The Find Outers

 Hallo there.

I've a bit of blocked up nose today so I'm doing some schoolwork complete in my full uniform today apart from some reading too.

That takes me to today's subject.

There are many types of stories written such as those centred on fantasy, romances, animals, adventures and so on but one genre I struggle with is the Detective Story usually because it requires  you use more short term memory while reading to piece together from the clues you're told, who really did it.

Fortunately I found a detective  mystery  series by Enid Blyton that were written for children from around nine years upward that I can follow reasonably well.

This series goes under the name the 'Find-outers' after the title the children who form a detective club called themselves dedicating themselves to solving mysteries and outwitting the local Police Constable, Mr. Goon who they christen 'Clear-orf' after what he shouts at them accusing them of meddling and otherwise interfering in the LAW.

The leader of the club is Frederick Algernon Trotteville  who is a boastful as well as cheeky outsider to the others in the village of Peterswood but is actually quite bright being good at languages and art at his boarding school. Because of his build he's called Fatty although he is quite physically fit playing school sports.

His deputy is Larry who is really called Laurence and they are joined by Daisy (his sister), Pip alias Peter, and Bets (Elizabeth) who is just 9 and the youngest of the group while Fatty has a dog called Buster who obeys Fatty's commands well.

Upon being formed they call themselves "Five find-outers and Dog".

Mr Goon is probably the most incompetent policeman ever to taken on investigating mysteries in their area and the children in the first story, "the Mystery of the Burnt Cottage", strike up a very good relationship with the Inspector of Goon's force much to the displeasure of Pc Goon, especially when the inspector realizes just how good the Find-outers really are solving the mystery Goon failed to do!

There are in total 15 stories in the series which were all  issued by Dean's in the Rewards series in 1990 with reprints from that edition keeping the typeset narrative intact through most of the 90's whereas current editions like most of Enid's output have been revised and rendered 'politically correct'.

Thankfully it's easy to find these editions but Deans also did something else, as with the Schools series Enid wrote, they did two omibus editions each having three stories from the first six published and the top one issued in 1992  is mine (it's a 1994 reprint).

This one (the second in the set) has 'Spiteful letters', 'Missing Necklace' and 'Hidden House' in it and was published in 1994 although my copy is the 1998 reprint and both keep original illustrations and text in them, making a great starter set you can get cheaply used.

I'm really enjoying reading this series, more than I thought I'd of been able to howling at how Fatty and the gang put Clear-orf off the scent as Fatty's boisterous wit as well as his genius with disguises.

They also are a period reminder of how life was in sleepy English villages back then before policing moved mainly to the town and your only contact with the police was in their distinctive 'Panda car' they came out to visit your patch in where at the time this was written your Policeman lived in a Policehouse in your village and he patrolled it.

So far I've picked Mystery of the Pantomime Cat, Mystery of the Invisible Thief and Mystery of the Banshee Towers to go with the omnibus editions.

Actions beget consequencies

It's bound to happen at some point.

You get through the day and often weeks at a stretch with things going more right than wrong and when they do go wrong it's more a lost opportunity that might well come around again should they have any real consequences for you.

Other things though do such as when I was putting the milk away having brought it on one cold morning to place it in our fridge when it falls out of my hand and hits the floor with that sickening crack followed by a splosh as a pint empties itself with speed.

It isn't just that the milk goes everywhere but so does the glass with fragments here and there plus is there enough milk now after you did this?

You have to remove all the milk, wiping everything down and sweep the broken glass to wrap up into newspaper.

Why did that happen? You weren't concentrating gurl were you?

Girl guide or not, there you go, over a knee as a grown up is going to give you the spanking you deserve to teach you a lesson so you'll never do it again.

Little sissy gurls like me need spankings to get the message over.

Jessops and HMV closures

I guess it had to happen really and was more question of when rather than if but the UK photography chain Jessops went into receivership as of January 9th brought about by an inability in the part of directors, creditors and suppliers to extend credit to this long established but ailing concern that goes back many decades.

It's my understanding some suppliers had during last year offered credit to them to enable their products to be sold as it was the #1 high street outlet for their goods.

Jessops was the first chain in the UK I established a relationship with as a consumer, a place where at the time you could get all manner of advice connected with photography, the virtues of different lenses, filters, film etc over the sales counter. 

My local branch would root out stuff for me to try instore without obligation. They also run a photography residential school with industry experts providing tuition.

Two things probably did for this type of retailing, the first being digital photography has  less repeat custom after buying a camera and maybe a spare memory card and for Dslr users an additional lens or two. You sure wouldn't be buying a new memory card each week in the way you bought film and although they'd invested in instore printing, a lot of casual users either print at home or don't even print their images so you wouldn't be getting much of an income stream from that!

