We drove past Coniston Water today. The lake looked a bit grim before the sun shone and no one was picnicking or splashing in the water. At this time of year there are an assortment of visitors: parents of babies and young children; couples whose children have grown up; the elderly who want a peaceful Lakeland experience. In the school holidays, at the height of summer, it is not peaceful at Coniston Water; the lake surface is littered with boats and canoes and kayaks, and on the shore excited children shout and scream.
What would the Swallows and Amazons have made of it? I expect those children of the 1930s would have been bewildered to see so many people, and disgruntled at not having the place to themselves. Camping on Wild Cat Island would have meant sharing it with strangers, and boat races would have been almost impossible with so many craft on the water. I guess that they would have been annoyed, but of course the Swallows and Amazon children were rather priggish and silly – well, to me anyway. I came across the Arthur Ransome books when I was about 10, so I may already have been too old to appreciate them – but on the other hand they may just not have been my cup of Typhoo. I didn’t like the way those children pretended to be pirates and adventurers. I did not want make-believe children to play at make-believe; I wanted my stories to be authentically unreal!
I was much more interested in the fantastical adventures of the Famous Five. George and Timmy and Dick and Julian and Anne had a rollicking good time and still managed to catch baddies single handed, find caves full of boxes of treasure, save kidnapped children, own islands. When I opened a Famous Five book I knew I was going to be transported to a world of the imagination, one that was very different from mine, one where play-acting and pretending were not on the agenda but wicked scientists and secret passages were.
I hope that the children’s book I am writing will convince its readers. But that’s a hard task – and I’m not Enid Blyton.
