The chalet school and ofsted?

[thebody]

Aibu to wonder what Ofsted would have made of the Chalet school.? Any fellow chaletians around?

I thought Tom was an inner city missionary working in London's East End. She and the boys she works with keep on making the dolls houses/chalets/villages for the Sale each year, don't they.

I am meant to be working but have been reading this thread and laughing my head off. There is a bag of my old chalet school books up in my mum's attic. I'm now very tempted to get them down and re-read them. I'd forgotten most of the characters (apart from Jo and her gi-normous family, the saintly Mary Lou and a few others) but it's all coming back to me now.

Do you think they are better re-read on a sun dappled lawn, or should I wait a few months and read them on a wintry November afternoon in front of the fire?

oh, re read them now! I'm loving them during night feeds :) may just have bought a few hard copies from ebay

I'm getting to read the non-abridged versions for the first time (thank you all the luffly people who emailed me) .

When they're waiting for 5-year-old Robin to arrive Madge says "We shan't find her too much of a baby." From then, what does EBD call her? The baby. And when they spend Christmas with the Mensches, Robin is given Frieda's old cot and has to ask Joey to lift her out of it when she wants to get up.

The cot could be that was the only spare bed. I remember being put back in the cot when I was 3yo and all the cousins were staying. I remember holding my hands up for my oldest cousin to pick me up. I was out of the cot at 18 months, but I don't remember being upset at being put back in, more excited because of the visitors.

However they do baby her dreadfully, bathing her and dressing her until she's way too old. I think there's another time she's referred to as sleeping in a cot or a crib, when she's about 8yo, because I started reading them at 8yo, and remember double checking her age.
She's still being carried round in the Exile book-age 14! Even if she was tiny for her age, I can't see many people being able to carry a 14yo up mountains even with full meals, let alone on the skanty rations they had with them.

I think the problem was EBD didn't really know what to do with her once she wasn't the interesting school baby.

I remember finding the way Robin was treated as a baby very strange. I recall one scene where a crowd of them were standing around admiring her when she was asleep as if she was about six months old when she was actually about 7.

Yay this thread is back! I am loving reading all the e-books that lovely MNers sent me. My current moments:

• Anne Seymour misses out on being made Head Girl because she slipped off the side of a mountain picking flowers, when this was a positive recommendation for Jo, Grizel and other HGs passim
• Thekla ate a rasher of raw bacon??!!!
• Miss Wilson sleeping with Miss Stewart to free her bed for Jo and Gillian, who will be late in after a late night romp catching the Middles acting
• Bette's husband and Robin's father - break it to us gently, EBD!

something that's puzzling me on my re-reading - Dick and Mollie are in India, and it's generally accepted that British DC will be sent back home when they are 4. Why? But then later on the Second Twins are 8 and still there?

Did people just hand their DC over to relatives? For years on end?

YY to all the Robin queries. Why at age 7 can't she bath and dress herself?

Some of the bits taken out in my Armada paperbacks are - in one of the early ones, one of the maid was described as being like a typical peasant, slow and stupid (words to that effect, am at work so can't check exact phrasing). There's a few other bits like that too.

Yippee my thread back.

Yes simmering same sex passions. Cathy ferris and nancy Wilmott, Hilda and Nell and why was Neil shepherd hanging around with young doctor Hamilton on his days off?

Just re read Chalet school reunion where Grizel gets married and Len nearly dies but Grizel saves her.

Robin or blumchen is a bit of a pain in the arse to be honest, agree on that one.

The one true saint though is Anna rising at 4 am to pick lettuces for an expedition. Ye gods that woman needed a nanny contract.

The book which really raises my face is "The Chalet School and Jo". There are so many places that I go agghhh!

We have Jo making a fuss about being head girl and being told "Marie is no leader" in chapter 1. Chapter 3 it says Marie "had a considerable following in the school" and it is acknowledged that if she stands against Jo's suggestion (Of Stacie as mag editor) then the prefects may well go with her.

Then we have the dramatic scene of telling Jo that the Robin may have TB. Why tell her then, when the tests are coming next week when they know that she will react violently?

And then Jo is told to tell Marie and Frieda but not Simone despite them being a close foursome. Simone is depicted as being unreasonable to think she's been left out (if she found out) but it would be a very obvious leaving out.

Then we have Jo's almost immediate reaction that Stacie is to blame. She says it despite Marie saying it's not, and is blatently nasty to her. Then when she finds out Rob is fine, then she tells Stacie that it wasn't her fault and EBD writes "Stacie... always felt a deep gratitude for Jo saying that." And I think we're meant to think how wonderfully kind of Jo to think that and say that... but actually it's obvious that if the Robin had been found to be ill then she would have continued to blame her.

Next issue is that they know Jo is fretting about the Robin, so why didn't Madge phone her up and tell her right away they knew it was okay? She waits for Miss A to phone and ask. And then she refuses to tell Miss A because it is "Jo's right to know first"-we'll tell her at the weekend and then we'll let you know either. That's quite rude to Miss A really isn't it?

