Could you live on the Secret Island?

[Courtenay]

Hang on, though — which John is the lady tripper in love with? We've got John Pickup, John Lucky Star and John Boatbuilder...

[Anita Bensoussane]

Hilarious, Pete!

[Boatbuilder]

Hang on, though — which John is the lady tripper in love with? We've got John Pickup, John Lucky Star and John Boatbuilder...

I guess she fancied a 'pick-up' Courtenay.

[John Pickup]

Of course it's me, I'm irresistible. Can't go out the house nowadays without women swooning. The hideous, odious brute part is Pete's mistake, he meant to say handsome, muscular hunk.

[pete9012S]

Ha ha John - confusing an irresistible Enid Blyton enthusiast with good taste and humour like yourself with a hideous, odious brute is easily done!


Going rowing on a choppy, stormy lake? Take one of these!

Not to go off topic with historical titbits etc, but interestingly:

HMV gramophone models of the late 1920s/early 1930s type pictured here added a further dimension to musical appreciation. In its own compact suitcase — with space for record storage in the lid — it was portable and relatively easy to shift around the home, or to other locations. As such, it was an early form of recorded music on the move.

Then again, not many people could afford it. This model’s cost of about £7 (£350 in today’s money) amounted to three and a half times the weekly wage of the day — a little under £2 — for those lucky enough to have a job, as the 1930s depression set in.

The trippers in the 1938 Secret Island story must have been fairly well heeled.

The trippers certainly made the most of their gramophone:

Jack suddenly
stopped, sat up very straight, and stared fixedly down the blue, sparkling lake.
The others sat up and stared, too. And what they saw gave them a dreadful
shock!
“Some people in a boat!” said Jack. “Do you see them? Away down there!”
“Yes,” said Mike, going pale. “Are they after us, do you think?”
“No,” said Jack, after a while. “I think I can hear a gramophone—and if it
was anyone after us they surely wouldn’t bring that! They are probably just
trippers, from the village at the other end of the lake.”

The played the gramophone on their way to the island.

“Oh, put on the gramophone, Eddie,” said someone. “I’m tired of hearing
you talk so much.”
Soon the gramophone blared through the air, and the children were glad,
for they knew it would drown any sound of Daisy’s mooing or the hens’
clucking.

They played it when they got there.

“Do you want us to be discovered just when everything is going so nicely?”
The trippers were getting into their boat. They pushed off. The children
heard the sound of oars, and peeped out. They could see the boat, far down
below, being rowed out on to the lake. A big wind sprang up and ruffled the
water. The boat rocked to and fro.
“Hurry!” cried a woman’s voice. “We shall get caught in the storm. Oh!
Oh! There’s one of those horrid bats again! I’ll never come to this nasty island
any more!”
“I jolly well hope you won’t!” said Jack, pretending to wave good-bye.
The children watched the boat being rowed down the lake. The voices of
the people came more and more faintly on the breeze. The last they heard was
the gramophone being played once again. Then they saw and heard no more.
The trippers were gone.

Seems unusual to play it on a choppy, stormy lake on their departure, but that's trippers for you.
Would the needle have skipped about a bit on a heaving rowing boat?

[pete9012S]

[Courtenay]

I've just found a gramophone record the "trippers" might have brought with them for appropriate romantic island vibes: An Island Sheiling Song from Songs of the Hebrides, sung by tenor Joseph Hislop, recorded in London in 1933. (Not played on one of those nifty portable gramophones in this instance, but it almost certainly could have been.)

[Jack400]

I seem to have, admittedly rather distant, memories of record players (not the windup type) being marketed as able to be played on a boat. I imagine in very calm waters- like a harbour, or river? Trades description acts in the 1970s were not like they, hopefully are now.

[Courtenay]

Now I'm remembering how the Adventurous Four had a gramophone on board their boat and their records got broken during a storm, all except for the one no-one liked, with the annoying "Hush! Hush! Hush!" lullaby — but that came in useful later...