Did you ever read Milly-Molly-Mandy?
I'm in my forties now and Milly-Molly-Mandy is still my favourite set of bedtime reading books. Even if I'm reading something else, I more often than not end the night reading a quick Milly-Molly-Mandy story and that means I end the day with happy thoughts of a quaint little village life far removed from this cluttered world we live in today.
I want life to be like Milly-Molly-Mandy's world. I want to hoppity skip along hedgegrows past the 'nice white cottage with the thatched roof', knock on little-friend-Susan's door and ask if she'd like to come out to play.
I want to go down to the village and pass Billy Blunt fixing his box on wheels and then decide whether raspberry drops would be better to have than toffee from Mr Smale's grocer's shop.
I spend an unashamedly large amount of mental energy imagining where Joyce Lankester Brisley might have based Milly-Molly-Mandy's village on. Do you think it was inspired by a village local to her own childhood days?
Joyce was born in Bexhill-on-Sea in East Sussex and in one of the stories Milly-Molly-Mandy goes on a daytrip to the seaside by train so she couldn't have been far from the coast. Milly-Molly-Mandy and her Aunt had to take the red bus to the next town to catch the train so the village is located near a town with a railway.
Could the village be based on ALFRISTON in East Sussex perhaps?
It's certainly one of the prettiest old villages around that area and it's close to Berwick town which does have a railway and goes to the coast?
Mmm... we'll never know what Joyce based her little world on but it is fun to imagine.
Perhaps she may even have been friends with Verity Hope.
Enjoy MILLY-MOLLY-MANDY and HAPPY SEWING too!
NEW DOLLS KITS in stock JANUARY 2017
Susannah x
No comments:
Post a Comment