Happy belated birthday to one of my favourites

Enid Blyton.

Enid has single-handedly inspired generations of readers, and if you dig deeper into writers’ backgrounds, you’ll find many of us reference Enid as an inspiration.

For me, I loved getting lost in the land at the top of the Faraway Tree, or riding shotgun with Julian, Dick, George and Anne, and Timmy the dog. In fact, I always wanted to be George. She was brave and never afraid to get out and have a go. Perhaps she was a little impulsive. All of that is me to a T. If there had been 'Book Week’ when I was at school, George would have been the one I dressed up as, because I wanted to be her. Anne used to annoy the crap out of me, because she was so timid and what I thought was boring. Now I realise she was the sensible one out of all of them, because, really, who in their right mind would follow a black Bentley across the moors that were shrouded in mist, knowing you could fall into quicksand and be swallowed forever, or confront a bad adult because they’ve kidnapped another person.

I was so excited when I started reading about the character’s boarding school experiences, because I was due to leave my home and head to Adelaide in Year 8 to go to Annesley College. Enid’s stories told of midnight feasts on the roof of buildings, ginger beer, fruit cake and ‘care packages’ full of the students’ favourite food, sent from home.

When I arrived at boarding school and found it more like a prison than anything, I took it upon myself to right those untruths and plagiarised Enid Blyton’s stories! I mean, how terrible it was to raise young children’s hopes, thinking they were going to have such fun at school, when really it was the most dreadful of institutions! I’d write about horrible house mistresses and the lack of care and empathy found amongst these traditional boarding houses. How punishment for the tiniest of misdemeanours ensured I was ‘gated’ (or grounded) for weeks at a time. (And I spent a lot of my time at boarding school being gated because I was one of the naughtier kids! Mostly because I thought the rules were ridiculous.)

There was nothing good about boarding school during the years I attended, and, since writing has always been my go-to, I wrote about all of it. If Enid had been alive, I would have written to her and explained how wrong she was, as well.

Anyhow… I’ll get off my high horse now and tell you that every time I speak of these boarding school stories, during a book event, I get a lot of laughs. And that’s exactly the point: to turn something terrible into something fun or funny. Enid did that, and while she was creating these stories, she was inspiring generations of young people to read and/or become writers themselves. What a gift she had.

So happy birthday, Enid, even if some of your books were not quite true!