My training and career were in accountancy, and never was there a squarer peg in a rounder hole. For my fortieth birthday in 1984 I had two very signifcant presents - both from Providence! Barney, a wonderful mongrel stray who walked in off the street one night, (the night Torvill and Dean couldn't dance because the stadium caught fire), and decided to stay for the next twelve years or so, and the onset of what turned out to be severe rheumatiod arthritis. Good news and bad news, one might say, but as my observations on the Birn Brothers page bear witness, few things are rarely just as they seem at first glance, and Barney could at times be a real pain, and at least my condition prevented me from doing what I detested, and allowed me to follow my interests, (obsessions might be a better word).

My dalliance with Enid Blyton goes back a long time. I was hooked, (like every other child on the face of the Earth), on The Famous Five from 1951 until 1958, but strangely I never read Noddy as a child, even though I am exactly the right age.

I began researching Enid Blyton's work and life in the early 1990s, having done what most bibliophiles do, specialised more and more on less and less until I was down to one author. Eventually, to my own and others' surprise, I actually began to learn a bit.

I am fascinated in what made Enid Blyton tick, and why she was such a winner. Other winners who hold my huge admiration and fascination are Elvis Presley, Baroness Thatcher and Beethoven, (not necessarily in that order).