Did it feel like it was set in the past on first reading?

[dsr]

Incidentally, according to a Norwegian tour guide when we were there a few years back, it is still normal for children aged 14 who live out in the sticks, to be sent away to school at 14 if they want to continue their education. Not sent to a boarding school or a school house, but to a bed sitter or other rented accommodation. They get to learn independence very quickly indeed.

Many Norwegian villages are 50 or 60 miles from the nearest big town and big school.

[Katharine]

That's interesting - I wouldn't be surprised if it also happened perhaps here at one time.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Interesting stuff, Dsr.

I remember reading in the last week or two that Frankie Dettori was saying (while on the latest series of I'm A Celebrity) how he was sent across here alone aged 14 - six months here, six months France - to pursue his dream of being a jockey, and he lived in a B & B without being able to speak any English at first! He said he cried most nights for the first few months due to homesickness.
So maybe they took them at a certain age? I can't remember how old the children were in Holiday House? I only read it for the first ever time in the last year or two so it's not one of the books I know well.

Frankie Dettori obviously went through a tough time. I've just looked up his age and he's 52, so he'd have been alone in that B&B in 1985. I'm surprised people could start training as a jockey as young as fourteen back then. The minimum age to begin training is sixteen now.

Regarding the ages of the children in Holiday House, twins Pat and Mary are ten or eleven (they're described as "almost three years older" than Ruth, the owner's daughter, who is eight). There's another child of eight called John who leaves soon after the twins arrive, and a "very big boy" of fifteen, "Gloomy Graham", who is studying for an exam. There's also a small girl named Maureen and a baby, but they're there with their nurse.

[Barnard]

People could become jockeys at a young age in the middle of the 20th century.
Lester Piggott rode his first winner at the age of 12 in 1948.

[Anita Bensoussane]

It doesn't surprise me that that was happening in the 1940s, but by the mid 1980s I thought most children were at school until the age of sixteen (or almost sixteen, if their birthday fell at the end of July or in August).

[Katharine]

I would have thought there should have been rules in place regarding education, work hours etc even in the 1980s. I think I've read articles about child actors who have to have so many hours of tuition per day alongside their time on stage/in front of a camera.

I recently read 'Ballet Shoes' and even back in the 1930s there were rules about balancing education with work.

I would have thought something as high profile as being a jockey would have been well regulated - or maybe there was some kind of loophole which made it exempt?

[Bertie]

I'm not really too sure about how it all worked regarding Frankie Dettori.
I've Googled one or two newspaper articles about him talking about it, and he does say similar things in each: that he wanted to be a jockey, so with his father's help he arrived here aged 14, not being able to speak English, and stayed in a B&B and got up really early to go to work at the stables each morning. It also says he won his first race aged 15, but whether that was an official race, or if he had to be older to ride in those, I'm not sure.

[IceMaiden]

I've thought of one thing that's always seemed odd - parents being happy to send their children away to school and not see them for weeks on end! Give how quick children grow and how fast time goes by you'd think they would want to spend every possible second with their kids while they still are kids. I can't imagine having been sent away to school and not seeing my mum and dad for huge chunks of the year. You would both miss out on so much and lose time and memories you could never get back.

[Moonraker]

I've thought of one thing that's always seemed odd - parents being happy to send their children away to school and not see them for weeks on end!

And then, as soon as the children break up, the parents swan off on their own on holiday - a lá Blyton families!

[GloomyGraham]

Certainly from about the age of ten, my sister & I were usually 'home alone' most school holidays as both my parents were working. Summer/Xmas holidays were a bit different as they would get time off and we would often go away (usually just for a long weekend) somewhere.

That's the main difference between the UK & Australia I guess. In the UK you might need to go away for a week to enjoy time at the seaside, but In Australia kids can catch a bus or train and go to the beach every day if they want.

[Courtenay]

That's the main difference between the UK & Australia I guess. In the UK you might need to go away for a week to enjoy time at the seaside, but In Australia kids can catch a bus or train and go to the beach every day if they want.

Or walk down every day, if they grew up in a seaside town like I did.

Mind you, I would think on average, Brits and Aussies tend to live about the same distance from the sea. In the UK, not many people are more than an hour's drive or so from the coast. In Australia, one can live a LOT further from the sea, but most of us (I think it's close to 80% of the population) live on or near the coast. I'd say it's just that Australia tends to have more sunny weather and — just preparing to run and hide myself away here — better beaches.

(No, to be fair, there definitely are some fantastic ones in the UK too, particularly around Cornwall. But those utterly ghastly shingle "beaches" along most of the south-east coast — near where I lived for 9 years after I first moved to England — still practically give me waking nightmares even thinking about them. )

[Yak]

I've thought of one thing that's always seemed odd - parents being happy to send their children away to school and not see them for weeks on end!

And then, as soon as the children break up, the parents swan off on their own on holiday - a lá Blyton families!

LOL yes, I sometimes wonder if Julian, Ann and Dick ever actually saw their parents

[IceMaiden]

Not better beaches, better weather!! I live 10 minutes from the beach and could go everyday but it's just too cold to! There's only about three weeks of a year IF the sun has been blazing down endlessly for days when it's actually comfortable to venture into the sea. A few years ago my mum and I decided to catch the bus for a day out to the sea. We got off the bus, walked down to the beach and stopped. It was bitter cold, absolutely freezing, couldn't even stand on the beach as the wind was so unbearable. On a hot sunny mid July day. We went straight back to the bus stop and caught the first one home . We have some beautiful beaches but unfortunately most of the time we don't have the weather to go with them!

[dsr]

That's the main difference between the UK & Australia I guess. In the UK you might need to go away for a week to enjoy time at the seaside, but In Australia kids can catch a bus or train and go to the beach every day if they want.

Or walk down every day, if they grew up in a seaside town like I did.

Mind you, I would think on average, Brits and Aussies tend to live about the same distance from the sea. In the UK, not many people are more than an hour's drive or so from the coast. In Australia, one can live a LOT further from the sea, but most of us (I think it's close to 80% of the population) live on or near the coast. I'd say it's just that Australia tends to have more sunny weather and — just preparing to run and hide myself away here — better beaches.

(No, to be fair, there definitely are some fantastic ones in the UK too, particularly around Cornwall. But those utterly ghastly shingle "beaches" along most of the south-east coast — near where I lived for 9 years after I first moved to England — still practically give me waking nightmares even thinking about them. )

There are some fantastic beaches in the west and north of Scotland too. But not quite sunny enough for the beach holiday lovers!

[Morgan Jones]

Slightly off-topic, but here in the UK at the moment quite a few soapies/serials like EastEnders and Coronation Street are being re-run in the afternoons, showing episodes from about 20 years ago. For the most part, they don’t feel particularly dated except for some pop-culture/contemporary references and it’s easy to forget how old the episodes are - until a character gets a call on their mobile with a “tinny” electronic ringtone or a text message in capital letters on a Nokia phone!

I’m not sure if it’s an age thing (I was born in the 70s), but watching a TV show from the 60s in the 1980s felt like watching a relic from the distant past - not helped by the fact they were in black and white - whereas today, the 00s, and indeed the 90s, feels like yesterday.