I'm like that Northwest Mountie, you know I'll bring her in someday (The Coasters)

Wie geht's?

Why is an Enid Blyton book on my coffee table in the music lounge?

Good question.

As part of an ongoing attempt to recapture my youth (surely I'm not alone in that kind of pursuit), I've been trying to track down a book I read as a child. 

In many ways it sparked my curiosity for things and fired my imagination.

It's long been lost and hard to find because I'm very vague about who wrote it and what it was called.

Here's everything I can remember:

• It contained a vivid description of a tumble down overgrown garden that some children came across
• Yes, children were key characters 
• I think the word 'treasure' was in the title somewhere
• It's set in the English countryside
• I read it in the mid sixties - when I was 7 or 8
• I owned a copy - it wasn't a library book

And, that's it!

After various interweb searches (there are search engines specifically for people tracing books from their youth!!), I believed it could possibly be The Treasure Hunters - a book by Enid Blyton.

There's treasure in the title and the story centres on three children visiting their grand-parents in the English countryside.

Only problem being that I never once read an Enid Blyton book as a child. Not one.

Then came the problem of tracking down a copy. Not easy as it's long been out of print and Enid was prolific - over 200 books according to the lady at the Little Red Book Shop.

Fishpond had a used copy for sale from someone in Wellington - that's it in the photo. There's a delightful little message inside the front cover: This book belongs to Sam Hill (age 7), 4 Whitney St., Blenheim NZ.

As the children look for the treasure, there is a section where they explore a pond and come across an area overgrown with thorns, bramble and ivy. It's all hiding a secret building. This is the scene I remember capturing my imagination as a child.

But it doesn't exactly feel right. Worryingly, it may be my memory has idealised a scene to the extent I no longer recognise it when I see it.

This may or may not be the book I'm looking for. 

A new thought has crossed my mind: maybe the scene was in something like the Swallows And Amazons books: Swallowdale or Peter Duck? I distinctly remember reading them having borrowed a few from the school library at Royal Oak Primary.

I'll have to check that out next.

Love and peace - Wozza