Re: The Missionaries


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Posted by Laurence Monkhouse on February 28, 2008 at 18:09:07 from 82.27.30.202 user Laurence_.

In Reply to: Re: The Missionaries posted by John Lambert on February 28, 2008 at 08:30:41:

The polite meal with the missionaries, no doubt with pork pies a plenty and loads of ginger beer, helps to frame the danger and savagery lurking beneath the surface.

somehow eels slithering around in mud doesn't have the same feeling as bucketing over that lake in the north

1. Go back to the text. "It was a very pleasant tea party of the most sedate kind...the he-missionary sat on the companion steps to pass up cups of tea and buns...." Exactly the sort of afternoon tea that one might have expected then - even occasionally now. Utterly different from the pork pie and grog S+A type of feast

2. Just you try (as a child) slithering about in the mud in Secret Water. It used to be one of the very favourite adventures of my own children. I have sailed my lug sailed dinghy both on Coniston and on Secret Water, and think on the whole SW is better sailing, if only because (as in the book) you always have to be watching the tides.

3. The Missionaries have always appeared to me to contrast quite dramatically with the parents of all the other children in the series, in that they try to keep very tight control over what their children do. At the Corroboree the Eels are allowed as a special favour to stay out after dark - in September which isn't very late - and then must come home at the time signalled by the Missionaries. A big contrast to "Better drowned than duffers..." You would almost think that the Missionaries were parents of today - it is surprising that they don't insist on everybody wearing lifejackets!

One thing, however, that the Missionaries do have in common with other parents, is that they are quick to inspect their children's new found friends - in the most friendly way possible. As for instance does Mrs Blackett in SA and WD.



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