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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

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

696 replies

CarrotVan · 19/09/2019 21:13

Shenanigans at the Chalet School featuring sales of work, sub text and full fat menu

OP posts:
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Yugi · 13/11/2019 20:53

I got soaked to the skin at work last week and had to stay outside in wet clothes for hours. I would certainly be in the san for weeks if not months, not back at work the next day.

Howyoualldoworkme · 13/11/2019 20:51

Boiling hot bath and special milk for you straight away!

PhilSwagielka · 13/11/2019 20:33

I was standing by an open door last night waiting for my cat to come in. If I was a CS girl, I'd have been given such a bollocking!

Papergirl1968 · 13/11/2019 20:10

Don’t know, sorry, but standing by an open door in winter for ten seconds definitely will!

Yugi · 13/11/2019 19:11

I’m not a doctor so can someone confirm that removing my blazer will immediately result in pneumonia? 🤣🤣

PhilSwagielka · 13/11/2019 16:48

Yeah, Madge is always telling her to brush her hair and it's always described as looking like a golliwog's.

Squirrel26 · 13/11/2019 15:17

Isn’t Joey always described as kind of scruffy when she’s young anyway? There’s a lot of going on about how her hair’s always all over the place. (Another example of how young Joey is endearing because she isn’t perfect, and older Joey is just bloody annoying because she is!)

PhilSwagielka · 13/11/2019 09:48

Look out for squalls, my lamb!

Howyoualldoworkme · 13/11/2019 09:16

And if I hear 'on our/your/my arched insteps' once more...

PhilSwagielka · 13/11/2019 08:50

@CarrotVan that was definitely EBD talking through Joey. Joey's supposed to be cosmopolitan and open-minded but she goes on this weird rant about how being scruffy in public means you can't be trusted, and it's so obviously EBD using Joey as a mouthpiece. Unlike Antonia Forest, EBD always made her main characters parrot her own views. It's like when Miss Wilson does that big speech about how it's a woman's duty to be a wife and homemaker - it sounds realistic coming from someone like Frieda who isn't expected to work, but not from an academic and possibly lesbian science teacher.

NewSchoolNewName · 13/11/2019 06:44

@CarrotVan

That’s the trouble with reading them all at once.

If you only read one every few months, or read them in a random order, the cabbage patch transformation would be new and fresh and you’d be thinking how clever of Jo to turn it into a beautiful rose garden.

I think Jo would also be less irritating in small doses.

Original poster
CarrotVan · 12/11/2019 21:35

If I read about the Freudesheim cabbage patch one more time...

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AthelstaneTheWhoooOOOooo · 12/11/2019 21:24

I too am beginning to think it was a mistake to binge-read. Am on 57 now, and have had quite enough of that 'golden voice' and soft black eyes, and bloody interfering and child-napping.

Carrot, that session in the train made me realise exactly how whatserface managed to write the whatever-became-of sequel where Joey gets dementia and just relives the same old tread over and over. It's because she always did, only times and customs stayed roughly the same so that it wasn't too noticeable. Until the 60s with those filthy, disgusting beatniks. Joey suddenly sounds like everyone's disapproving Granny, complete with entire train-travel washing, clothing, tutting, and entertainment kit.

bibliomania · 12/11/2019 15:21

Shame, but at least your granny had her Parisian hats!

Original poster
CarrotVan · 12/11/2019 14:41

I don't think so - they pre-date the internet by a very long way. My sister compiled them all and sent them around the family but I don't think they exist digitally

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bibliomania · 12/11/2019 13:45

Are those stories available anywhere, Carrot? I have an inexplicable yearning to read them...

Original poster
CarrotVan · 12/11/2019 12:46

I doubt it. Might give you some 'pin money'

My granny used to write doctor/nurse stories for The Lady and it kept her in hats (from Paris). They were very EBD I think - lots of young Catholic doctors meeting lovely and worthy young women who are choosing between lay nursing and becoming nuns until they meet dashing Catholic doctor and Their Path is Clear

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Papergirl1968 · 12/11/2019 12:14

I’ve sometimes thought about writing one too. I wonder if there’s much money to be made from it. As in, enough to earn a living.

bibliomania · 12/11/2019 12:09

@Parker231, I've been fighting so long but now I give in - may I have the Dropbox link too?

Original poster
CarrotVan · 12/11/2019 11:54

Jack Lambert is an appalling little git. And Margot is a right nutter.

Summer Term has the marvellous description of the 'beatniks' which makes Joey sound so very, very prissy

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Howyoualldoworkme · 12/11/2019 11:21

I've just finished 'Jane' and what an awful little bully Jack Lambert is! Trying to scalp Jane and then Jane gets some of the blame for trying to defend herself? It's just like Betty and the bookend.
And Margot slapping the girl in the lift in 'Reunion'? Has EBD got a soft spot for psychos?

As for Joey adopting random children, I think EBD was planning for her to have those blasted quads but even she realised that would be the outside of enough so diverted it into random child collection.

I'm another that skims over plays and sports now. I've read 51 books in a row, I could probably write one!

Original poster
CarrotVan · 12/11/2019 10:06

I'm up to Summer Term and WTAF is Joey doing just acquiring a small child in a train crash to be a sister for Erica Jane? And why would someone who knew Joey for a few weeks 20 years ago refer to her as Aunt Joey and leave her child to Joey? The batshit woman doesn't even know where Joey lives and Joey doesn't even know the child exists so they clearly weren't BFFs.

And Adrienne being related to Robin is a stretch and a half. And the sheets and pillow cases party for the whole Senior School at Joey's place. When there's seas of mud outside. How about doing it at the school instead? So it's less bloody work for poor spinster Anna and the Coadjutor (or whatever Rosli's ghastly title is)

Plus the cartoon gangsters in Redheads

What in the name of My Aunt Sophonisba was EBD smoking???

And I've started skimming straight through descriptions of skis crossing and interminable Christmas plays

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PhilSwagielka · 12/11/2019 10:01

I've just finished The Lost Staircase. It's barking mad, but brilliant. All the usual EBD tropes are there - cellos, big dogs, girls getting injured, Catholicism, a teacher marrying a doctor, double pneumonia, deferential servants. The Gellibrand family are basically cursed. Jesanne is lovely (and I wanted to smack her governess) and I wish there had been more of her in the CS books - I think she only really appears in Lavender. The ritual where she has to wear an ancient blue robe and wander the house with a dog and a lantern and ask, "Is anyone there?" every time she enters a room is great to read about as well. The plot about the hidden treasure also makes me wonder if it was an inspiration for all the Dai Lloyd subplot in Shocks.

SurpriseSparDay · 12/11/2019 08:52

FelicityBeedle You poor thing! How did you manage to drag yourself through all those long, dreary years of pointless existence?

Halloween Grin
Doubleraspberry · 12/11/2019 07:33

Thank you. Christmas list time. Katherine Bruce wrote Peace Comes to the Chalet School which goes for a higher price than the original books, but I think I read somewhere that it might be reprinted next year?