when the posh children in Enid Blyton have an "ice", I always thought it meant "ice lolly"...

[sadpapercourtesan]

...but I was reading "Five Go To Billycock Hill" last night, and they talked about having an "ice" in a tub with a little wooden spoon...surely that's an ice cream?!

Yes, I have too much time on my hands. I should be doing stuff

Miss Peters was arguably gay as well. She definitely pinged Bill's gaydar

The two teachers as well.....games mistress? Miss Collins?

While I like a bit of queering school stories as much as anyone (Miss Wilmot and Miss Ferrars in the Chalet School, anyone?), I genuinely don't see any evidence whatsoever that Bill and Clarissa's relationship differed in any way from those of the multiple other sets of best friends at the school. They're not depicted as being any closer than Darrell and Sally, or Alicia and Betty, or Irene and Belinda, who've all been inseparable all the way up the school. Yes, they plan set up a stables together after they leave school, but then Sally and Darrell (and Alicia and Betty, come to think of it) are going to St Andrews together too.

In fact, Bill shows zero interest in Clarissa, a mousy new girl, until she asks her to come for a ride when she sees C is sad, and then their friendship seems to be entirely about their mutual love of horses, rather than one another.

I would say that Bill's relationship with the 'mannish' horsy Miss Peters who is described as Bill's friend in a way that is unusual for a mistress/girl relationship in an EB story is way more lesbian-coded than Bill and Clarissa. But even then, it stems from Miss P heroically riding cross-country at night to get the vet to save Thunder, rather than anything inherent in Miss P, other than her love of horses...?

There wasn't anything much of that sort of thing though. I remember reading the Trebizon books by Anne Digby, written in the '70s and '80s - and they had boyfriends like real teenagers! I'm sure even in the '40s and '50s, they weren't so focused on lacrosse and French verbs they were devoid of hormones - and they do walk into town to go to the cinema in MT, I think, so they must have been aware of filmstars and so on. Mind you, my father, at boarding school in the late '40s into the '50s, wasn't allowed to acknowledge girls in the street, even if it was his sister, who was at a nearby girls' school.

and they do walk into town to go to the cinema in MT, I think, so they must have been aware of filmstars and so on

I think EB thought that an excessive awareness of film stars was incredibly vulgar and likely to turn you into sophisticated American Zerelda, who wears make-up and her hair in a 'roll' on top of her head, in imitation of her favourite film star, Lossie Laxton. And has to be taught how to be an 'ordinary jolly schoolgirl'.

There is some plot about going to see a film in St Clare's, isn't there, but wasn't it about Clive of India or something, so historical and informative about Empire, rather than molls and gangsters...?

[quote sadpapercourtesan]@RedNun didn't Maureen boast about the two swimming pools at Mazeley Manor and say "you should have seen the playing fields!" though? I thought it sounded quite established and also thought it was odd that it had shut down when the Head died. I wondered whether it had had other problems and the Head dying wasn't really the reason.[/quote]
Maybe the Head was running it out of her massive house like Jo March/Bhaer's school in Little Men? Plumfield always sounded pretty huge also. And when she died it went to her nearest relative who had no interest in running a school and immediately transformed it into a spa.

Or perhaps she died in some kind of scandalous way and the school couldn't recover from the furore?

Oh, I am sure anything they were allowed to see at the cinema or theatre would have been thoroughly improving, but they would have still been exposed to posters and so on.

Pretty much all Americans tended to be vulgar in some way, and to do fast things like wear makeup. French girls were similarly against hearty things like games.

I like the idea of the Mazeley Manor Head dying in some booze-fuelled Happy Valley set escapade during the summer vac and the scandal shutting the school immediately.

And French girls were also obsessed with not getting a freckle from sun exposure, and had to be taught 'British honour'. Whereas having Spanish blood meant you were all tempestuous and at moments of excitement were liable to give bareback riding displays or acrobatics, because you used to be in a circus before your middle-class father decided to send you to school.

And girls with creative gifts were always absent minded and scatterbrained.

I had an Enid Blyton compilation and I can remember one story about a naughty fairy who had to paint the tips of daisies pink and another about a greedy child who ate all the pink and yellow sweets and ended up missing a party - I don’t suppose this rings a bell with anyone and they can point me towards the title

By astonishing coincidence having dug out Tales at Bedtime for the pictures I posted earlier, I was reading it’s twin today Tales after Tea. That had the story about the girl eating the cheap sweets after finding sixpence and missing the party. She then fessed up to the boy who had lost the sixpence and was invited to his party instead.

Don’t know about the daisy one though, I’ll keep reading 😂

And girls with brothers had had their " corners rubbed off" and were better for it!

St Clares had its fair share of disappearing students too. Whatever happened to Kathleen who was the twins loyal best friend? And Sheila who Janet sneered at for being a bit common and noveau? I would have told Janet to shove her tin of toffees up her arse for the lame non-apology.

