To put away childish things #0

There is a question that has been asked at wordcraft about whether Enid Blyton has ever been a popular author in the United States. The answer appears to be "Enid who?", and, bearing in mind that we have children's librarians among the membership, this is quite interesting. It doesn't actually surprise me all that much as even many of the British find them unrealistically twee, portraying, as they do, a life of upper-middle class jolliness, ginger beer and cake, and impossibly polite children. They are not popular nowadays because they are almost impossible for children to relate to. It's easier to believe in Hogwarts than it is to believe in the eternal summer of Enid Blyton.

That's not the point of this post though. The point of this post is to introduce a new series of posts in which I want to wallow unashamedly in nostalgia. I want to recall some of the childish things that have long since been put away - Enid Blyton, the Doctor Syn novels of Richard Thorndyke, Etch-a-sketch, the Rubiks Cube, Airfix, the John Bull printing set : all of the hundreds of things that were important when I was five, or six, or nine but that I haven't considered much for years. The things locked in the attic of my mind.

And we''' start with...