The Enid Blyton Society

MJE wrote:     Do the showers have gold-plated taps? I wonder if they serve lobster and 1,000-dollar bottles of champagne at every meal.
     It does sound a bit like that kind of thing.
Michael.

Hi Michael,

I never threw out the brochures from AAA for the Rocky Mountaineer train ride (hoping if we would ever win the lottery, we could still do this trip), so I need to find it. Then I can check if the showers have gold-plated taps .

Moonraker wrote:

Chrissie777 wrote:...some of the FFO books are very funny, especially the one with Fatty's jogging along the river to get rid of Eulalia (maybe in the English version her name is different).

What a lovely name,. much nicer than Eunice!

Thanks, Nigel, I keep forgetting that her English name is Eunice which always makes me think of Eunice Kennedy .

MJE wrote:     Do the showers have gold-plated taps? I wonder if they serve lobster and 1,000-dollar bottles of champagne at every meal.
     It does sound a bit like that kind of thing.

I think they charge you for all the beautiful scenery you will be treated to while travelling on the train. It is daylight robbery of course considering the scenery has been provided free of cost by nature.

I don't know what the Rocky Mountaineer's speed and facilities are like, but the Amtrak is super-slow and super-lousy when it comes to service (unless you are willing to pay through your nose for the Acela). I remember a news item in the Washington Post once on a train in India that apparently broke down or something. I believe the passengers helped push the train to get it started again (don't ask!). The accompanying photo in this news item was of the Amtrak and caption read "Maybe this will help the Amtrak go faster".

70s-child wrote:I think they charge you for all the beautiful scenery you will be treated to while travelling on the train. It is daylight robbery of course considering the scenery has been provided free of cost by nature.

     Well, maybe. But how do you decide what the value of a service is, anyway? According to capitalism, the system unquestioningly accepted by most Western nations, the value of something is nothing more or less than what people (on average) are willing to pay for it. Evidently enough people are willing to pay this for the train service to continue at a level the operators are satisfied with.

Regards, Michael.

Problem is they are not typically profitable. The Amtrak is making huge losses for instance, and I would be surprised if the Rocky Mountaineer is breaking even. The thing is, in North America, most people prefer traveling by car or by air. So trains typically end up making losses, and then the management tries to minimize the losses by ramping up ticket prices, which of course doesn't work either!

70s-child wrote:Problem is they are not typically profitable. The Amtrak is making huge losses for instance, and I would be surprised if the Rocky Mountaineer is breaking even.

     In that case, I suppose its future will be limited, and that will show that (according to the principles of capitalism) the service is *not* worth that much, after all. (I'm not saying that I fully agree with the principles or philosophy of capitalism, or that I may not favour other possible systems - just that capitalism *is* the system by which things of this sort are organized in many countries.)

70s-child wrote:The thing is, in North America, most people prefer traveling by car or by air.

     Got to admit I feel the same way now - and I suspect lots of Australians feel similarly - I think we're almost as much a car culture here as the U.S. is; I don't know what the situation is in other countries such as the U.K.
     As I said before, I was once very keen on trains - I even sometimes took the overnight train to Adelaide or Sydney and then came back the next night, purely because I wanted the train ride! You probably can't get much more fanatical than that.
     But, as I also said before, trains in Australia have changed now, and the things I liked most about them have gone or changed, and I'm not much attracted to the idea now, and my ideal way of a holiday would be to drive a car, and just feel free to wander round exploring this or that district as the fancy took me, and stay in motels along the way, and not having everything too tightly scheduled ahead of me. And if you fly or go by train on a holiday, you do have the problem of transport at the other end: you either use sometimes inadequate or inconvenient public transport, or you have to expensively rent a car. If you are in your own country and can conveniently take your own car from the start, that seems the best solution to me. If you are going overseas, then air is the only solution, plus renting a car at the other end.

70s-child wrote:So trains typically end up making losses, and then the management tries to minimize the losses by ramping up ticket prices, which of course doesn't work either!

