The Girl (Comic)

A special offshoot of The Eagle but for Girls:

The Eagle was a iconic British boys comic from the 1950's when boy were boys full of beans, heros and daring-do but girls then were regarded more as dainty, fragile things best kept for marriage and being of use to boys and men.
It was interesting that this comic taking some inspiration from what Women contributed during World war Two when the menfolk were on the frontline helping the War, effort showed a woman at the helm of an important role.
Girls can be aviators too!

Secrets

To say Enid Blyton wasn't an influence on me would be to miss something that overlapped the other big thing in my life boarding school life as I read one while at the other and a good number of her novels I read were about communities of children in boarding school like me, living in the country or as this series starts with children running way from uncaring and abusive even by the standards of the time adults who were responsible for them, making a new life with amazing resourcefulness.

 I did eventually get the Secret Island in hardback which isn't really an adventure book in the way all the others are but more an account of their lives giving you the background to the adventures to unfold as we learn about Jack, Peggy, Mike and Nora.

The Secret of Spiggy Holes is the first adventure proper  introducing us to important people such as Prince Paul.
As with the first one it took ages to find a serviceable hardback and like the other, it didn't come with the full colour dust jacket although the images in both are replicated as frontalis so it's just an irritant not to have the actual jacket.

This is a more modern edition, the 1991 omnibus published by Mulberry of the last three novels, the Secret Mountain, Secret of Killimooin and Secret of Moon Castle being held captive in the Secret Moutain, travelling the the Killimooin Forrest where they feel a ferocious band of robbers  hangs out and exploring Moon Castle looking for ghosts at the end of night.

When things go wrong adults take over..

The warm up before the serious action

 Strapping tends not to be mentioned so much as the slipper or the cane but is keenly felt.

Stopping the pouting

When I'm being like that, I need my knickers taking down and the surgical application of the cane to put a stop to it.

In a stew

Sometimes I get in an almighty strop shouting and pouting away for ages were no amount of words will actually stop it and why this life includes measures that bypass the funk I'm in to ensure I stop there and then