I learned two things upon arriving in the UK many moons ago. First, the name Enid was pronounced ‘EEnid’ and not ‘EHnid’ as I had been pronouncing it ever since I begun reading
Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books. The other was that ginger beer, always a mystery to my young mind, i.e. how could children be allowed to drink beer, was no different from tangawizi soda.

When growing I really loved the Famous Five Series. I was captivated by the fantastic tales of extraordinary dog, Timmy, brothers Julian and Dick, younger sister Anne and cousin Georgina, known as George and who was a tomboy. Although I had a mild crush on Julian, I think I loved George the most – she was just so daring, tough and not scared of anyone – just what a typical 9 year old like me wanted to be like. The Famous Five adventures were always the same and revolved around the children tackling a gang of hapless criminals (smugglers, kidnappers, etc) during the school holidays. The fact that the villains were always swarthy and that Anne always did the washing-up led to accusations of racism and sexism decades after the books had been written.

And of course, no story was complete without lashings and lashings of ginger beer and exclamations of ‘gosh!’ and ‘golly!’

It is all change now and the Famous Five have received a makeover. A new series has been written which consists of George’s daughter, Joyti, who is Anglo-Indian (ha, who’d have thought George would end up married), Max, Julian’s son, Allie, who is Californian (??) and Anne’s daughter and Dylan the son of Dick. And Timmy, of course but no more ginger beer, apparently, the ginger beer and the cream buns from the tuck shop have been replaced by replaced by mobile phones, laptops, iPods and pizza.

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