The day before the edition

For me with just one day to go this is so apt a playful Tomboy can become that refined pretty young lady even if chunks  of how I'm wired mean I can't do everything you expect and I still require your love  and support.

The Girl (Comic)

A special offshoot of The Eagle but for Girls:

The Eagle was a iconic British boys comic from the 1950's when boy were boys full of beans, heros and daring-do but girls then were regarded more as dainty, fragile things best kept for marriage and being of use to boys and men.

It was interesting that this comic taking some inspiration from what Women contributed during World war Two when the menfolk were on the frontline helping the War, effort showed a woman at the helm of an important role.

Girls can be aviators too!

Secrets

To say Enid Blyton wasn't an influence on me would be to miss something that overlapped the other big thing in my life boarding school life as I read one while at the other and a good number of her novels I read were about communities of children in boarding school like me, living in the country or as this series starts with children running way from uncaring and abusive even by the standards of the time adults who were responsible for them, making a new life with amazing resourcefulness.

 I did eventually get the Secret Island in hardback which isn't really an adventure book in the way all the others are but more an account of their lives giving you the background to the adventures to unfold as we learn about Jack, Peggy, Mike and Nora.

The Secret of Spiggy Holes is the first adventure proper  introducing us to important people such as Prince Paul.
As with the first one it took ages to find a serviceable hardback and like the other, it didn't come with the full colour dust jacket although the images in both are replicated as frontalis so it's just an irritant not to have the actual jacket.

This is a more modern edition, the 1991 omnibus published by Mulberry of the last three novels, the Secret Mountain, Secret of Killimooin and Secret of Moon Castle being held captive in the Secret Moutain, travelling the the Killimooin Forrest where they feel a ferocious band of robbers  hangs out and exploring Moon Castle looking for ghosts at the end of night.

Dresses from my youth

Wow this picture takes me back to the mid 1970's when Mom and the adult females in my family wore these light summer dresses. 

They were into cutting and sowing their own - Gran was a champion cutter outer - and in addition often kitted me out in hand knitted girls jumpers.
I've enhanced this picture digitally as the original was very washed out and flat.

Valentines

A week to go and it's Valentines Day which I recall getting and receiving cards as a child as it was always a big deal in school and at home where you might be asked if you'd had one.

In Finland, Valentine's Day is called ystävänpäivä, which means "Friend's Day". As the name indicates, this day is more about remembering friends, not significant others. In Estonia, Valentine's Day was originally called valentinipäev and later also sõbrapäev ('Friend's Day') as a calque of the Finnish term.

While there is nothing at all wrong with romantic love, it does tend to overshadow the love of friends, family members and people you may be very close to and maybe there's something to marking that.

Compacts!

This is a lovely compact by The Color Institute that I own.
You can get this Argos in the UK for under £ 10 making a great starter kit to which you can add to later on.

• Set comprises the following:


• 64 eyeshadow pressings.


• 32 lip gloss pots.


• 2 face powder pressings.


• 6 powder/blusher pressings.


• 1 bronzer.


• 3 pressed powders.


• 1 shimmer.


• 1 blusher brush.


• 1 face sponge.


• 3 sponge applicators.


• 2 lip liner pencils.


• 2 eye liner pencils.


• 1 black mascara.


• 3 brushes.

The youngest girl in the Fifth

Having gotten Christmas out of the way, here's the latest instalment of a series of short bits on the stories I read at boarding school and this edition dates to 1970 and isn't in quiet so good a condition as the others apart from having the price in the old UK money that was changed February 1971.

The story is is set at a all girls boarding school where fourteen and a bit Gwen Gascoyne, is moved in the middle of the term from the Upper Fourth to the Fifth Form as her Principal, Miss Roscoe feels the work in the Upper Fourth is too easy despite her years.
In the World of the school girls she is seen as stand-offish, treated very much as an outcast by all except Netta whose malicious scheming nature leads Gwen into trouble and deceit.
All of this isn't helped by a spell of bad luck either!
Gwen comes into her own during an accident during an accident in her forms geology expedition and from then on begins to earn the respect of her classmates.