It was EBD's fault

Always blame someone else. In this case it was probably jointly my mum and EBD, or Elinor Brent Dyer to those not a member of Friends of the Chalet School (I am, yes, still hooked). After reading ridiculously fast through Enid Blyton's Malory Towers and St Claire's series, soaking up the adventures of Darrel, Sally, Pat and Isobel at their boarding schools, I was in need of more. Blyton only managed a poor six books per series, and it took me under a day to finish each book. That was even with my dad, in exasperation, hiding the books from me in the holiday cottage in Wales we were staying in. Nothing daunted, I climbed up on the settee, fished them down from the top of the grandfather clock and carried on speed reading.

I still have those books somewhere, a little bit battered from many reads through, a couple have shed their covers. They were cheap paperbacks from the seaside shop, but I loved them. I read them so many times I could quote pages of dialogue. To the consternation of my friends who had to listen to me doing so. It was a blow to reach the end of 'In the Sixth at Malory Towers' and realise that was it. And that Enid Blyton had died long before I was even born, so there was no chance of any more. Little did I know, but more on that later...

So I turned elsewhere. My grandma always kept an eclectic assortment of books at her house for when my cousins and I visited, and one of these books was a bright yellow paperback book, with an intriguing title: 'Mary Lou at the Chalet School'. I tried it, and didn't like it. Sadly, Momma died a little while later, and some of her books passed to me.

A year later, I re-discovered the book, and tried again. Something in it appealed to me, probably not least that one of the characters had the same name as me, which I'd never come across before, I was sold.
The next time I had some pocket money, I knew where I was going and what I wanted to buy, straight to Chapter One bookshop. The books I wanted were not easy to find, and I was almost ready to give up, and the sales assistants were about ready to throw me out, then I found them on the bottom shelf - a glorious row of white-spined books with pastel titles and covers. Different to the edition I had, which I was later to learn was the 'Second Style' cover, but much more attractive. I coveted them, but had to make do with just one, for the time being: 'Chalet School Triplets'. I still have that book too, less battered, much more cared for. By the time I finished it, I wanted more. My excitement after looking at the inside pages to discover, oh glory, there were 61 more books to go was unlimited. That had to be at least a few months reading worth...

Ah, if only I'd known then. It did in fact take me 12 years to track down and read every single one of those 62 books, and I don't want to calculate how much money it has cost me. Perhaps there's something about being a stubborn Taurean. That one book would take me along a strange and lengthy path of reading, writing and collecting though. More soon.