Posted by Elizabeth on October 25, 2006 at 05:07:26 from 71.236.185.241 user Elizabeth.
In Reply to: Re: All Things Ransome - out of date images posted by PeterH on October 23, 2006 at 11:10:19:
Peter H.--
I am one of those people from overseas who grew up reading the books. I consider myself extremely lucky, because 1) I stumbled on the books as a child, and thus have already had many happy years reading & re-reading them, 2) I have a good imagination & love to "live" inside the books I read, thus I "am" each of the characters at different times (Thank-you, AR, for your incredibly life-like writing!), and 3) I have traveled to several of the wonderful areas so ably brought to life in the books. What I remember about reading them as a child was that there were so many things that were simply different than the way we lived--some related to the time setting & some to the English country setting. During my trips to the Lakes District, the Broads, & the Naze, in between happily discovering so many beloved sites in real life, I found that although time has certainly changed some of what I read, there are still many differences in my daily life & that of a resident of Coniston, Salisbury, and other small-town places in England. AR doesn't talk of the overall size of England, but there is plenty of mention of characters riding trains from "the south" to get to Coniston in one day, or from Coniston to the Naze, etc. Where I live, I can get approximately 1/5 of the way across my country in one day--including the night! There is a quaintness to England, even today, that we simply don't have in many places in the US. Also a depth of age--shown in architecture, obviously, and in deep traditions which have been passed down so much longer than any of us European implants have resided on this continent. You can see I could go on and on. I will spare the poor TarBoarders the rest of my verbosity--you may e-mail me directly if you'd like to "talk" about this more. Elizabeth @ erjolley@aol.com