Some Fretwork and the Interminable Christmas Play at the Chalet School

I Have made some very superior scrapbooks full.of pictures of different wines. I hope they sell well.

I got complimented on my Italian this week at work. I was accidently copied into an email in Italian, so I put it into Google, then put the answer back through Google translate.
I think this is the only time I have ever been complimented on my language skills.

Met a chap called Mr. Humphries. He got on at Irstuk. Lovely bloke and we've drunk lots of vodka together but amazing he says he knows all about the chalet school and he's got a daughter there bizarrely called "The Robin". Do you know her? Apparently she's very sweet and something to do with this Joey of whom you all keep on speaking.

He's on his way to visit her and has promised to escort me so we will both see you soon.

I managed to speak to my parents - they've just received the letter about the school moving to Italy - they're a bit annoyed I'm missing so much of term wandering about various continents but they suppose its good for my languages.

Mr. Humphries says he knows a Russian Doll maker who will be able to let me have lots of unpainted ones

A beintot j'espere

I'm just putting the finishing touches to my model wine bar. Put your brains in steep, folks, because we need a comp for it.

I peeked into Inter V's form room the other day, and glory be, they seem to have got the distillery going again, just in time for the Sale. I don't know quite what they're planning - they weren't speaking very clearly, but they kept mentioning chapels and then falling about in gales of laughter.

Anyone know if we're on for a record number of lime green twinsets this year?

How are things going for our wine themed sale? Is it time for a grand show of all our work?

How are things going for our wine themed sale? Is it time for a grand show of all our work?

Well perhaps someone will be writing to explain to parents how they managed to leave the entire upper school without any adult supervision so that a child (Joey Bettany of course, who else?) has to risk her life to save a child from a neighbouring school (also unsupervised) from drowning in the icy waters of the lake as there aren't any adults to tell when they need help.

It is a wonderful school but they do seem surprisingly careless and none of the parents seem to mind whereas for St Scholastika's having a child in the lake is seen as potentially being the beginning of the end.

DD and I are now on to Eustacia which follows straight on from Rivals but I've noticed that whereas in Rivals the new term is going to start on 3rd Jan because they missed 3 weeks of school at the end of the previous term in Eustacia the same term is starting later because everyone is going to Bernhilda's wedding.

DD has taken the book to school - I think she's been reading it without me which means I shall miss some key plot points!

Ahh that explains why the lady with the daisies never appeared.

I've exercised my Mongolian to fullest extent and consumed a lot of vodka - can't believe I've now got to spend 5 more days and nights just getting back to Moscow. The Trans- siberian is so boring in places - just lots of pine trees (did you know Stalin put them there so travellers wouldn't be able to see the gulags?)

Ah well Moscow and thence Italy here I come. I've bought lots of cashmere for the knitting and thought I may buy some unpainted Russian dolls in Moscow - they might be good for hobby club.

Shame you left Mongolia, the vodka is good and I haven't got round to visiting the Gobi desert yet either.

Now please don't move again before I've arrived, this is all very tiring

Oh no, listsandbudgets, did your people not show you the prospectus? We've moved from Mongolia something about mass murder on the plains at the Nativity play, it's never dull around here and now we're living it up off the Italian coast somewhere south of Belsornia. I'm afraid it's back on the train for you, my lamb. It's just as well you're a seasoned traveller and you've brought plenty of books and knitting with you to keep yourself occupied. We'll ask the King of Belsornia to let us know when you cross the border, and I'm sure he'll arrange an escort down here for old times' sake.

Fingers crossed you'll make it in time for Madame's birthday. It's not long now, so we'd better start collecting. I'm sure she'd love another dainty coffee set - Jo will keep smashing them, bless the girl.

Please may I join?

I'll take the train - Calais - Paris, Paris - Prague, Prague - Moscow, Moscow - Ulan Bator... that last leg from Moscow only took 5 days which is nothing for a Chalet girl like me. I'm an efficient traveller. I've rolled up my travelling rug and remembered my umbrella.

A bit lost now I'm in Ulan Bator though. Having travelled through all those countries I've picked up lots of languages which I'm sure will be of benefit when I join you.

