On My Way to the Bluebell Castle

Remember when you were a kid and your imagination always ran wild?

Out of nostalgia, I took my favorite bedtime-stories collection – Enid Blyton’s More Goodnight Stories – from the bookshelf yesterday and started rereading a few chapters. The book itself, which turned out to be published in this country in the same year when I was born (wow!), was already worn out – the edges of the paper had wrinkled and the glue keeping the pages together had dried. But it was really exciting to see the colorful illustration again. And during those moments, I remembered exactly how fun it was to be a kid!

There were stories about a boy whose act of kindness came back to him, about little fairies from the Bluebell Castle who fell into the pool and got soaked, about a music box that helped save a goldfish’s life, about a panicky plump lady who lost her head, and about toys catching the evil dwarf who stole the children’s sweets… among many others. My favorites, though, were one about the Fatty-Shorty’s party on page 77 and that about a toy oven on page 90… and not because of the story.

There on page 77 was an illustration of the Fatty-Shorty’s party – a room with happy dwarfs and pretty fairies dancing together, and a BIG table full of mouth-watering jelly cakes and cookies shaped like hearts and clouds! On the top right of the page, a skinny thief dwarf was stealing a pink jelly cake, trying to sneak it into his giant hat. When I was a kid, I could hear the ‘dunk’ sound in my head every time I saw that picture, imagining that pink jelly cake plunging into the hat. And following the sound was my own imaginary jelly-cake party, complete with the confetti and guests in colorful dresses. Almost twenty years later, when I stumbled on that page yesterday, I swear that sound came back! The only thing missing was the imagination that followed.

The same thing happened when I stumbled on page 90. There it was, the illustration of Angela’s toy oven with some gifts from the fairy – a piece of yellow Tippy Pudding with melting orange sauce on top, three pieces of red-and-blue gugle raisin cookies, and another piece of green bubbly cake that left me drooling. Back when I was 8, encountering that page would soon lead to me baking such delicious cakes using my own toy oven. And fake as the paper cakes were, I would have SO much fun! And yet when I looked at that picture yesterday, I had lost the excitement of going where imagination would take me. I guess the process of growing up really does involve cutting our imagination down, to the point where everything has to seem realistic in order to be considered right. What a pity, right?

Anyhow, they say better late than never. So, I guess I’ll start exercising my imagination again. Not too far, though – maybe only till the point where the now-dry little fairies are halfway back to the Bluebell Castle and quickly turn around.