A question of chronology

 Here's another Nicholas Fisk I've acquired - Leadfoot!

Like Space Hostages, this wasn't the edition I read when I was young, but unlike Space Hostages, this one is (according to the small print at the start of the book) a "revised edition". Revised in what way?

Leadfoot (another favourite of mine) wasn't one of the earliest Fisk books I read; I can't really fix a date when I did read it, but I'm sure it must have been before 1992. And I would have got it from the library, so it probably wouldn't have been a brand new copy - I really must have read the original 1980 text.

So what's changed? Well, all I can see is that first page, and the line "built in 1926: so it was about six times Rob's age." Rob, as we're told a couple of pages later, is "aged about eleven", and to quote Sherlock Holmes, the calculation is a simple one - the current year is 1992.

This one isn't a futuristic science-fiction story, it's set in the present day and grounded in reality, but there aren't any precise references to what year it is. The plot, a camping trip in the Highlands, could happen in any year in the latter half of the twentieth century. I don't remember the book word for word, obviously, but I remember all the best scenes and cleverest lines, and those are all exactly as I remember them. Does the 'revised edition' really consist of a single change to how many times older than Rob the Alvis is, on the first page? Or have I missed something? I'll have to track down a first edition now...