The Island Of Adventure - some thoughts

[Ming]

Philip and Dinah have a very tempestuous brother / sister relationship in general. They are always fighting and arguing.

I can certainly relate to that!

Seriously, though, a reactive brother/sister relationship sometimes makes them much closer. I felt Philip and Dinah were much closer to one another than Jack and Lucy-Ann - despite Jack being devoted to her, he wouldn't really spend much time with Lucy-Ann, or just talk to her whenever she wanted to. The Mannerings seemed to display the bond more, in my opinion.

[Dick Kirrin]

You normally only tease up or quarrel with someone who is somehow important to you. Why waste time on people you don't care a monkey's for?
So I'm definitely with you here, Ming.
Besides, without knowing the adventure series too well, in the other series there is quarrelling, too. Maybe it doesn't come to blows, but if we take old Ju in "FF go off on a hike together" serious, he thinks he could exclude George from any further activities. That's a threat for sure. In addition, may I point out the quarrell in "Five go off to camp"? Total rejection for some time on both sides.
Just because Anne "needs", in his opinion, a babysitter, Julian forbids George to come along to the old railway yard. George of course objects, and things boil up.

As this is a thread about the "Island of Adventure", I won't get into it any deeper.

Cheers

Dick Kirrin

[70s-child]

Holiday coaching - as both Jack and Phillip's folks/guardians etc are 'poor' how come this was seen as so vital? So what, they'd fallen behind, the funds surely weren't really there for this? School fees alone we are told are a struggle. So what if they had to repeat a term? Would a normal boy and girl living in a terraced house (Jack and Lucy Ann) not be at a state school? Or did their father leave money for school fees? Shouldn't Jack and Phillip be working harder in order to not let families down when they were making such a financial sacrifice etc? They are supposed to be fine, upstanding boys after all.

Don't know much about British society, but status sometimes plays a role here. Often high status or upwardly mobile families, even if they are not well-off, will make a lot of sacrifices to give their children the best education. If expensive private schools were the only way of getting a good education in those days, then that's where their children would likely have gone. In any case I think these children would have been phenomenally rich before the end of their adventures. Apart from all the reward money they must have got, they also get some priceless antiques from the Govt. of Greece (Ship of Adventure). That alone would have made them millionaires several times over.

Interesting to read your reply and I hadn't realised that Enid was newly married to Kenneth. Yes, I can see how she might have been influenced in that her feelings for Kenneth would have spilled into her characterisation of Bill. If me and there was a Daniel Craig type in the hotel then first flush of love or not I might have 'taken a shine to him' also

Sean Connery might be a better fit, right down to the bald head.

I always wondered what a person who studies old papers is called! What is that something-o-logist? (The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage).

In Rilloby Fair Mystery, Diana Lynton says such people are called "antiquarians" (though Snubby thinks that means "anti-aquarium" ).

[Yak]

Given that grammar schools abounded in those days I am sure that both Jack and Lucy-Ann could have got a better education in the state system than they could nowadays

Yeah the holiday coaching must have been pricy tho ... and fair point about the boys 'letting their families down' by not knuckling down and doing some work.

And were Lucy Ann's guardians paying for her to be there too??

[70s-child]

Would a normal boy and girl living in a terraced house (Jack and Lucy Ann) not be at a state school?

Not being familiar with the term, I looked up "terraced house" in wikipedia (an admittedly unreliable source!), and found that terraced homes are the same as what is called a row house here in the US. Now I am intrigued. Row homes in the US are typically seen in big cities or in the immediate suburbs of big cities, and thanks to this factor, they can be really expensive. Row homes in Brooklyn for instance go for over $600,000, while in Manhattan you need to be a fat-cat executive to be able to afford a decent row house in a decent neighborhood. So I take it from Belly's quote that terraced houses in Britain are not highly sought after dwellings? Otherwise, I wouldn't be surprised that Jack and Lucy Ann can afford boarding school. If they lived in row-homes, their families would be reasonably well-off. While row homes in tough neighborhoods would be cheaper, I somehow don't envisage these kids as having grown up in that kind of neighborhood.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Terraced houses, usually brick-built with a garden at the back and sometimes a small patch of garden at the front too, are found in most towns in Britain, not just big cities. They tend to be considerably cheaper than detached or semi-detached houses in the same area. We live in a two-bedroom terrace - we wouldn't have been able to afford a mortgage on a two-bedroom detached or semi-detached house of a similar size.

[Moonraker]

Terraced houses tend to be considerably cheaper than detached or semi-detached houses in the same area.

Unless they are in the Royal Crescent, Bath!

[Wayne Pyer]

I always assumed that in their parents wills, that their education was financed.

[70s-child]

Terraced houses, usually brick-built with a garden at the back and sometimes a small patch of garden at the front too, are found in most towns in Britain, not just big cities. They tend to be considerably cheaper than detached or semi-detached houses in the same area. We live in a two-bedroom terrace - we wouldn't have been able to afford a mortgage on a two-bedroom detached or semi-detached house of a similar size.

Interesting. In the US, as long as you are not very close to a big city, home prices, including for some really huge homes, are fairly reasonable. It helps too if you are as far away from Manhattan (and LA) as possible. That's the most expensive piece of real estate in the country. I wouldn't mind a nice row house on the upper west side of New York. Sadly I also don't have a few million dollars in the bank!

Coming back to why these kids went to boarding schools, is it possible that if the state schools of a particular neighborhood are not good quality then parents have to get their kids privately schooled? That happens here in the States. I have friends who are solidly middle-class, who send their kids to private school because they don't live in a good school district (and there are good reasons why they can't move to another town/state, which is what most people do). It's not easy since a good chunk of their monthly budget goes into paying tuition, but they don't have much choice.

Unless they are in the Royal Crescent, Bath!

That's so beautiful! Oh well Lucy Ann and Jack clearly didn't live there!

[Catbury]

I was wondering, isn't it more racist to make Joe (Jo-Jo) white than letting him remain black? I mean, there are loads of white villains in the Adventure series and in all series; in fact, I don't remember another black one offhand, even in The River of Adventure, the real baddie is white. So there is a villain who happens to be black, why is that automatically racist? Okay, is it pointed out here that he is black, but it was probably a mere way to describe him. In one of the Findouters books, the thief has two different coloured eyes; surely that's a discrimination for all people who have different coloured eyes? In Five on a Hike one villain is a woman; as a woman, I consider this a discrimination and demand she is changed into a man. And so on.

[Moonraker]

I was wondering, isn't it more racist to make Joe (Jo-Jo) white than letting him remain black?

Of course it is, and I welcome your common sense. We will only have conquered racism when we don't notice the colour of someone's skin. Who knows, one day racism might extend to people of different planets! That'd be fun!

[Lucky Star]

Who knows, one day racism might extend to people of different planets! That'd be fun!

In the book Star Wars (the original one) Luke Skywalker is accused of being "Specieist".

[Moonraker]

I was thinking of the café scene when I wrote that!

[pete9012S]

I was thinking of the café scene when I wrote that!

This One?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ-H91fnD4k

Think many of us may have been in bars like that!