To ask the Abbess to find me a solid lump of comfort and a cream cake

We have now hit 200 shares of the Dropbox link. Must be a lot of people now spending their time reading school stories rather than working, cleaning, shopping, cooking etc!

Pitifully I find the Guernsey clan tremendously glamorous. They’re such royalty; wonderful home lives in the midst of a huge family community, fabulous school, beautiful futures all mapped out ...

Aargh EBD obviously, autocorrect fail.

Thanks for the primer on the Chester’s et al. It’s very confusing how they’re parachuted in at one go, but as I said in a previous thread, I presume that was because they’d lost a whole lot of B-list characters on leaving the Tyrol and END needed a new lot stat.

Could I have the Dropbox link too please @Parker231?

I know, right? Especially as there's an entire chapter just before about how primitive Rome is, how Katy can't buy a feather pillow or a hot water bottle or ice for love nor money! But then she develops superpowers and finds the Roman doll wig shop.

Sorry, derail. But am impressed someone understands the various internecine connections of the Chester/Lucy/Ozanne clans. The only bit I remember is that Joey is outrageously rude when she first meets 'puckish' Janey Lucy and more or less blurts out 'Gosh, you're not exactly a looker compared to your gorgeous sisters, are you?'

Which from someone who herself has a very pretty sister, and was being described as 'goblin-like' only a few years earlier, is a bit much!

I always wondered where you bought a doll’s wig.

And Annoying Amy insists on having her doll's head shaved too, and, when her hair starts to grow back in little curls, Katy buys a short, curly wig for the doll.

Your hair growing in curly after being shaved seems to have been a general idea - though surely it was probably only that your hair wasn't weighed down, so it was lighter and more likely to wave? I assume that's what it was with Mary-Lou, who goes from Kenwigses to short and curly. If she'd grown it long again, it would have gone back to being straight.

I think the thinking was a combination of thinking that having a lot of hair sapped your strength, and also that lying down a lot when ill meant tangles, hair fastenings and general discomfort if you had a lot of hair? I think we're told Stacie, after her accident, has her hair bobbed so there aren't hairslides to hurt her head.

Thank you, Quater, I may have to pin that to the back of the book and refer to it every three minutes over the course of the next 40 books...

SGB, my mother was a nurse just after the war, and she told me it was hairpins. Might have been one of those yes-dear-run-along answers you get when you're 8 though, so must remember to ask her again.

I'm pretty sure head-shaving for 'fevers' was common at least in the Victorian era and even later. It's mentioned at one point in the What Katy Did books (the one when she goes on a world tour and the annoying kid she's minding gets 'Roman fever' which I presume is typhoid).
I think my mum had her head shaved when she got scarlet fever, but that was more to do with getting nits from the proletarian DC in the fever hospital...

the Chester/Lucy/Ozanne family tree improvisation fantasia.

As I understand it there were three socially smart Guernsey sisters who married Messrs Chester, Lucy and Ozanne.

I think it’s Janey Lucy (mother of Julie, Betsy, Viola (and Kitten + the odd boy child?) who is Joey’s particular friend. Because Janey is also youthful and active and a chum to her children.

Mrs Chester is mother of Beth, Nancy, Barbara (+ Barnaby???) She is much more the traditional CS mother, increased by worry over Barbara’s childhood delicacy.

Mrs Ozanne, Mother to Nella and Vanna, seems more aloof (aka I can’t remember anything about her). Her daughters are bone idle at school and never expected to have to earn their own livings.

I may have mixed up Kitten, Barnaby and many boy offspring.

Hairpins, my loves.

In the days when naice adult ladies had long hair, it had to be pinned up. And pins can tug, yank, be annoying - ever got just one hair caught too tightly in one? You'll know...

Yes, Quater, that's the one: currently gawping at potatoes and interning Frieda.

I think I must have missed this period first time around - I remember them being on an island, and then in Switzerland, but Wales is new to me.

Am on the sofa today with sinusitis/raging temp, so my brain is v hot and confused anyway, but have TOTALLY lost the plot over the Chester/Lucy/Ozanne family tree improvisation fantasia. I have no idea how any of these are related to each other, or even which are supposed to be school age. There seem to be too many Nancy's as well...

I can’t remember where I came across this, but I’ve got it in my head that, historically, it used to be common practice for sick people to have their hair cut short.

But I can’t remember why, or where precisely I read that before.

That was to Athelstane, btw.

Is this Goes To It? Wonderful book!

I mean, if we’re going to start getting all technical, there is no reason to cut someone’s hair off just because they’ve had a bang on the head. I think Jack also does something similar to Jacynth, just because she’s got German Measles. It’s like he’s got some kind of obsession...

Well.

I've just arrived in Guernsey and we're leaving already. (Have not read this bit before).

Who the hell is this Naval Commander who stops them in the water, carries Jo to the inn, decides she needs to stay in bed for two days, and directs her to stop breast-feeding?!

It's all gone a bit weird.

I am finally beginning to see why the Armada versions were abridged

@TheMustressMhor Oh yes, I remember that as well. I'm quite old and first learned first aid in the early 70s, but I'm pretty sure that puking after a head injury was a cause for concern, not relief.

‘Fraid so!

I'm unscathed when it comes to peeling potatoes but has anyone else found that a childhood of reading CS novels has left them a stickler for correct use of 'can' and 'may'?

There's a similar bout of thankfulness when Win throws up after having been unconscious.

I have no idea why.

If it helps anyone, I was having problems with getting the links out of the Dropbox until I installed the Kindle app on my iPad and then it came up as an option to copy it there when you clicked on the little chain symbol, Create a Link and then Open In

I think the hair-white-overnight is a bit of a myth. Mind you, have just been rereading Mary-Lou and rolling my eyes a bit at the great recovering-consciousness scene - the kid's been in a coma for five days and the first thing she does when she wakes up is spew her ring? For which Dr Jack is 'thankful'? Firstly, surely she would have had nothing to throw up, and secondly, why is vomiting post-head-injury supposed to be a good thing?

I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels horribly guilty when peeling potatoes.

I felt it for years.

Then one day I just snapped and thought ‘fuck Frau Mieders. She didn’t have a full time job, 2 kids and 20 mins to prep this shepherds pie’.

And it hasn’t troubled me since.