Pamela Cox wrote some St Clare's continuation books for the missing years where new characters had a hasty dispatch at the end to explain their absence from the ‘later’ Enid books.

Yes, I wonder whether boys with sisters were regarded similarly, and whether a boy being escorted to the doors of his public school by his seven sisters on horseback would have been regarded with awe-struck approval as Bill's arrivals at MT. (I think we know the answer to that one, alas.)

@kierenthecommunity

St Clares had its fair share of disappearing students too. Whatever happened to Kathleen who was the twins loyal best friend? And Sheila who Janet sneered at for being a bit common and noveau? I would have told Janet to shove her tin of toffees up her arse for the lame non-apology.

Pamela Cox wrote some St Clare's continuation books for the missing years where new characters had a hasty dispatch at the end to explain their absence from the ‘later’ Enid books.

And Vera, who fell off a rope and broke her leg in the gym near the end of the term, was taken home to recuperate for the rest of the term and apparently never came back.

I would have told Janet to shove her tin of toffees up her arse for the lame non-apology.

God, yes! And it's not even just that Janet, one individual girl with a nasty tongue, thinks poor nouveau riche Sheila talks like 'the daughter of the dustman', the narrative voice agrees, and says that even though she's rich, she never washes her neck properly and doesn't brush her hair well enough -- clearly 'bad breeding' will out... And then we discover her mother was the daughter of the dignified headgirl's gardener, and her father was a shopkeeper. The horror.

And that the way the unfortunate Sheila should have dealt with this was by admitting to her humble origins and saying how proud she was to attend St Clare's with her social superiors...

And you get exactly the same with nouveau riche Jo Jones in Malory Towers -- her father is a loud, Cockney embarrassment who drives giant American cars too fast, has appalling manners and encourages his daughter to behave badly, so that she ends up stealing money and gets expelled.

Definitely the same snobbery about Jo Jones' "dreadful" father and his Cockney accent - one of the girls makes a nasty swipe about him using his massive wealth to buy himself a few hundred Hs

I've read them all again recently and was surprised at how brutal they are. I wouldn't have lasted five minutes (and I went to boarding school).

@sadpapercourtesan

Definitely the same snobbery about Jo Jones' "dreadful" father and his Cockney accent - one of the girls makes a nasty swipe about him using his massive wealth to buy himself a few hundred Hs

I've read them all again recently and was surprised at how brutal they are. I wouldn't have lasted five minutes (and I went to boarding school).

And about Jo's mother "dripping with diamonds".

I wondered whether Angela's mother, who was very beautiful, beautifully dressed and looked very young, but a really horrible person who loudly criticised everything to do with the school at half term, was actually as aristocratic as Angela (who was an Honourable so her father must have been titled) made her out to be, or whether her father had actually married some film starlet or something.

The bit that kills me in relation to Jo Jones and her father is that after he interrupts Miss Grayling talking to some other parents at halfterm, she actually tells the entire group of other parents at some length! that taking Jo at MT was an 'experiment that hadn't worked' and specifically blames the fact the school hadn't altered her for the better on her father!

(I was very baffled when I first read MT by Jo keeping her five pounds up her knicker leg. I had no concept of the voluminous, long-legged gym knicker, so I was literally imagining her rummaging around in her pants to show people her money!)

They were pretty unkind to Gwen - ok she was a PITA and a mummy’s girl but had they been a bit tolerant and kind rather than leaving her out all the time, she may have changed her ways.

Was it in St Clare’s where they were vile to a girl called Alma when they were way up in the fifth form? She committed the terrible sin of being fat and spiteful, but again, a bit of understanding eh? She obviously had an under active thyroid.

(I was very baffled when I first read MT by Jo keeping her five pounds up her knicker leg. I had no concept of the voluminous, long-legged gym knicker, so I was literally imagining her rummaging around in her pants to show people her money!)

I think in the updated books they’ve changed it to her wearing some games shorts under her dress

Was it in St Clare’s where they were vile to a girl called Alma when they were way up in the fifth form? She committed the terrible sin of being fat and spiteful, but again, a bit of understanding eh? She obviously had an under active thyroid.

Yes! They called her "pudding" and got annoyed with her when she didn't find it funny!

I'd be seriously spiteful too if my schoolmates thought it was unreasonable that I didn't find my fat-shaming nickname a wizard jape.

@kierenthecommunity

They were pretty unkind to Gwen - ok she was a PITA and a mummy’s girl but had they been a bit tolerant and kind rather than leaving her out all the time, she may have changed her ways.

Was it in St Clare’s where they were vile to a girl called Alma when they were way up in the fifth form? She committed the terrible sin of being fat and spiteful, but again, a bit of understanding eh? She obviously had an under active thyroid.

Yes they never went out of their way to be welcoming and kind to new girls in either school. Unless the new girl was obviously fun from the start like Don't Care Bobby in Summer Term at St Clares.

They were horrid to Eileen at St Clare's too. The only St Clare girls I liked were Claudine and Carlotta.