The summer hols are here and we’re going to have a jolly wizard time!

School’s out, and children across the country are excitedly planning for the blissful weeks ahead, filled with fun, frolics and far too much time staring at screens.

Parents, on the other hand, will experience an initial burst of gratitude for slightly less hectic mornings, before remembering the bitter reality of trying to juggle work, holiday clubs, play dates, tantrums and the rest of it. There will almost certainly be tears before the end of week one.

A few days before the end of term, my son wandered into the kitchen with sparkling eyes to tell me that the “hols” were nearly upon us. He paused, then added: “Do people even call them ‘the hols’ anymore?” I admitted that a lot of people probably didn’t, while reassuring him that it was, nonetheless, a perfectly reasonable word to use.

That evening, he popped downstairs with an empty cup and said he would be “very much obliged” if I would refill it with water. Surprisingly polite, I thought, while also reflecting on whether his diet of Enid Blyton was getting the better of him.

For all that they are an occasionally challenging product of their time, Blyton’s books remain good yarns. My daughter, despite now being a teenager, still finds joy in a bit of Malory Towers or the St Clare’s series (which are essentially interchangeable tales about girls’ boarding schools); and my son intersperses non-Blyton biographies of football heroes with Famous Five stories and occasional forays into the Five Find-Outers mysteries. Blyton was nothing if not self-derivative.

It’s not that we don’t have less archaic kids’ books in the house. Rowling, Walliams, Wilson and many others jostle for attention. But my daughter especially was a voracious reader, and many of her favourites were from an earlier age: Blyton, Arthur Ransome, LM Montgomery, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Frances Hodgson Burnett, E Nesbitt and Louisa May Alcott provided her early insights into the world. My son hasn’t bothered with Little House on the Prairie or Anne of Green Gables, but the Swallows and Amazons, Secret Seven and other adventurous children have inspired his view of life too.

And the books have inevitably affected the kind of language our kids use. When my daughter was at infant school, she came home one day and told us hotly that “the teachers treat us girls no better than scullery maids.” These days, she mixes teenage expressions (“slay”, “fam” etc) with plenty of “golly goshes”. My son, meanwhile, regularly uses “blast” to express exasperation, revels in “marvellous” or “splendid” lunches and talks of “bathing” in the sea, rather than swimming.

I recognise there is a danger that people will think my children are appalling little spods. And there’s also a risk that they’ll try hailing porters at railway stations to help with the luggage. Yet the truth is, I have definitely encouraged them, in part because I find it charming, but also because I talk a little like that myself. In fact, they probably pick up as much early 20th century lingo from me as they do from Blyton and Ransome. For instance, with my potty-mouth days largely consigned to history, I’m more likely to utter a “Good Lord!” or a “dash it” than anything fruitier now.

That said, back in the days when I read Blyton’s books out loud to the kids at bedtime, I took particular, private delight in the regular occasions when one of the Famous Five or Secret Seven would “utter a loud exclamation”. In my head, I would imagine Julian or George, Peter or Pam shouting “Oh for f***’s sake!”, or “S***ting hell!” This is the kind of language I’m hoping my kids don’t start spouting, especially when we’re on our hols, looking for adventure.