FOODS EATEN IN CHILDRENS’ BOOKS #3: Ginger Beer
Lashings. Of course.
Drinks in childrens books, especially those of an ealier age, show an almost slavish fetishisation of fizzy drinks. Birthday parties when presented in Blyton were always accompanied with plenty of “pop”, a name my grandparents but not my parents would use for fizzy drinks. For my grandparents pop also came in a tin, rather than a can, but I am willing to believe this is a family anachronism. I think placing a drink merely because of its fizz on a pedastal is a surprisingly British thing, a childs version of class warfare was almost certainly being played out in those glass Corona bottles. And woe betide if the warfare got fizzical…
So the Famous Five are famous not just for their fiveness but for their favourite drink. Properly brewed ginger beer is naturally slightly carbonated. However I am sure that the lemonade they would occasionally drink was not of the freshly squeezed variety, rather the strange clear chemical gunk you can still buy for 20p for 2 litres in Safeways. The pop occasioned the odd plot point too, it was so important. Despite Blyton being the queen of decorum, a number of times in her million books a stray ginger beer related burp caused discovery by the bad guys. But rarely any actual lashings.