{"id":1460,"date":"2019-01-21T00:01:44","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T07:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/?p=1460"},"modified":"2020-02-15T18:47:52","modified_gmt":"2020-02-16T01:47:52","slug":"you-are-what-you-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/2019\/01\/21\/you-are-what-you-read\/","title":{"rendered":"You Are What You Read"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, I listened to a speaker talk about the need to connect with your uninhibited, playful inner child in order to access your creativity and confidence. She spoke of childlike curiosity\u2014I don\u2019t think she was referring to the way kids explore the insides of their noses–and opined on the ease with which the very young mix with their peers.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

No doubt many of us have heard similar advice in varying contexts and forums over the years; I know I have. It\u2019s just that this speaker made the point more convincingly than I\u2019ve heard others do.<\/p>\n

But although that speech was the trigger for this week\u2019s ramble, it\u2019s not really the focus of it. My own attempts to reconnect with my childhood are.<\/p>\n

Many Brits over the last seventy or eighty years grew up reading Enid Blyton books. I did. Mrs. H. did. Both our hatchlings did. Blyton\u2019s books have sold over six hundred million copies and according to Wikipedia, are still enormously popular.<\/p>\n

I recently started re-reading Blyton\u2019s \u201cThe Famous Five\u201d series.<\/p>\n

For the uninitiated, The Famous Five are siblings Julian, Dick and Anne, their tomboy cousin George (Georgina), and George\u2019s dog, Timmy. In the first book (written in 1942), they are twelve, eleven, ten, and eleven years old, respectively\u2014we never learn Timmy\u2019s age, although we can guess at two. In the twenty-one adventures they have, they track down crooks, solve mysteries, rescue kidnappees, recover long-lost treasure, and probably discover the identity of Jack the Ripper too. They take on gun-toting robbers, smugglers and spies, armed with nothing more than middle-class accents, tons of spunk, and lashings of ginger-beer.<\/p>\n

For the sensitive among us, the stories are safe to read, because fair play is done, the baddies don\u2019t shoot (or stab or club) first and ask questions later, there\u2019s not that much ill treatment of children or animals, and the bad guy always gets his.<\/p>\n

Actually, I should have qualified the word \u201csensitive\u201d. If, like me, you abhor exploitation of people, justice not being meted out, and gratuitous violence, then the stories are safe. If you are dismayed by pre-twenty-first-century attitudes to country, class, creed, or sex\/gender, then you might not like Blyton\u2019s books so much.<\/p>\n

Our heroes (and heroines\u2014we are<\/em> discussing books that contain gender-specific nomenclature and characterisations!) are remarkably mature and capable for their ages. In book five for example, we learn that they can all drive a horse-drawn trailer (caravan) along the country roads of England. Ten-year-old Anne is an accomplished cook and housekeeper, especially under camp conditions. And Julian can face off, stare down and out-argue most antagonistic working-class adults, especially if they\u2019re up to no good.<\/p>\n

The children\u2019s appetites (and Timmy\u2019s) are the stuff of legends. They seem to eat four huge meals a day, with bacon, ham, eggs, and cake being the principal feature of most breakfasts. By rights, all five of them\u2014yes, Timmy included\u2014should be morbidly obese, but their adventures and antics (or Blyton\u2019s overlooking the laws of physics) keep them in trim.<\/p>\n

When they go camping or caravanning or whatever, we\u2019re sometimes treated to a detailed list of what they plan to take.<\/p>\n

And because of that huge food intake and the detailed gear inventories, there\u2019s one thing that stands out as a glaring omission from the narrative\u2014the need for the children to\u2026 ahem\u2026 \u201cmake themselves comfy\u201d. There\u2019s no latrine shelter mentioned; no spade, no toilet paper\u2026 And there\u2019s no reference to watering the flowers, squatting behind a tree, or availing oneself of a dock leaf or two.<\/p>\n

Blyton\u2019s books aren\u2019t unique in that respect\u2014I don\u2019t recall a single children\u2019s book that does acknowledge this most basic of human needs. Perhaps more recently-written ones do. After all, teenager TV dramas these days (UK ones, at least) depict that age group\u2019s inclination to what I shall politely call auto-exploration, many movies incorporate scenes that take place in the bathroom, and what are known as \u201clate-night comedies\u201d on Netflix and elsewhere wouldn\u2019t be complete without someone perched on the porcelain throne or talking to God through the great white megaphone. So it\u2019s reasonable to suppose that modern children\u2019s books include mentions of potty time.<\/p>\n

According to my mum\u2019s records (Me? Packrat? Me!), I read at least six of the Famous Five series as a child\u2014numbers 5, 12, 14, 10, 16, and 13. Strangely, I don\u2019t recall thinking it odd that nobody ever needed the toilet.<\/p>\n

This time around, I\u2019m on the seventh of the series, I\u2019m reading them in sequence, and I spotted the lack of loo time straight away. Either my OCD and toilet awareness hadn\u2019t developed back then, or my mum had to get whatever the library had on their shelves and I accepted that Dick taking a dump wasn\u2019t critical to the plotline.<\/p>\n

Enid Blyton probably played a huge part in shaping my worldview, which, given that her depiction of life is through rose-tinted spectacles, explains why I have a totally unrealistic expectation of humanity. Maybe by reading the whole series as an adult, I might finally grasp that the world is an unfair place where idiots govern us, gangs operate with impunity, vulnerable sectors of the population are exploited, shoddy work is passed off as something much better, and the key to success is marketing rather than ability.<\/p>\n

According to what I read about her, Enid Blyton herself discovered that last societal imperfection about halfway through her writing career. I wonder if she wrote any books about marketing and branding? If so, then perhaps she may once again influence the path my life takes!<\/p>\n

But back to connecting with your inner child in order to tap into your creativity. That theory has one major flaw.<\/p>\n

What if you were born middle-aged?<\/p>\n

\n

[1]<\/a> \u00a0(We\u2019re talking in generalizations here, so please don\u2019t get all huffy with me if your child is one of those who don\u2019t fit this convenient stereotype.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, I listened to a speaker talk about the need to connect with your uninhibited, playful inner child in order to access your creativity and confidence. She spoke of childlike curiosity\u2014I don\u2019t think she was referring to the way kids explore the insides of their noses–and opined on the ease with which the very young mix with their peers.[1] No… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[488,489],"tags":[648,649],"class_list":["post-1460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bbs","category-scat","tag-enid-blyton","tag-lashings-of-ginger-beer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1460"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1463,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460\/revisions\/1463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}