I have just blued £30 on Nicola bloody Marlow

Is Mary-Lou at the Chalet School the one where there's a new girl (Naomi?) who has a disability and gets strong-armed from agnosticism into Christianity by the insufferable Mary-Lou in an avalanche?

Enid Blyton is crammed with unpleasant class stuff. Nouveau riche girls in the school stories always get their comeuppance, getting ticked off for speaking 'like the dustman's daughter' or expelled for having a father called Cheeky Charlie with a fast car car who doesn't defer to the school governors stealing.

Though the bit that fascinated me about Jo stealing the money after Matron had confiscated hers was that she stuck it up the leg of her knickers. At eight, I wasn't envisaging giant, well-elasticated 'strong' knickers, and was imagining Jo rummaging around in her scanties...

It's only OK to be a semi-prole if you're exotic and do cartwheels and ride random horses bareback all the time, like the half-Spanish circus girl.

Yes- when it comes down to it, Attic Term is just In the Fifth at Malory Towers or Mary-Lou at The Chalet School but by someone with a talent for writing, an imagination and a gift for characterization.

Sobering, isn't it.

Opened this thread because of the Marlows (obvs), but have to post to say I adore the Bishop of Burnley, Broomstick

The bit in (I think?) Attic Term where Nick and Miranda, in their best shopping-trip uniforms and boaters, go to a hip secondhand clothes shop staffed by an amiable drug-dealing stoner who greets them with 'Shalom' is one of the funnier 'two worlds confront one another' moments' in AF. It's unobtrusively done, but confident Miranda is weirdly reluctant to go inside, and when Nick asks 'Do you have gear in our size?' I've always assumed that 'gear' is her attempt to be down with da kidz, 1970s Kingscote-style. Only they end up shopping him to the authorities, anyway.

And exactly why the two of them, having only gone into the shop to buy something for Miranda to wear in the evenings when their au pair packed her the wrong dress, ended up buying their entire form cool clothes on a whim, I've never quite understood. And Nick must have looked like the Bay City Rollers in her outfit!

I definitely had a crush on Harriet rather than Lord Peter.

It's funny (or at least I am amused) at how far to the right people like the Marlows and pretty much any Noel streatfield characters and every other popular 20s-50s children's book characters are. I was quite enjoying my bargain shocked it was even available let alone cheap copy of under the rainbow (streatfield as Susan Scarlett) and then the condescending paternalism became too glaringly obvious even for me to ignore.

I think maybe the impossibly smug way the characters just assume that of course they are always going to exist in this comfortable landed gentry type existence is what is so infuriating, once you notice it.

Oh I had forgotten that. But it must have been a bit tricky her phoning every night- and she is a bit of a lightweight, so they must have run out of things to say to each other And presumably he arranged the separate meals to avoid dining with his parents? I think they often had guests so the prep excuse would have been a good one. So cross at dd stealing the books-I want to read them all again!

It's when Ginty is phoning him every night in Attic Term, and he wishes she'd phone either earlier or later because her call often coincides with Claudie bringing him some leftovers from dinner, because apparently he doesn't eat dinner with his parents because of his prep.

Which sounds a bit infantilising unless they go in for lengthy multi-course affairs every night...? Thank heavens there's a sexy, amoral French jolie laide waiting to help him grow up....

"When I want to thwack him with a rolled-up newspaper is when Claudie brings him leftover creme brûlée and he tastes it and says something like 'I'll pass this',"

I don't remember that

No, only in our fevered imaginations. Or do people mean the bit where Patrick discovers he's been expelled, is so thrilled he dances Claudie around to the strains of Liliburlero, kisses her and then (with a Roger Moore style eyebrow quirk, I always imagine) says 'That was rather pleasurable. Might we do it again some time?'

Which, even for a Patrick-hater, is so youthful-pompous and redolent of zero sexual experience trying to sound caddish, it's almost endearing...

When I want to thwack him with a rolled-up newspaper is when Claudie brings him leftover creme brûlée and he tastes it and says something like 'I'll pass this', like the man from Del Monte, or the Times restaurant critic.

Was there another incident with Claudie? The one I remember is when the Merricks were staying in London and Claudia asked Patrick whether it was OK if her boyfriend stayed over. She then asked him about him and Ginty and was surprised they weren't sleeping together, and offered to have sex with Patrick. He said no-then she asked him why not. He said something about it only being OK when you're in love or of it's paid for and she said something mocking and French about being amazed he knew about that. Or am I misremembering? Dd has stolen my books and taken them to university with her!

Yes, when I used to go to mass at the Oratory in Oxford, the place was crammed with young fogeyish Patrick Merricks meditating on ancestral brushes with Blessed Edmund Campion and taking their indiscretions with the au pair to their confessors. I surreptitiously checked for golden eyes.

I realized in later life that I think my crush was on Harriet, not Peter.....

Actually, I'm sure she offered and he said no. I remember being impressed by the writing when I first read it.

Most of my fictional crushes would be pretty obnoxious if they were real. Payrick is at least more realistic than Peter Wimsey. He's just a bit of a right-wing young fogey, of the type who were Tories at university and who make up a proportion of the congregation at my Anglo-Catholic church. Come to think of it, I have a bit of a crush on the Bishop of Burnley, who is a modern, Anglican equivalent, who refuses to accept the ordination of women, but is rather good looking and passionate about his beliefs.

I thought Claudie offered and Patrick said no?

Claudie?? Don't you mean the servant that Patrick decides would be a useful body to practice on? How is he going to allow her to alter his thinking or his life?

I think she only appears so that we know Patrick won't become a priest.

I'm not at all rational about Patrick - obviously i had a crush on him myself for a bit

Mind you, the Marlows are somewhat to the right of Atilla the Hun- except for Ann, who is despised for it.............

No - the Marlows are all fair, but Patrick has 'golden eyes', and is dark and skinny.

I can see a scenario when he might be allowed to become Rees-Mogg-ish, but I don't think the influences of his dad (a reassuringly normal MP ), Claudie, and at least knowing the Marlows, would allow that.

Of course if he were Rees-Mogg then Victoria Coren would be Nicola or Ginty (or Lawrie), flirting outrageously with him on HIGNFY...

Good Lord- Patrick's blond, isn't he???????

I think you're horribly right about Jacob Reese-Mogg. He even has the floppy hair.

annandale Noooooo!!!!! Pass the brain bleach!

Much more Rupert Everett in Another Country, floppy 80s hair and too intense for his own good.

I'm afraid I think of Patrick every time I see Jacob Rees-Mogg.

Giles is unnecessarily horrible to Nicola when she runs away from school to visit him, though.

My ds is Patrick for other reasons- but I am secretly pleased.........

Giles only really appears in RAH and is obnoxious. Seems to be the cossetted first-born son with a superiority complex.
The fic where he marries Mary-Lou is ace though.

I'm very fond of Patrick - I think he'd grow up into a bearable human being, annoying as he is. I'm more worried about Peter's death toll (already killed a Kommendant and Jael, nearly killed a sister when the gun went off in Peter's Room, and it's amazing he and others havent died at sea thanks to the cock-up at the start of MATT and of course RAH). I just pray he ditches the Navy as soon as he can.