7. A Blyton tea party with family and friends!

To illustrate the joy and nostalgia which I feel towards Blyton and the food in her books here I am at my very own Blyton tea party! My son Thomas, my nephew Jack, my godson Zac and his big brother Max all immersed ourselves in the making and eating of classic Blyton treats. Here we are getting underway with the Gingerbread House, Jammy Buns, Treacle Tart and Macaroons! Helped along with lashings of Ginger Beer and Cloudy Lemonade of course.

I feel now is the time to interrogate why Enid Blyton novels and the food within them propel me so fiercely and successfully back to my childhood. How do the reading of the books and the re-inventing of her treats strike so ardently within my memory that they conjure up an almost tangible recollection of my past. Holtzman suggests there is a strong link between food and memory and it is the relationship between these two things which instigates a sense of nostalgia: "some food literature relies on a lay notion of sentimentality for a lost past, viewing food as a vehicle for recollections of childhood and family" (367). We can look back even further to Marcel Proust's 'Madeleine moment' where the narrator's taste of the light and fluffy sponge cake instantly allows him to recapture memories of his forgotten youth: "No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shiver ran through me and I stopped...this new sensation having the effect, which love has, of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was me" (60). This amalgamation of food, taste and memory is the recipe needed to create a nostalgic remembering of childhood through an idealistic and sentimental adult lens; a palpable (and ephemeral) feeling for who you once were and for a time which has now passed. Gingerbread, ginger beer, jam sandwiches and treacle tart (to name just a few Blyton treats), all initiate a Proustian memory of childhood loveliness for me. Bring on the tea parties!

The boys had a great time following the recipe for the gingerbread house and jam tarts - measuring out the ingredients, beating in the eggs (eggshell pieces included!) and rolling out the pastry. Unfortunately, the blend of sugar icing and water paste failed to keep the gingerbread walls and roof together and the house kept caving in! With three pairs of adult hands we managed to keep it upright long enough to take this photo! Of course, this was all part of the jolly fun and plenty of laughs were had. Lashings of ginger beer were swallowed by all along the way.

The nostalgic memories of childhood were what my friend Elise and I cherished here with Blyton mania at the forefront of it all! Our boys may not have been able to join us in our memories of 'olden days' but they enjoyed the baking and eating of the treats nonetheless. This is the joy of Enid Blyton: through food, she creates bonding magic between the characters of her stories, she transports the readers of her stories to faraway lands of adventure and fantasy, and to this day we can mimic that adventure and bonding by re-making her treats in real life. Jolly indeed!

Holtzman, Jon. D, Food and Memory, JStor, 2006, (p.367)

Proust, Marcel, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1, 1913 (p.60)