Stuck on Ulan Bator station - late arrival ... been told to look for a lady with a blue beret and a few daisies in her buttonhole... no one matching that description just yet... feeling rather nervous. Did learn Mongolian from nice lad on train but only "bayarla" (thank you) and nadad arcc ognu (pass the vodka please) and not sure that's going to get me far....

help

Isadora I suggest you sign up to Archive Of Our Own (AO3) for free and post it there and link here.

If its an actual 100 words one you could put it here too.

My mum has written a "Drabble" that she is very proud of, set in the CS...
is anyone here not on the FOCS site and would mind if I shared it here? I feel bad that I clearly don't appreciate all the nuances that true CS fans would get...

It should be about the triplets, but they haven yet developed any individual personality or character at all really. And I think their first school days take place in the 44-47 three year gap in the original series.

Thank you for the welcome.

Mornington DD still likes me to read aloud to her - she's 10 so perfectly capable of reading to herself. We tried the School at the Chalet and she really enjoyed it. I wondered whether she would as they are so old fashioned and it is a bit slow to get going because there's quite a bit of scene setting but after the first couple of chapters she was hooked.

In the story the information about the KKK is all found in 'awful' Elsie books - I had no idea what these were when I was young but thanks to the wonders of the internet they turn out to be books about a young girl growing up in the South after the Civil War whose family opposes the KKK. Which makes their glib use in this story even more surprising.

I've never read 'Three Go' and have to admit I'd always assumed it referred to the triplets starting school.

Strangely, the scene in Three Go which stays with me is OOAO in the apple orchard with the gardener explaining different types of apple to her. There's something about moving into a house with its own orchard and a gardener who can talk you through apple connoisseurship that evidently appeals to me. It went downhill once they went to school. grin

That scene is possibly one of the reasons I enjoy my tiny orchard of 5 different apple trees.

The ku klux klan bit is jarring. I didn't know what they were talking about when I first read rivals a gazillion years ago, but when I reread it as an edumacated adult I found myself really struggling to forgive EBD for whitewashing violence etc.

mornington I tried various heritage apples a while back, russets etc, and was hugely disappointed that Worcester Pearmains are brown and rough and taste of cotton wool!

I have been reading my old Chalet School books to my daughter who now wants to go on holiday to Austria next year to see mountains and lakes and all things Austrian.

How on earth have you managed that, Cedar03? Neither of my DDs ever took to the Chalet School and they refused point blank to read them. Welcome, btw.

All together now, girls, a rousing chorus of The Red Sarafan to welcome Cedar03.

Strangely, the scene in Three Go which stays with me is OOAO in the apple orchard with the gardener explaining different types of apple to her. There's something about moving into a house with its own orchard and a gardener who can talk you through apple connoisseurship that evidently appeals to me. It went downhill once they went to school.

Hallo can I join in? I have been reading my old Chalet School books to my daughter who now wants to go on holiday to Austria next year to see mountains and lakes and all things Austrian.

We are currently enjoying Rivals of the Chalet School where I was rather shocked to read the girls researching the Klu Klux Klan and thinking this a jolly good way to get at the girls from the rival school. This part clearly went right over my head when I read it myself. Tried to vaguely explain it to DD without much success.

Currently waiting for child from other school to fall in the lake to be rescued by Joey (this is the main part I remember about the book) and no doubt the old bronchitis kettle will be dusted off to help her recover from the pneumonia/fever/whatever she will inevitably suffer.

I'm pretty sure the Three Going are Mary-Lou, Verity-Anne and Clem - Ruth doesn't really feature much other than being a generic extra new girl so they can have the "goodness, I hope you don't have a double-barrelled first name too!" gasp.

I thought I'd read the unabridged version but I can't recall Miles/whatever his name is in this book Barras(s) being particularly awful beyond other adults having tempers in the books. Though it's odd how much has changed regarding not just not hitting or spanking children nowadays, but also not dragging or shoving them or locking them in places when needed, nor even shouting at them - which means my kids find most of Blyton and loads of other books from my childhood quite terrifying, when that really wasn't the intent of most of them! The parents in modern books are either so amazingly awful that they aren't taken seriously (Dursleys), or are limited to sighing and saying "I'm really very cross". My mum asked me how I discipline children if I can't hit them and I had to admit that sometimes I wonder... Sometimes I wish I'd never read about children trained to "instant obedience" as my kids really would never make Chalet continentals!

