Bedtime story

I didn't read much when I was a kid. And when I read, I only read Malay books, to be exact, those translated Enid Blyton's books. I never knew they were translated. I thought Enid Blyton was a Malay with a weird name. And I also thought that Enid is a male's name. How wrong I was at that time! And it was easy to get hooked to any of her books, since most of the times, you can relate to the character in the books, or imagine that you were one of them.

My favourite series would be the Secret Five. I'm sure almost all of you would have at least read one of the series. In Malay, it was translated to Lima Penyiasat. The main character is Gemuk, who was a master in disguise and always outwitting the local policeman, Encik Goon. He was assisted by John, Mary, Samy and Saroja and also at times, his dog, Buster.

There were a few tricks that they did in the book that was quite impressive. I still remember some of them, which includes the invisible ink trick (supposed to be lime juice) and to reveal the ink, you need to iron the message. Also the one where they were locked in a room, and what they did was slipped a piece of paper underneath the door, and poke the key out until it fell down onto the paper (of course the key needs to be in the keyhole on the other side of the door).

And I remember Gemuk has this shack where he hid his disguises. And he would disguised himself as different characters and walked around town to fool people (especially Encik Goon). Somehow, Goon and his bicycle always provide the humour in the story (with Buster occasionally barking and biting his legs).

Other than that, another one of my favourite is the Lima Sekawan series. This one is about Eddie, Dean, George, Mona and their dog, which I can't remember its name. Also about kids playing detective, but it is more like stumbling into a case rather than looking for one. Eddie, Dean and Mona are siblings, with George (Georgina is her real name, but she prefers to be called George, and likes to wear boy's clothing) being their cousin who lives in a house near the sea. So there were plenty of secret caves, islands adventures with the occasional pirates and treasures.

I think that was why I yearned for adventures and mystery during my childhood years. I even formed my own detective club in school, with our secret meetings and codes. But we didn't solve any mystery. It was more to creating our own mystery and solving them with our imagination. Something like role-playing (of course at that time, we had no idea what Dungeons and Dragons were). But all in all, we had a lot of fun. I still have our membership card, tuck safely in my drawer back at home.

I think I shall rummage that drawer the next time I'm home.