And the adopting of Biddy must be one of the strangest episodes. And deciding the school can't keep her, but the Guides can raise money for her and they'll train her up to be a maid and send her to the village school despite her apparently not speaking anything but heavily accented English...

love this thread! I get frustrated by the whole "Jo was the best Head Girl we ever had" nonsense in the later books when there was nothing at the time that particularly stands out. All part of the beatification of Jo by EBD I guess.
I am gradually replacing paperbacks and filling gaps with GGB books but have pounced on your Google list Elennare and want to beg anyone with Mystery, Rosalie, Joey goes to Oberland and Jane to PM me!

I used to love these. I'll have to look into reading them again, hopefully my mum has my copies as I can't afford to buy any new copies!!!

DeWe so agree. I don't see why jo was such an outstanding head girl?

I always wondered what Marilyn did so badly that they decided to exclude special sixth from the head girl position.

I also hate the 'next time quads' line from a woman who has 11 freaking children and seemingly no bodily issues. No repairs or stitches and seemingly no caesarians despite having triplets and 2 sets of twins!!

But love the books as such escapism.

Marking my place - so delighted to see this thread. Haven't read everything but was always struck by extraordinary levels of prettiness the popular girls were blessed with - sweeping lashes huge limpid eyes, tumbling curls etc. recently re read lavender laughs ...

- Bette's husband and Robin's father - break it to us gently, EBD!
YES! I actually went all the way back to the beginning of that book and double-checked I hadn't somehow missed the previous book, it came so out of nowhere.

Having missed the book the triplets were born in (Exile?), I wondered who they were named after. Margot was obvious, and I remembered "Charlie" Stewart was Constance, but got completely stuck with Len. Even when "Chalet School Does It Again" told me she was Helena, I didn't realise until "Chalet Girl From Kenya" that it must be after her godmother Nell Wilson! (In my defence, the only Helen I know goes by Helen, so I never remember Nell is a nickname for it...)

The fathers never seem to get much say in the names, somehow!

Lazy moment from EBD in those books - the description of visiting the echoes is almost word for word from one book to the next, right down to both Biddy O'Ryan and Miss Wilson "lifting her voice in a clear yodel, to the admiration of her pupils, who had no idea she possessed that accomplishment."

I thought it odd in "Joey Goes To The Oberland" that Marie doesn't get a visit, or even a phone call! Poor Marie...

Isn't there one of the later Chalet School books where Joey doesn't even realise the Robin is temporarily at a nunnery in France until the Robin sends a girl (Adrienne?) to the school?

What was that about? Given how close they seemed when at school themselves......

Bette's husband and Robin's father - break it to us gently, EBD!

What?? What???

They died in a climbing accident
It's mentioned lightly in passing in The New Chalet School, in a sort of The Robin's now an orphan but she wasn't allowed to fret because that could have effected her health, so that's fine way.
I don't think he's ever mentioned again.

Thanks DeWe.

I really will have to get up into my mother's attic and retrieve some of my old Chalet School books. Like Vintage, this thread has made me go all nostalgic for them.

This thread sent me off to read the non-EBD The Chalet School Girls Grow Up, and I loved it. It made sense to me that something that seemed wonderful through childish eyes (Jo's enormous family yet inability to detach from school) would look less so portrayed through the eyes of her adult children.

Much less an escapist read that EBD herself, and clearly not popular amongst many fans, but it worked for me.

Oh, and this book is non-fiction and has a really interesting analysis of whether there are implied lesbian relationships. She concludes that they're probably not intended as sexual, but it's still a powerful thing to portray women loving and respecting other women.

OK, so now I'm reading Carola Storms. Carola has been left with a cousin while her father is off doctoring in Darkest Africa and her mother is with him because he can't be trusted to look after himself. When Carola runs away to join the Chalet School, father re-appears in short order to work out what is to be done with his daughter and seems to be flabbergasted that she is nearly 15. He thought she was a 'small girl'. What? Didn't her parents send her birthday cards or anything? Leaving your child for years on end and not seeing them is bad enough, but not keeping track of how old they are?? Almost (but not quite) as bizarre as the adoption of Biddy who re-emerges as a teacher in Carola Storms with her creamy Kerry brogue intact as ever.

Some interesting Hilda/Bill action early in Carola Storms - Hilda proclaims that she is going to bed with a, 'Nell, are you coming?' And off they go to bed together leaving the rest of the staff to tidy up. No-one bats an eyelid.

Doesn't it say at the start that the cousin had a pied a terre in London? I didn't know what a pied a terre was, but I thought it sounded immensely glamorous.

In real life you would think a grown woman with a busy life of her own was a bit weird if she was constantly hanging around her old school, giving unasked for advice to pupils, popping in to visit with a moses basket over her arm and basically acting as if she'd never left the place. I would imagine that pretty soon people would be dodging behind doors when they saw her coming or that the next time the school relocated they would be careful to leave no forwarding address.

Totally - I can't imagine hanging around my own secondary school decades later. Grow up, woman, make new friends! Broaden your horizons!