must have read them all at least fifty times—living in such an isolated part of Victoria I was only able to go to school once a week and did home schooling the rest of the time. We had no TV and no other children to play with other than my brothers and sisters, so Blyton books were my escape into a place of mystery and excitement.
I kept re-reading these old favourites occasionally even into my early teens, especially when I was ill or upset. They became more of a calming influence after the stories had been read so many times the excitement of the plot had worn off. I finally gave them to my younger brother who also loved reading anything he could get his hands on. That was the last I saw of them. My mother decided one day that they were "just old books" and threw them away after I had moved out of home and married.
