Some Fretwork and the Interminable Christmas Play at the Chalet School

No, we all look trig and trim. they all look like my MIL and her sisters

Best bit in that blog is "OH NOES THERE IS A PINK WORM IN THE ENGINE!" Also a post entitled 'The Chalet School: If There's A Mountain We'll Try To Jump Off It'.

didyoueverstoptothink.wordpress.com/tag/elinor-m-brent-dyer/ Chalet blog that made me laugh a lot.

Btw, I recently watched a documentary about the Chalet School in which lots of women in early 90s Deirdre Barlow glasses, sweatshirts and paisley calf-length skirts went to Pertisau am Achensee and got on the steamer.

Have you been imbibing too freely of the light country wines or the special milk Cheddar my lamb? Or has there really been a documentary about the Chalet School? I must see this!

Loving the idea of a 70year-old EBD watching children's TV for plot ideas. I think she must have been watching Magic Roundabout when she was writing some of the later Swiss books.

Oooh, a regatta! Bags me to walk the greasy pole and collect the bag o' mutton! I think I could also manage to ride a panicked carthorse dressed a a mermaid/Neptune/Amphitrite (btw, does EBD think all wild Irishers hunt to hounds or something? Cf Deira wanting to have a horse before her/Norah Fitzgerald/Mollie Bettany saying 'any daughter of mine could manage that old spaltreen' or something equally colloquial made up).

Btw, I recently watched a documentary about the Chalet School in which lots of women in early 90s Deirdre Barlow glasses, sweatshirts and paisley calf-length skirts went to Pertisau am Achensee and got on the steamer.

Well, I may have a locket, that is hard to open, with a photo inside to prove I am someone's 23rd cousin 10 times removed thus allowing me to be a part of the Bettany/Maynard/Russell family.

Did anyone else catch the program about children's TV the other night? Not exactly sure what it was (helpful) but there was a bit about Valerie Singleton on Blue Peter racing a motor boat. Happened in 1968 - year before Althea was published and made me wonder if motor boats were a 'big thing' around then, or if EBD watched it and thought she'd pinch the idea. I've always thought the whole motor boat thing was a bit random, coming from a school that was pretty conservative in most ways!

Cripes, 1971 was certainly a landmark year.

And I was born in 1971!!!!!

I did some research to find out if it was in a connector somewhere, but it doesn't seem to be. Perhaps it was in a book that never saw the light of day?

Oh, that's not an impossible idea, now you mention it. I don't think it would have been her original plan to write only one book about St Mildred's. Maybe the mystery of the great contralto even interconnects with the mystery of why musical appreciation is taught by a former PT mistress who has changed her name and mislaid her husband. (Do you think GGBP have relaxed the rules on fill-ins enough yet that I can pitch that one to them?)

I can't help thinking your 46/midpoint thing could be an excellent starting point for some kind of comparative study of childhood in 1925, 1971 and 2017, told through the prism of girls' school stories, or something. At the very least it would make a more interesting contribution to FOCS / NCC journals than some I've seen.

I don't think I will try for the swimming races, but I thought could do a tub race but using the wine casks we will have helpfully emptied at the sale. Then e could also have a comp. to design, build and race a raft made from wine corks

Hurrah! A regatta, how topping! Splendid of you to remember, hels71 old thing. Is anyone prepared to take on dear Jo at the front crawl championships? Just because she's won it for the last 87 years doesn't mean she always will, bless the girl.

The one which really irks me is a variant on this - it's in Oberland where a woman in the audience starts telling them about the singer and how "one day she will no longer sing in concerts". And then disappears before she can say any more.

Yup, I noticed that on my recent Oberland re-read. I did some research to find out if it was in a connector somewhere, but it doesn't seem to be. Perhaps it was in a book that never saw the light of day? Or perhaps EBD was trying her hand at an EJO crossover!!

I've realised I celebrate an anniversary of sorts this year. I read my first CS book in 1971 - I know the date because I remember which class I was in at school (3rd year juniors as we called it back in the day). Anyway, I've worked out that makes it 46 years ago, and the first CS book was published 46 years before that. So I've been reading and re-reading Chalet School for exactly half the time that the series has been around. It makes me feel old to think there's as much time between my childhood and now, as there was between Joey's childhood and mine.

It's irrigating in a "I wonder if there was a better plot to this plotless book" type way.

Ha! Aren't there so many occasions where that happens, though? Even in the books which do already have plenty of plot, I mean.
The one which really irks me is a variant on this - it's in Oberland where a woman in the audience starts telling them about the singer and how "one day she will no longer sing in concerts". And then disappears before she can say any more. It has exactly the effect of those random EBD dropped threads - but it's deliberate! Why would you do that?!

Isn't prefects the ones where you get one of the kids stopped by the prefects in a plan (racing motor boats if I remember rightly) and saying "if they think they're going to stop me" and commentary along the lines of "the prefects were going to wish she'd never thought of it" and never a mention of it again for the rest of the book?

It's irrigating in a "I wonder if there was a better plot to this plotless book" type way.

Kathie' s exploits are in althea, the half term before prefects.

(Totes up for a regatta. Eager to catch the eye of an eligible local baron.)

Is that the one where Kathie Ferrars starts leaping from motorboat to motorboat, something like James Bond?

Right, as it is the summer term, I assume we are planning a regatta as well as the sale? I suspect it must be time for those motorboat races I am currently reading about in prefects...

Yeah - even with that helpful list of content from mornington, I still can't remember any of it! I sold it on almost immediately after reading it, so I must have been very confident I'd never want to read it again, but I could count on one hand the number of Swiss books I can imagine wanting to read again, so that's not necessarily as damning as it might sound coming from someone who can reread the Tyrol books almost endlessly.

I agree that the standard for the fill-ins has risen hugely through time, probably partly through a less anxious approach from GGBP. I think for me though the biggest predictor of how much I'll enjoy a fill-in is how I feel about the era and the characters. For me, Helen Barber's three full-length ones (both prequels plus CS Headmistress) stand head and shoulders above the rest, but most of her collection of short stories didn't interest me. And I was willing to be very tolerant of the Gillian fill-in even though some fundamentals of the story failed to convince me, because it's one of the gaps in the original series I most wanted to read.

I probably liked CGGU better than New Beginnings, although I suppose they're scarcely comparable!

Corney in my mind is definitely short and stocky, although can't remember specifically reading anything which supports or contradicts this. She definitely looks all sorts of wrong on the cover of Reunion, but then so does almost everyone except for Simone and the triplets...