Sunday, January 25, 2009

Secret...four

Remember the times when you were little and the world seemed so big and adventurous?

When I was a little girl I used to read Enid Blyton's books. Of course after the passing of the years ,and age ,I switched to Agatha (Long live Hercule!) but Enid holds a special place on my bookshelf and in my heart.

The story goes like this...I used to spend my weekends at my grandmother's house in a small village, about 20-30 minutes from the city I lived. I had a...small gang of friends there (some of them are still my friends). Inspired by Enid's "Secret Seven" we formed our own group of amateur detectives...we were the "secret four" (no surprises there:-). Every week we would meet at my grandmothers warehouse and discuss how we were going to save the world from the misfortunes and the bad people that were out there!


Now Enid Blyton's books were written in an English context and by context I mean the moody, wet, somewhat dark, misty, English weather and surroundings. Luckily in my country and village we got to have many different kinds of weather. In order for a good mystery to unfold and for us to "take matters into our own hands" autumn and winter was about the right time. So every time the season was right and the mood for a real nice mystery was set, we would be ready for any kind of stake out! Now you may not understand what I mean by that so I will provide some visual aids.

We would walk these roads searching for interesting and 'unusual' activities;-)


We would walk through these mountains...exploring (seriously we went up there!)


We would wait for the darkness to cover everything...in order for us to sneak out and do our thing (till our folks would come out, looking for us:-)


These are the places I grew up in...I am happy that they still exist in the way I left them. The only thing that is missing...a gang of four 10 year olds, walking, laughing, conspiring, imagining. I am guessing that they are inside right now watching TV...

3 comments:

Coffee Messiah said...

It's interesting to go backwards sometimes.

I know for us, our little dairy town which was S of San Francisco is so built up, you'd never know what it was a long time ago.

Cheers!

New Yorker wannabes said...

I know what you mean Coffee Messiah!

That is the way it is in my home town. Luckily it is different with villages because people tend to get away from them, so nothing much changes. Now I am not even sure that is a good thing either, since after a while these places tend to be uninhabited...

greetings and take care
xoxo

Rachel Cotterill said...

We had the Fabulous Four, inspired by the Famous Five. But shhh, I didn't tell you that, because it was a secret club :)