Here’s how it goes. One week away, totally clear of email, texts and mobiles...so what do I choose to entertain and comfort myself?

Well, the Famous Five (and I read four of them last week, one after another, so I know what I’m talking about).

It starts off with Aunt Fanny, worrying that her husband, Uncle Quentin, is sure to be upset by the arrival of her daughter George’s three cousins (at least, I think that’s the relationship) – Julian, Dick and Anne.

Julian is very manly for his age and when talking to the police can sound much older than he is.

Dick, his brother, is younger and consequently more knockabout.

Anne, their sister, is younger still and constantly a coward.

All three hang around with George (real name Georgina) and her dog Timmy, who George considers the ‘bravest dog in the world’. Which is just as well since it’s Timmy who always saves the lives of everyone else, although lifesaving may be exaggerating it a little; usually it’s a couple of rough-looking rogues who lock them in caves by Chapter 19 and get their come-uppance by Chapter 22.

Why? Because, believe it or not, despite their very best efforts to just eat loads of ham and drink ginger beer, these four youngsters from the 1950s are always uncovering: s kidnap plots s smugglers s saboteurs, and s local children who are poor and dirty, looked after by cruel and mean stepfathers, with knowledge of secret tunnels and old-wives’ tales about hauntings.

Invariably, it takes 12 chapters for anything to happen because Uncle Quentin is one of Britain’s top scientists and therefore constantly short-tempered and at odds with the youthful exhuberance of his younger relatives.

Consequently, they get packed off by their mother to either camp beside a circus troupe, a castle, or a lighthouse.

By doing so, she also inadvertently introduces them to cheery-as-chips farmers’ wives whose farmhands or husbands tend to be scowling, silent types who bizarrely turn out to be the heroes of the tale.

Realistically, despite the fact the Famous Five get involved with international jewel thieves and ruthless kidnappers, no-one ever thinks to kill, cuff, or even threaten – beyond a “you’ll get what’s coming to you” reprimand – the children who threaten to expose their dastardly deeds.

And yet despite all of the above, and maybe because of it, I can lose myself in these books more totally than any other holiday read.

Enid Blyton’s heroes are the ones I save for the moonlit balcony, the pool and the flights there and back.

I guess it’s comfort gorging but of a literary kind. And right now, after a week away, I’m cheerfully obese.