I rather like three go, other than the rather twee voices they lisp in to show they're juniors from time to time, and Joey's delight in calling people "Mokes" after picking it up from OOAO, which always made me cringe-it's so obviously an attempt to sound "with it"!

It's quite a nice ordinary showing of the new juniors arriving. Although I could never decide whether the third in three go was the third junior (Ruth Barnes wasn't it?) or Clem.

I was also massively underwhelmed by Three Go. I think I remember reading it (most likely Armada) as a child, because I remember expecting it to be about the triplets starting school and of course it's not. In the context of the entire series, it's one of the better post-war ones, but if you view the series chronologically there is imo a big drop in quality between Gay from China and the three short stories, and then another big drop between Rosalie and Three Go.

That said, Gillian Linton's is one of a vanishingly small number of romances which actually makes any sense at all! Miles ahead of dubious shit like Hilary Burn being sedated for days by random Dr-Graves-who-walks-with-a-big-knife and then suddenly being engaged to him.

Oooh yes, Emerence, I do love the Janeways names! Melody and Harmony - plus the conceit that only girls with fathers belonging to the Arts can attend the school.

I never read the Armada version of Three - it was the very last book I ever got hold of, so I had read a lot about Verity refusing to sing carols and OOAO, but it felt almost flat when I did read it. I think I had hyped it up so much as my Last Chalet Book that only a proper, melodramatic Rivals or Princess would have done the trick, chockful of kidnappings, fireballs, the KKK, falling-through-ice-heroics, and near-death experiences saved only by the singing of the Red Sarafan. Three is really rather placid in comparison - Mary-Lou's 'brain fever' just doesn't quite live up to Joey's pleuro-pneumonia (or in fact Joey's brain fever in School At).

The platz existed in an imaginary nether world where the fifties and sixties never happened, and the world of post ww2 Switzerland is very much reminiscent of Austria between the wars. Except that the only way EBD could maintain that was to ensure that the school and SAN and all who belong to them do not ever in any way interact with 'local' society.

I reread three go yesterday. And then read the unabridged version. There is a big huge plot device that amarda removed. I'd never read Gillian Linton's love story before. And the relationships between characters make so much more sense.

Plus they seem so much more human at the school when you have a teacher coming in and plaiting a girl's hair for her, and so on.

Also rereading thrilling term at janeways. So many awesome EBD special names. And 2 sets of twin 12 year olds arriving in a single term. Harmony and melody, and then philomela and philomena, whose parents are Phillip and Phyllis and other three sisters are phyllida, Philadelphia and Phillipa.

I realised too just how many truly abusive fathers there are in these books. In the unabridged version of three go miles Barras is beyond awful.

There's something about EBD and Blue Peter colliding that feels all sorts of wrong to me.

Oh dear, you've got me thinking about all those other 60s programmes Jack was secretly watching up at the San while Joey had her radio parties. Emergency Ward 10, perhaps, as comfort viewing? Or a good police drama like Dixon of Dock Green? 'Mrs X has taken a turn for the worse' would have been code for 'Crossroads is starting in half an hour, get yourself here', and 'Mr Y won't last through the night' meant 'It's the final of Opportunity Knocks'. Margot's devil was, of course inspired by early episodes of Dr Who.

Ahhhh I've seen that documentary before. It made me very happy but no, it's true, we are all trig and trim in our gentian blue revers.

There's something about EBD and Blue Peter colliding that feels all sorts of wrong to me. I don't really think of the Chalet School as persisting much beyond the 1940s, which is partly to do with hardly bothering with the Swiss books (also the way the Gornetz Platz is in a sort of weird time warp of earphones and radio parties) and Blue Peter feels as improbable a Chaletian bedfellow as, well. Armed robbers and motorboat races, I suppose.