 
As a traditional film slr user I saw reductions traditional products in stock to the point while on vacation I couldn't get medium speed print film and ended up visiting a well known drugstore that had better stocks off the shelf!

Also many users use smartphones as cameras leading to a drop in demand for digital compacts that come on contracts while professionals users would use online stores that held larger 'to go' supplies with rapid delivery 

Last week, he said trying desperately not to come over all smug, it's finally happened, music retailing has moved from the high street.  Poor ol' Nipper.

Well okay, I know that's Birmingham Bull Ring, not Broad Street, but you know what I mean -our town and city centres - with the shock announcement late last night (January 14th) the national music and video retailer HMV was planning on going into administration following poor Christmas sales.

Sounds familiar, eh? And rather like with Jessops they also were being bankrolled by the suppliers who provided much of the January 25% off "Blue Cross" sales stock as did two state owned banks who to put things with my usually matter of factness, want their money back.

Some other similarities include high rents, failure to capitalize on online sales, poor in store stocks (I mean just seven studio albums by the Stones in the branch in a large city branch near me???), uncompetitive online store pricing (Amazon often cheaper).

HMV potentially could of gotten into downloading but after a brief messy store attempt, partnered up with 7Digital who run that for them which would be fine except 7Digital are a big brand in their own right so most would of gone straight to them.

As much as I feel for for all the staff I'm expecting nearly all the branches to go simply because it seems to me you can't run a big chain anymore because of the overheads and also your immediate best sellers, new albums, are stocked by both supermarkets such as ASDA and Tesco cheaply and the likes of Amazon for those who want cds but many more  prefer to download and these can obtained cheaply from the big three Amazon, iTunes and 7Digital.

You can do niche cd selling from a small side street location with an internet presence backed by a warehouse.

Hmv failed also to capitalize on the "Vinyl revival" by stocking few new and re-issue titles that many who like a physical album buy which was the tipping point for me becoming fed  up of having to order run of the mill cd titles only to return later at my expense to collect, getting an account at Amazon  ordering from them. I guess I wasn't alone in that!

I get the nostalgia many are feeling, remembering the first time I visited HMV Oxford Street London and the Manchester store still having those records and the many BritPop vinyl  titles on 7" and 12" lp I bought new that are most collectible.

I just feel by years end the high street will be that much the poorer.

Repairing the past

The circles have been getting wider as I have been finding people who in some ways are more like adult children even if they do a few things different than I do.

For instance some are very much into things such as wearing school uniforms as part of being that child back in that time whither or not it is a uniform from the same period  they were originally at school or a more recent one as uniforms have changed a fair bit since I formally left school in the early 1980's.

We were still in a fairly rigid girls must wear skirts and dresses era even if many female employees could wear trousers and that did include some teachers.

For some, being that school child is getting back to their school days but trust me I never left mine simply because I just Never Grew Up.

The point about me being in school uniform is really to put me back to where my development stopped and where I can have a second chance to polish up and become a mature school gurl learning how to do things better and restore the buffers between the adult world and me,

The schoolboy me then only had occasional opportunities to express the more feminine side because of the attitudes of the time and so putting me in skirts is more a reparative therapy to let the feminine boy side of that era out and embrace my whole identity.

Trains with a bushy tail!

Phew it's a cold start to the year outside!

 It may be new year but we're going backwards!

That there steam choo choo - Met Locomotive No. 1 - was a weekend visitor to London's subway systems ("The Underground") 150th anniversary on the Metropolitan and Circle line. Just imagine the smell and sound of all that steam and the regulars might even why me of all people just puts up for the first time ever a picture of a train?

While many gurls like me shock love trains especially the steam powered sort probably keying into stories around getting to girls and boys boarding schools and that marvellous 1970 film adaption of The Railway Children, for me trains are a darker thing routed in childhood issues.

Consequently talking trains to me is something I'm ill at ease with not that's your fault or anything just the demons running around my head but we're getting somewhere as I was able to view footage of of this weekends event without wanting to hide or run off.

I even thought having that train running was a really nice idea!

Some of us may remember seeing something with a bright bushy tail when we were younger and also some of us have seen the 'real' thing.

Boom! Boom! Yes it's Basil Brush the anthropomorphic red fox star his own BBC TV show starting in 1968 though 1980 and in a slightly different form from 2002 through 2007.

A somewhat mischievous sly creature he was really funny taking the mickey out of his fellow characters in the series with some measure of his popularity being how many times he was referenced in other British tv shows. Whenever he was on tv I couldn't stay still!!!