Anyone remember E.B's Chalet School/Mallory Towers names?

Ah, you can read it in an afternoon if you ignore everyone and everything else for a bit .

Thank you Elaine.
The paperwork I am bogged down in will be even further neglected.

Which would certainly appeal to Ginty, wouldn't it?

Hope you enjoy Spring Term!

I think of him as the dark, smouldering type (and due to inherit the estate and the money).

Yes, I can never see the attraction of Patrick. Would this boring old reactionary who only ever talks about god and falconry really have all the blonde beauties from the house up the road throwing themselves at him?

just bought it on amazon - didn't know it existed.

Where can I get hold of Spring Term please?

And then Ginty for Nicola, if Spring Term is to be believed!

But what I love about af is that even the most apparently admirable characters have flaws. If Rowan thawed she wouldn't be Rowan. And the less admirable ones (lawrie, ginty, Lois) are so interesting.

For me, the most flawed good character is patrick. He is such a dumper. He dumps peter for nicola and then nicola for ginty. He has quite a nasty side.

I also love Jan, along with Miranda, the most. Of everyone, I would like to be miranda best (rather more than competent at everything and not quite as self sacrificing as the other goodies) but am probably a bit mire like janice (I tend to get labeled as uncooperative ).

My DD is Rowan

Thekla was a screaming snob who didn't like hanging around with Trade, like the daughters of bank tellers and - shock, horror - shopkeepers. Take that, Frieda Mensch and Sophie Hamel.

I have a mild, Miranda-like crush on Jan Scott - so aloof, so beautiful, so solitary and tough-minded, so right about Unflappable Rowan... (Don't quite know why I find her a lot more palatable than Rowan - maybe the fact of her being passed over for things and deemed 'uncooperative' for most of her school life?)

SilentMammoth, I knew there would be at least one CBBer on this thread!

Well quite. Nigerian so therefore Must Be A Good Athlete.

Thekla was a terrible racist while we're on the subject. She was from Prussian nobility and considered herself hochgeboren.

So said Jan Scott, though really she had more than a touch of the Rowan Marlows about her herself.

'A conviction that no-one could ask for anything more of life than to be Rowan Marlow'.

Yes, that would be pretty awesome, wouldn't it?

Elaine, I want to BE Rowan Marlow! Just to have that casual dignity that is the birthright of a Marlow. "Spring Term" is fabulous, so true to AF. I wrote a rather gushy e-mail to the author when it came out

OTOH you couldn't possibly call a baby Thekla.

Thank you NorthernLurker!

Any CBB-ers here?

Oh, I forgot which Black Girl was good at running....

It is a bit racist to refer to black people continually as such though.... although I'm sure Anne Digby thought she was being terribly right-on to have a Black Girl at all, it was a tad dodgy to have the Black Girl be called Aba Amori and be Good At Running, perhaps?

No no, she wasn't good at running, she was good at surfing. Aba Amori (another "black girl" - she was Nigerian) was the good sprinter. They weren't racist though, not at all, just clumsily phrased perhaps.

Yes, it is the sequel - it's really interesting, even if you don't buy into it all.

I read Trebizon too, though not all of them. And yes, she was ALWAYS called 'the black girl' - and she was good at running, as I recall. Used to annoy me how they called Rebecca 'Rebeck' for some reason.

I agree about Rowan being more interesting when thawed, too, like the one moment when she breaks down at the end of Run Away Home, when Giles and Peter turn up safe, but I suspect I'm just intimidated by her competence and toughness, and the admirable way in which she tackles running the farm straight out of school.

Giles is so much the Smug First-Born Son - there's that uneasy little moment in RAH when it's borne in upon Peter that he and his children won't be inheriting Trennels as he's a younger son. And of course Rowan has really given up her own choice of a career in order that Giles and her father not have to sacrifice their all-important naval careers, which is more than a bit annoying.

(Haven't read Spring Term - is that the recent non-AF sequel? I get a bit squeamish about those in general...)

This is a names thread, right? Am I alone in quite liking the name Thalia?

Oh, yes- the ones where they all went surfing all the time!

Did anyone read Trebizon? Rebecca, Tish, Sue, Mara (the Greek), another Margot (the black girl) and Sally "Elf" Elphinstone (the fat girl)

They were all good at sport, music, were clever and had boyfriends. Boarding school for the 80s.

Yes, I liked the fact they were moving toward a better relationship, and that Sally H. had picked up on the hints that they might in RAH. Whenever I re-read TRMF, I see more how and why Rowan was so angry and upset about what happened with The MIster. It's as though they were a team all through school ('the Elder Girls' as Nick puts it) but that gets dented through the End Of Term year... but would surely sort itself out in time.

I'm interested in the relationship between Karen and Rowan- that was explored in Spring Term really rather well.

Am also imagining dd running a farm in 18 months time, to my own amusement....