Handles Quotes

“Unfortunately the holiday turns out rather less lovely than Mum hoped. Marooned in a remote village with Auntie Joan, Uncle Peter and her dreadful cousin Robert (inventor of the patent caterpillar trap) and their garden full of domineering vegetables.”

“She finds Elsie Wainwright and Bunny, Bill Birdcycle and the Gremlin, a cat with false teeth, a plague of frogs and an unlimited supply of motor bikes.”

“The market was almost deserted by now, and among the few people who still lingered there she saw no one whom she knew. That meant that the Crowd was assembling in the multi-storey car park. No one ever arranged beforehand where to meet, but somehow every knew, and eventually everyone arrived.”

“Erica Timperley, city girl and motor-bike buff, is all set to spend her summer holiday messing around with The Crowd in the multi-storey car park -until Mum tells her that she is going to have a lovely holiday in the country. ”

“It was August, and the summer streets of the city had been crowded all day with tourists who could not speak English, or who could speak English but could not read a mar, or who could do neither, nor even recognize a castle when they saw one.”

“Erica could scarcely remember the last time she had been at Calstead, and on that occasion they had arrived in the car. The countryside looked very different from the top of a bus; there was more of it, for a start, and it seemed rather flat after the hills of Norwich.”

“Erica stayed at the window and wondered about the surprise. It was only half a surprise now, because she knew it was coming, but she was glad in a way of the warning.”

″... and that there may be more to a name than she ever though possible, for in Elsie’s Kingdom it isn’t enough to have a name. You have to have a handle, too...”

“Erica fears that she may well die of boredom before the holiday is over, but then chances takes her to Polthorpe and the world’s smallest industrial state, where she finds Elsie Wainwright and Bunny.”

“By the end of August she has discovered that even vegetables can be interesting, if you approach them in the right way.”