Patrick's future

[alliekiwi.livejournal.com]

I've started re-reading Falconer's Lure and came across the following snippet:

~*~*~

Patrick said suddenly, "Oh dear. I do wish it was six years from now."

"Six years?" said Nicola, who sometimes wished it was this time next week, but had never looked that far ahead.

"Yes. Well. In six years, I'll have finished school, I'll have done National Service, and if Dad's still M.P. I can come back here and look after things. And then Jon and I can keep hawkes properly.

pg 52/53 GGB edition

~*~*~

That made me wonder about how AF changed things to suit the times, yet retained some things that were already 'canon' despite them being 'out of time'.

For example, when the red uniforms came back in, the book they were mentioned in was written *past* the time rationing finished in the early 1950s in Real Life? That was Falconer's Lure as well, but haven't reached that bit in the book, yet. I know the book is set in 1948, and clothes rationing ended in 1949...but the book was written/published in 1955.

What I'm leading up to here is... will Patrick do his National Service, despite that going out before potential later books would have been written, and presumably set? Especially since it had already been mentioned that he was going to do it? Or would AF have just ignored that?

Comments

[kit120.livejournal.com]

This hardly rates as a problem. National Service might have been abolished in the 4 years before Patrick became 18 even if the books had a realistic time scheme.

The time settings didn't bother me until 'Attic Term'; probably because lumping together any time after the war wasn't a problem until the books entered my lifetime.

The biggest problem I have with the timing is that Ginty has to phone the operator to get through to Patrick and it is the operator who gives away the fact that she's been phoning every night. That didn't strike me as realistic for the 1970s.

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

The first direct-dialled call in the UK was in 1958; the last operator was decomissioned in 1976. Attic Term was published in 1976, so I dare say parts of Dorset were still on operator service as the book was being written, and by the time of publication it was only slightly anachronistic, not enough to worry about. Nicola does think to herself that she wishes Wade Abbas would buck up and get hitched to STD.

[kit120.livejournal.com]

Thanks for doing the research. To me, that bit about wishing Wade Abbas would buck up and get hitched to STD sounded like confessing to an anachronism.