Big Ears at the window

I dreamt last night that Big Ears was knocking at my window. Today I recreated the dream in this blip, with the help of a figure from a Christams cracker and the aid of Photoshop.

For those not in the know, Big Ears is a character in Enid Blyton's 'Noddy' books, and is Noddy's best friend. Indeed such a good friend that in days when homosexuality was beyond the law Big Ears and Noddy were happy to jump into bed together:

If you can squeeze into my tiny bed, you can sleep with me tonight," said Big-Ears ... They squashed into Big-Ears' tiny, soft bed, put their arms around one another to stop themselves from rolling out, and fell fast asleep.

Indeed, they are woken up by Mr Plod the policeman on a burglary enquiry, who seems to expect to find them in bed together.

The quote is from a book published in 1950 called Hurrah for Little Noddy, brought out at a time when things were generally more innocent, so I doubt Enid Blyton is having a swipe at the anally retentive British sociey. But who knows And there are things in this and following Noddy books that are far more offensive to modern day readers, which I'll not go into here.

For a number of reasons Blyton is pretty much persona non grata as a children's author these days, which is a shame as some of her work for older children is IMHO worth preserving But it is the Noddy books that have caused the most revilement. Here's a typical quote, from Dominion in August 1990, perhaps a less PC time even than today.

Noddy, Big Ears and all their friends from Toytown have been branded as being too naughty for the 1990s. After years of criticism the publishers are to withdraw them from next month and replace them with a new sanitized edition. Toytown's golliwogs will disappear to be replaced by gremlins and monkeys; words like Gay and Queer, used in their old-fashioned sense by Blyton, are being written out and wimpy girls, who need to be looked after by boys, will be given a tougher more self reliant image.. Out too go those cosy little scenes that depict Noddy and his best friend, Big Ears cuddling up in bed together after a cup of hot chocolate. Many of the Caucasian denizens of Toytown are being substituted with Chinese and even Eskimo dolls reflecting modern, multicultural Britain. In the forty years since Noddy made his first appearance the books have sold about 100 million copies.

You decide: I have read that Jane Austen should be banned from libraries unless rewritten to make women's roles more assertive, and we must remember that until the 1970's bowdlerized copies of Shakespeare's plays were still commonly being sold and studied. But that is outside the scope of today's blip.

Back to Big Ears. According to the Brownie himself, he is a brownie "or a sort of a hob, or hobgoblin" and he lives in a toadstool house the "hilly, lumpy, bumpy part of town outside of town". Quite why he chose to visit me I'm not sure - and I certainly wouldn't fit in his tiny bed with him, having neither the flexibility not diminutive stature of Noddy, not to mention the inclination, but I've a feeling he may reappear in this blip blog.