Getting back into my routine. Children’s books.

Back home after a few days away I have taken step one towards getting back into my routine by getting up and running round the village at a reasonable hour. It’s less cold than it has been. I had been putting on an extra layer to keep out the cold but today I was back to a running vest with a light weight waterproof on top. 

There didn’t seem to be many people out and about. There was a man I quite often see with bis blind and deaf dog. The dog wanders along following its nose, which seems to work quite well. 

We’re expecting the family round for dinner later. I suspect my daughter might have preferred to stay home and get herself prepared for going back to work in her school tomorrow. After all we’ve been away together for the last few days. However, her eldest daughter is feeling a little abandoned. Her housemate has gone off with her family on a visit to their extended family in Friesland. We are not permitted to say the Netherlands or the friend’s father gets very upset and Friesland-patriotic. It’s a little like saying that the people of Galicia are Spanish! Anyway, Granddaughter Number One has been on her own for the last few days and would appreciate having a family gathering here. So I have baked a cake and will come up with some other kind of food. 

While I was at my son’s house I had a look at his small daughter’s bookshelf, reminding myself of the collection of books we used to read when he was equally small. There’s quite a lot of Enid Blyton, whose works for a while were pooh-poohed in some quarters. And yet her stories continue to enchant young children. The works of Roald Dahl are there too. Now, according to this article, latest editions of his works have been “rewritten”,  getting rid of language which is deemed to be offensive. For example, changes have been made to descriptions of characters’ physical appearances. The word “fat” has been cut from every new edition of relevant books, while the word “ugly” has also been culled. And so Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is now described as “enormous”, and in The Twits, Mrs Twit is no longer “ugly and beastly” but just “beastly”

I wonder what the original writer would feel about others tinkering with his work. This description of part of bis childhood suggests he was not an angel by any means:

“Dahl first attended The Cathedral School Llandaff. At age eight, he and four of his friends were caned by the headmaster after putting a dead mouse in a jar of gobstoppers of at the local sweet shop, which was owned by a "mean and loathsome" old woman named Mrs Pratchett. The five boys named their prank the "Great Mouse Plot of 1924". Mrs Pratchett inspired Dahl's creation of the cruel headmistress Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, and a prank, this time in a water jug belonging to Trunchbull, would also appear in the book. Gobstoppers were a favourite sweet among British schoolboys between the two World Wars, and Dahl referred to them in his fictional Everlasting Gobstopper which was featured in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

And in my experience children delight in the exaggeration of the descriptions. Surely what parents, and grandparents, need to do is talk to children about all this and make them see that stories are one thing and real life is another. We can teach them to be kind!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!