The Adventures of Snidy - with Colourful Pictures!

I've been on a bit of a spending splurge over the last two days. I got two DVD's (The Producers, Blazing Saddles), a book of How To Write Television Comedy, Dream Comics, Tintin in the Congo, Ha! Magazine, The Australian, and the Herald Sun.

I also got A Sindy Adventure Story!



Not this one: Sindy Adventures, it seems, are so rare that they haven't even made it onto the internets. However, the Adventure I have - The Curious Clock - shares certain characteristics with the others. Note the blue, white, and red sweater: Sindy wears the same on the cover of my book, along with the red hair-band and denim trousers. (And she's certainly a well-developed girl, isn't she? Excuse me ...) Note, also, the sidekicks - most importantly, her ten-year-old sister Patch (pictured to the right of Sindy). And note, finally, that an anagram of 'Sindy' is Snidy. Not that that's important or anything, I just felt you should know that.

As it turned out, I was missing the first two pages, but I bet I can guess the beginning:

'I am so sorry, but I cannot come to the auction, my dears! I hope you have a WON-derful time!'
Blonde, blue-eyed Sindy ____s, who was sixteen and tall for her age, flicked a strand of hair out of her eyes and looked in exasperation at her sister...

You know how it goes.

Anyway, it made for a pleasant Saturday afternoon read. You learn some interesting things about, for instance, people who live at places with name's like Rat Wharf:

'Mike Roake, Rat Wharf'. Fancy living in a place with a name like that!'

Or:

'But I thought we'd decided that the burglar was Count Fersson?'

'That was what we thought last night - because of the clock, but we may have been wrong, Paul. The sergeant may have been right. It might have been a professional burglar, the sort of man who might live in a place called Rat Wharf.'

Now, you or I might doubt that criminals actually do live at Rat Wharf. You might think, in fact, that people living at a place called Rat Wharf are just ordinary folks. Sindy, thankfully, is in no doubt of their felonious propensities, and she and her 'boy friend Paul' take her theory to the police station and inform the sergeant.
At this point, Sindy's sister Patch actually gets into the action. And about time, too ...

'Excuse me, but could you tell me the way to Rat Wharf?'
'Rat Wharf!' He looked at her with something approaching horror.
'Why do you want Rat Wharf? A nice little girl like you has no business going to a place like Rat Wharf!'

When she gets there:

... 'The only thing she noted in that first, horrified glance was that he had a cloth tied around the lower part of his face.
She dropped to the ground ...'

Nice little moment of pulpy writing there: action and reaction are all tied up in one 'first horrified glance'.
It's all quite enjoyable. I had lots of fun spotting the moments of pulpy writing: the 'beaming smile' from the detective, and the melodramatic Count Fersson who has this beautiful line written about him:

He was handsome in a dark, flashing-toothed manner, but for some reason Sindy did not like him. She did not trust him because he smiled only with his mouth.

Smiling only with his mouth; I like that...

(Cross-posted here.)