Quote of the Day

The Junior Common Room was the usual seething mob, everybody yelling at the tops of their voices, so we didn't bother much to introduce Lisa around, only grabbed as much tea as we could - it's rather special on the first day, sandwiches and cake, so that the poor victims think that's how they're going to eat every day and feel quite cheered, little do they know. Prune was stuffing away quietly in a corner, so we took Lisa over to talk to her.

From A GIRL WITH IDEAS, Chapter 1, Dotty Has An Idea. This book was written under the pen name Jean Bell and was clearly intended for the Collins Spitfire series in the late sixties. However, it was only published in 2002 in Susan and Friends.

Monkton Combe near Bath

This is the countryside between Bath and Monkton Combe, which served as the setting for three of the Penny books (Threepenny Bit, Fourpenny Fair and Crooked Sixpence). In Twopence Coloured, Penny and Jill become friends with Laura and John Mallory during their trip to France. The Mallory siblings invite the girls to visit them in Monkton Combe (in the book the village is called Friars Combe). The Carter sisters become regular visitors to the area. The village is used once again in the novella by "Jean Bell", A Girl with Ideas, penned after the Penny series had been laid to rest. In that story, the village is given the name of Thornton Combe.

Quote of the Day

I was just drifting off when suddenly a hand was digging into my shoulder and someone was breathing in my ear in a very tickly way.

"Whasser marrer?" I murmured sleepily.

"Denny!" It was Prune, all dramatic and agitated. "Denny, wake up!"

I moved my ear out of reach and leant upon my elbow. "Well, I am awake," I whispered. "Who wouldn't be with you yelling right in my ear-hole. "What's up?"

"Denny, there's something in my bed!"

This, I must admit, was a surprise. "What sort of a something?" I asked.

"Denny, I don't quite know! I'm petrified--"

From A GIRL WITH IDEAS, Chapter 2, The Mouse Club.

Quote of the Day

Supper is nice too on the first night, sausages and mash and ice-cream, we told Lisa to make the most of it because the next day it would be back to revolting macaroni-cheese and sago pudding.

From A GIRL WITH IDEAS, the 1960s short story written for Collins under the pen name of Jean Bell. This story was only published posthumously in Susan and Friends. Some of the punctuation is a bit strange, but this may be deliberate as the story is told by a young girl in the first person.

Quote of the Day

They were all perfectly well behaved except that madcap Sambo. He was off and up over a little hillock before you could say knife. We thought Dotty had lost him forever. But of course we had armed ourselves with a spare bit of chocolate left over from yesterday. Dotty put down such a huge lump that even Sambo couldn't resist it. He came over a hummock, his nose twitching with delight, and ate himself practically into a stupor. He was no trouble, Dotty said, on the way home.

From A GIRL WITH IDEAS, Chapter 4, King Arthur Lived Here.

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"May I -ah - enquire," said the little man, and that was the way he spoke, like a book, an old-fasioned book, "what you were searching for?"

"A mouse," said Dotty.

"A mouse," said the little man. "Well, well." And he looked at Dotty more strangely than ever.

"Yes, my mouse," said Dotty, and then she went on, "and I'm really very sorry that I sat on your tent, but we thought that this place was more or less private. It's our special Mouse Training School-"

Red-face turned, with an even more bewildered expression, to the young man and asked him something, it was perfectly clear that he was asking if he thought Dotty was quite right in the head, but the young man was laughing again. I looked at them both very oddly; I was not at all sure that they were right in the head.

However, we all cheered up - especially Prune - when the young man said, "We were just going to have some tea - if the thermos has survived - would you like some?"

From  A GIRL WITH IDEAS, the novella written under the pen name Jean Bell in the 1960s but which was only published in Susan and Friends in 2002.

Quote of the Day

Most of the silly things that happen in our school are caused by my friend Dotty Ellis. Her real name of course isn't Dotty, it's Dorothea - can you imagine? - and that's what the staff and other grown-ups call her, but everybody else calls her Dotty, it suits her much better. There's nothing wrong with her brain, mind you, quite the reverse, it's just that she gets these ideas. There was one time last term, when she had spent all her pocket-money - on another of her ideas, I forget what - and she got this idea of doing everybody's maths prep for sixpence a time. It worked like anything for a while, too, and Dotty made stacks of cash, but as Dotty happens to be a sort of mathematical genius (her father really is a genius, top man in nuclear physics if you know what that means, we don't) we all got such good marks that eventually even Miss Parker, who isn't all that bright in the head, smelt a rat. There was a fearful row and Miss Parker wanted us all expelled, but after all you can hardly expel a whole form so we just had lots of boring old detentions and gatings and so on instead. It was maddening, we were all dying to be expelled and go home for an extra holiday.

Then another time Dotty thought that she would wire up the dorm so that she and I, who had been put at opposite ends for talking or something, could speak to each other in the middle of the night. So she wrote to her father for all the bits and pieces (she has no mother and he spoils her like mad) but before she had even got the thing going properly she'd got tangled up in the electricity and fused all the lights in the whole school and there was a bit of a rumpus about that.

From the novella A GIRL WITH IDEAS. The story is told in the first person by Denise Wilson and centres around Denise, Dotty and new girl Lisa Russell. Lisa secretly keeps a pet mouse in the school and Dotty has the idea of starting a mouse club. The story progresses from there in typical Jane Shaw fashion. The familiar elements are all there: lazy pupils, teachers with names that happen to form perfect nicknames, like Nosy Parker, and of course an ancient mystery to solve, this time it's not buried treasure but King Arthur's castle! In the mid 1960s, Jane Shaw began to use the pen name Jean Bell (although the final Susan books were, of course, published under the name of Jane Shaw). The result was two books for younger readers published in paperback in the Collins 'Spitfire' series in 1967. These books were Paddy Turns Detectives and The Penhallow Mystery. Collins also requested A Girl With Ideas, which began life as Adventures of a Mouse. This story was written before 1967 and later lengthened and expanded. Although it is excellent, Collins never got round to publishing it and it was only to see the light of day in Susan and Friends in 2002.