Posted by Jock on February 29, 2012 at 11:42:03 user Jock.
In 1962, I persuaded my parents that they really wanted to spend their next summer holiday on the East Coast, and we spent two weeks at Walton-on-the-Naze. I organised expeditions to search for 'Sinbad's Creek', we looked (with some success) for flint arrowheads on the way to 'Flint Island' and the highlight of the holiday was the crossing of 'The Wade' and tea with the natives living in the Kraal on 'Swallow Island'.
After tea, I had my first trip on a horse (I would hesitate to say that I rode the horse, rather it took me for a walk) and my parents were told about AR's own visits to the island. Later my mother wanted to tell me what she had learnt, I would have none of it: I wanted to know more about the explorations of the Ss and As and cared naught for the research carried out by AR.
Now, 50 years later, I kick myself, of course. But it is a measure of AR's genius that when I was a child his creations were more 'real' to me than their creator. These days I smile when someone asks 'When was SA/SD?' or 'Where is Beckfoot?' I like to think that AR's various clues to the answers, sometimes deliberately vague... sometimes accidentally(?) inconsistent, can give us an all-to-brief insight into his thinking, and how it may have changed, during the period that he crafted the books.
Of course, I still read all the 'Where/What is Beckfoot?' posts with great interest... Perhaps, like the little boy looking for Sinbad's Creek, I'm still a 'Beckfoot plumber' at heart?