     Sounds like the wrong approach to me. If they're ripping people off, they should perhaps just be less greedy and charge a more reasonable price; or if the service they are providing genuinely does cost that much to provide, and their profit margin is reasonable, maybe the answer is to try to find ways of reducing the cost of the service in ways that customers will find acceptable, in return for paying a lower fare. Rather than just guess that, maybe do market research, or surveys, and the like.
     (Rocky Mountaineer management, if you want me to consult for you, I'm here!)

Regards, Michael.

Apologies if this has been discussed before... I've looked and couldn't see any topic that covered this exact thing. And I hope it's not too cheeky of me to start a new topic as a newcomer...

No problems at all, Rose. I've merged your topic with an older one, but it's an interesting subject and it's nice to see more discussion on it. - Anita

So, a simple question really... What is it that draws you to Enid Blyton and her books?

For me it's the characters. It's always the characters that draw me to a book; if it has well-drawn characters I can forgive poor plotting and bad writing (not that Enid Blyton suffers frequently from these flaws!). I love the way she can draw a character in a few words and you immediately can imagine that person being real. Even though she isn't big on description, either of physical or other traits, somehow she can convey the impression of a person incredibly strongly. I love it!

Both the characters and locations draw me to Enid Blyton's books. There are some amazing creations in Blyton's writing: worlds of impossible made possible, worlds of villains, baddies and mystery and worlds of adventure. Wherever you are, you are there in the world that Blyton creates for you - and the characters are your friends. But perhaps the best thing about Enid's writing is the warmth in the text. I always feel welcome in Blyton-books and comfortable. With other books, I pick them up, uncertain about their content, but when picking up an Enid Blyton book, I have a lot of confidence in the enjoyment enclosed inside.

However grim the prospect, however bleak the outlook, you can read on, safe in the knowledge that all will end well. There will be nothing to embarrass, no bad language or any post-watershed shenanigans. Just a dashed good read. I found her in 1955 and have seen no reason to let her go.

That's a good question. I don't know that I have a specific answer. I first read Enid Blyton books because they were in the house, my mother had some from her childhood, and then people bought them for me. There were a few other authors in the house too, but I never felt the desire to read any more of their books. There must have been something about the style of Enid Blyton's books that appealed to me.

I is probably a mixture of things. Thrilling story lines, believable characters, great locations. I think she has a knack of painting a great picture of a scene in just a few simple lines, some other authors get bogged down with too many technical details. I also agree that on the whole her stories have a nice 'safe' feel to them.

The storylines and the characters for me. Blyton really has a way of making you care about her characters and what happens to them and that keeps you hooked till the end. The way that she is able to "paint" a scene with her words also feature heavily in that one can virtually see the action, the settings and the characters. Reading a Blyton book is an all round feast for the senses.

The storylines for me. I loved the castles, the secret passages, adventures in the night and the children of every series outwitting the crooks. Enid's books were just great to read in bed before you went to sleep and something to look forward to when you woke in the morning.

The plots and the storylines for me. Julie has said that Enid Blyton books 'flow well' and I agree with her wholeheartedly.

Well, number one, the food descriptions! Yum! They make one feel hungry!
Number two, I think it is the way the children's thoughts seem to agree with our own.
Number three, her easy-worded and yet beautiful style of writing is lovely! The 'brown streams', the 'rabbits bounding about' are described very well, and make one imagine those things.
Number four, the number of stories she wrote is amazing! I mean, writing 700 or more splendid stories is not an ordinary thing!
And of course, the stories themselves are simply amazing! Three cheers for Enid Blyton!

I think another thing in her favour is that she wrote so many different types of books. I prefer some more than others. It amazes me when someone says that they don't like Enid Blyton books. I really ought to ask them which ones they have read. Personally I'm not keen on Brer Rabbit, and I know some people don't particularly like Noddy, and possibly the school stories aren't as popular with male readers, but there are so many others to choose from, surely there must be something for everyone?