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Enid Blyton

A POEM FOR MY GRANDDAUGHTER

I became 12 at the end of ’53.

That year we had bought our first TV

(with a 9 inch screen) to watch the Queen

being crowned. Just in time for the crowning

the British – with some help – had ‘conquered’

Everest. That September I had started

at the grammar school which had been founded

by Henry VIII after he had robbed

the local monastery. The masters

were begowned, the corridors stone-lined, dark.


Placing the sides of our blue and green striped caps

equidistant from our ears – as per

the British obsession with school uniform –

we would take the short walk through the city

to a Georgian building that had been

a charity school. There we had science

and ‘dinners’. Next door was a brewery.

As we lit the Bunsen burners, and ate

the grisly meat and semolina,

we could smell the pungent brewing of hops.

We were forbidden to eat in the street.


At some point I had lost my sense of humour,

had forsaken The Beano and The Dandy –

with their roll-calls of impromptu anarchists,

like Dennis the Menace and Korky the Cat –

for The Eagle, and its square-jawed, upper class,

Scottish space hero, Colonel Dan Dare,

and his fat batman, Digby, who came from Yorkshire.


That summer I had read Enid Blyton’s,

‘The Famous Five Have A Wonderful Time’,

knowing that it would probably be

the last time I read such a book, that

my childhood was ending, and being grown up

was approaching – sometimes like a huge iceberg,

sometimes like an imminent, hoped-for

landfall on a fragrant coast that was just

over the horizon.

MIRAGE

On Little Eye, a family appears trapped
by the incoming tide – two adults,
a boy, a girl and a dog marooned
in some Enid Blyton adventure.
We anticipate an RNLI
Atlantic hoving to the rescue.
But they wait in the sun for the ebb,
the dog barking at black headed gulls.

By a sandstone outcrop are high, thick bushes
with vivid orange berries – ‘Poisonous!’
we hear our childhood’s guardians call.
But a woman is gathering them –
Sea-buckthorn berries – nutritional,
medicinal throughout Eurasia.

And I remember my first outing
after a heart attack – to the North Shore,
Llandudno – a picnic in a shelter
by the paddling pool and an October sun
making me thankful. ‘We had salami
sandwiches,’ I say. ‘As if!’ you respond.

Here, at sea level on West Kirby’s beach,
people, at the sea’s edge, seem to walk
in the waves, on the horizon itself.
From the top of the dunes, they become
cormorants drying their wings on the sand.