Some Fretwork and the Interminable Christmas Play at the Chalet School

I was vaguely thinking that too Witchend - that people would have been using sugar directly in cooking and baking more than we do - but I couldn't think of another obvious example apart from jam! I bet my weekly sugar consumption now is well over 8oz but I am a lazy modern gel and virtually all of mine has been added to my food by somebody else.

I still need to finish Sisters... I'm only about a quarter of the way through, although I am enjoying it - just need to be packed off for a few days at Penny Rest to actually find the time and energy for it.

Another website :
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdom
says sugar was rationed with the minimum allowed was 8oz, and max 16 oz.

However thinking about it, people used sugar more than I think. I think most people added it to tea for example. But people would have been making cakes and jam etc.
I think the WRVS got extra sugar supplies for jam making in the blackberry season.

I think rationing fluctuated during the war. So you were entitled to 1 coupon of it but it varied how much that was worth.

But I've just looked it up on the BBC and it does state 8 oz for 1945:
www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/84/a4537884.shtml

So I suspect either that was fairly constant or the author used that as a source.

mornington - I've read Sisters and enjoyed it. I liked the fact that we saw the triplets starting school, and I thought the whole book held together quite well. I did find the fact that the youngest one (Ruth?) dies later in the series somehow overshadowed it a bit though....don't know why but it just seemed really sad to see this lovely little character develop when you know that she has a bad ending (I think I like children's books because you usually don't get those sorts of sad endings).

I found the information on rationing at the end fascinating too...particularly the 8oz of sugar per week for adults? Was it really that much? I always got the impression that there wasn't much sugar about, but that seems loads to me! What were they doing with it all??

I think EBD was guilty too of plagiarism, so probably wouldn't have dared!

Oh my. I'm reading (thank you GGBP) Swiss School by Mabel Esther Allan. So far there's a storyline about girls sneaking out to attend the ice fair from which they've been banned as it's too rough, and one where Our Heroine is locked in the shed by a jealous rival and has to smash a window and climb out so that she can take her starring role in the school concert. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I'm surprised MEA didn't get sued!

Oh how remiss of me! Here we go.... looooooo....

Sadly I found no doctor who was willing to accompany me. Something was often muttered about "ghastly career woman" in the vicinity of my room. Wonder who they were referring to?

Margia my lamb, it's simply topping to have you back with us. Have you brought any handsome doctors with you? We've been standing outside Madame's window since July 4th waiting for you to pipe 'loo' in your true little treble as our signal to begin. Do hurry up and give us the note because some people have got toilets other places to go.

In other news, I've got to the end of Sisters. Anyone else?

Ah, here you are, my loves! Apologies for my absence, following a successful concert tour I contracted a terrible illness and had to spend a considerable amount of time in the San to recover. As a consequence I seem to have totally lost my access to the OneDrive and also have totally missed the wonder of Mongolia!

The Abbess thinks I should recuperate here and play daily, although Plato may be somewhat more strict...

Interested to hear what people think of that one. Have read Juliet of and am now enjoying and robin, with corney somehow more robin's contemporary than jo's. I do rather like the plans howell years. It's the Swiss ones that somehow are unanchored and narrowly concentrated on the school and jo's family that I find harder to believe in.

I have ordered it and shall endeavour to read it by the end of next week. Excited!

It's a GGBP one, Nell, by someone called Amy Fletcher whose name didn't ring a bell for me, set in Armishire at the end of the war. The author is holding a gorgeous dog in the picture of her on the back - dog definitely posing for the photo.

I've PMd you Emerence.

Mornington my lamb I am completely out of the loop and haven't even heard of this Sisters book! New fill-in?! I must order it immediately. must also check I haven't already pre-ordered it and forgotten all about it

My copy of Sisters of the Chalet School arrived yesterday . Anyone else got it/read it? I'm planning to start reading it as soon as I've finished my current book, and wondered if anyone would like to discuss it in a few days.

Emerence I'm a tecchie failure and I've never negotiated the onedrive myself, but I'm sure someone will be along soon to help you out.

Popping up my head again to ask if the one drive details could possibly be shared. I'm 4 weeks into a hospital stay (home next week we think) and my brain is too tired for 'real' books. I'm just reading Juliet of the CS and I have a couple of other fill ins, but some of the originals too would be nice.

I agree, Nell and Witchend. As a teen I remember reading some updated Dimsie books, never having read the originals. It was baffling - I couldn't tell whether they were about a modern school, or written several decades before in a world with which I was by then familiar having been steeped in Chalet School. The attempts to update the Dimsie texts really didn't work, because none of the cultural references could realistically be updated (anti-Soppists just weren't a thing in the early 1980s) but they were using decimal money and some editor's version of 1970s slang. It was much more confusing than if they'd just kept to the original.

I find the 'updating' quite a weird thing, conceptually. It's a really limiting view of children (or anyone), that they/we can only cope with reading stories about people who inhabit exactly our world
I totally agree with this. It's rare (if ever-I can't think of any) where I would prefer the updates version. I can remember being really upset finding that the children's version of "Children of the New Forest" had been updated in language, it lost a lot of the charm. I found an old copy eventually and dd2 also preferred it
It's the same as (I'm told) that if a British book is published in America then they change it to an American version (pants/diapers/color etc). Now I'm sure that if we as children were more than capable of working these out, then American children are capable of working out the other way round. It does seem a little insulting of the publishers to assume that.
(although the Hardy Boys spending a "semester" in Oxford university was hilarious in the extreme. 5 minutes of research on the web would have shown little things like it not being a campus university etc and made it a much better book)

Ha! Someone I work with had a baby Josephine in 2015. I also know one of 13, so pretty much perfect for early CS. no I didn't have the guts to ask either mother if it was a Chaletian reference

I find the 'updating' quite a weird thing, conceptually. It's a really limiting view of children (or anyone), that they/we can only cope with reading stories about people who inhabit exactly our world. I agree there are a handful of phrases that could do with editing out (and 'working like a " would be top of my list!), but in general I think the language and the names and the currency are of its time and place. I think I liked the specific dated-ness of the earlier and wartime CS books as a child, in much the same way I like Dickens' Victorian London or Laura Ingalls Wilder's prairie. I think one of the things about fiction is that it enables the reader to look beyond those boundaries, isn't it?

Plus obviously discussing the complicated position the Chalet School would occupy in 2017 is interesting - it'd seem a shame to lose that opportunity by trying to merge the two in any convincing fashion! Although I guess there's something rather free school ish about it all, so it's not as utterly impossible as it might have looked ten years ago...

The fact that a child nearly dies practically every term in the early books would mean that the school got shut down pretty quickly.

Then each episode could be followed by a chapter called "The Health and Safety Report/Recommendations". or after a bad one "Ofsted Inspects"

I don't think you could update them, really. The fact that a child nearly dies practically every term in the early books would mean that the school got shut down pretty quickly. But those are the most exciting parts of the books and without them you're just left with high jinks relating to dropping ink everywhere (of course that wouldn't work either in the world of biros).

As for the absolute obedience expected by the girls - well I'm afraid my 10 year old just laughs when I suggest that she behaves like that

DD just accepts them as period pieces - as they are.

I was just reading the Faraway Tree updated thread and wondering how the Chalet School books would fare updated.
Obviously some of the names are very dated-I don't think I've met a Josephine aged under about 50, and ones like Barbara are also dated. But there's so many outdated names, and interspersed with the German/French/Other nationalities names (which may well also be dated) I suspect it wouldn't work changing them. Josephine could become Joanna, I guess (my friend Joanne was always Jo or Joey) but you'd always be thinking "Who?" if you had a mixture of the books.

You could change uniform dress into sweatshirt and jeans etc, but such a lot of it is dated, plus you have the WWII stories, that I don't think it would be recognisable or you would have to condense several books into one by taking so much out.

But then is it needed? I think because it is clearly dated, it doesn't need to be updated other than occasional remarks like "working like a * * * * * *"

I think that's why people get indignant about the Enid Blyton books. Because although they're dated, they're not clearly dated so people judge them by todays standards. When I read them as a child I thought they were about modern children, and I know dd2 was astonished to find they were over 50 years old (or the early ones were)

I think for the time they were quite progressive-girls would be expected to stay safe, so George keeping up with the boys would have been a shot for feminism.
And people would have assumed if someone was wearing boys clothes that they were a boy, hence the constant mistakes, they wouldn't have looked further than the clothes. Of course to truly update it, perhaps George would become trans?

I've just bought three Chalet books from a second hand book shop I found on holiday. Have read Trials and am halfway through Triplets - both full of the usual near death experiences. Avalanches, winter sports accidents, a motorcycle crash (which surprisingly enough was rather skimmed over), an unexpected blizzard, and pupils getting lost.
I bought Genius Too, which I have read, I think, but it was years ago. So sad to be so happy!

This thread is ripping! Oops, slang, sorry Madame. I'd love to join the school, a little late due to a terrible sledging accident.

Ahem, Mornington. The Queen of Belsornia, if you please. And yes, I did send my gaily apparelled henchmen to escort lists, after all I am always a Chaletian.