To wonder whether you'd prefer to go to Malory Towers or the Chalet School

[Vintagejazz]

I just heard to girls about 11 years of age having an earnest discussion about this on the bus. I didn't think kids even read Chalet School books any more.
I think I'd opt for Malory Towers. They seemed to have more fun. I'd probably be expelled from the Chalet School for cursing, wearing lipstick and forgetting to speak German every Wednesday or whatever it was.

I think Con was the one to escape to the swinging 60s. Her dreaminess would have been fine as a drug addled student.

Those were the days aye! You out your name down for a uni and you got a place. No interview or mess like that. You are posh so to Oxford you go.

I think you're right, I've known some 'strong willed' nuns in my time.

Maybe she was like the mad, bad nun from Black Narcissus, overcome with lust for the priest she gleely started murdering the other nuns around her so as to get rid of the competition.

That sounds like Margot.

Mooncup yes agree the later books got madder and madder. Like EBD was desperately trying to hang into a world that had gone.

Oh, God, Margot's devil! I'd forgotten that - and, while I get that in fact lots of real small children blame their imaginary friends for misdeeds, (and maybe little Margot is rebelling against Joey's zealous convert Catholicism), what was weirdest about Margot's devil is that the family and everyone she knew, including her teachers, kind of went along with it. So you had a sixteen or seventeen year old still blaming her 'devil' for her less-than-nice deeds (like nearly braining poor Betty Whatsit with a bookend), and her mother and teachers nodding sagely. A convent would probably have said 'Get over your psychopathic violent tendencies, and then we'll talk...?'

Mooncup, not only does Grownup Nun Robin rescue Adrienne from a possible future of hinted-at prostitution, but there's a mysterious locked locket no one can open, whose mystery is never resolved because EBD seemed to forget about it. If only it held the solution to the mystery of why Adrienne turns out to be a long lost cousin on Robin's father's side, when she apparently looks strikingly similar to the Robin, who is the image of her mother...?

squoosh

Also the need to cut hair in times of illness/coma/head injury or even just growing.

Think EDB got a bit confused there with Samson.

Could be, body, could be. I had a year's worth in a book (ie three books chronologically from the same school year, omnibus edition) and they were both in it so I may have conflated the two.

Ricky was definitely a Quaker though.

C'mon people! Surely you haven't forgotten Len's ponytail? Even though Joey 'particularly disliked the style' EBD let her wear it. Never let it be said that EBD was behind the times in the matter of girlish coiffure.

On the subject of Len, anyone remember when she gets hauled up before a store manager on suspicion of being a shoplifter's accomplice? I can't help comparing generations. Teenage Joey rescues assorted small and larger children from natural disasters and mad kidnappers, and ends her schooldays in a daring escape from the Nazis. OK, so she nearly dies a few times, but she never becomes a spineless jellyfish (until adulthood). Len, however, is so distressed after her dreadful experience being suspected of shoplifting (in a perfectly safe department store knowing her teachers aren't far away) that she has to be consoled with endless cakes and coffee, and she and her contemporaries couldn't possibly be expected to take a train back to school after that, oh no, a 'motor coach' has to be hired specially for them. Ah, the good old days when adolescent girls had endless near-death experiences but still managed to keep their pecker up.

Yes forgot the locket. Doesn't Joey take it to a good jewellers to get it opened and it's never seen again?

Probably pawned it. .

The Adriemne book is the most ridiculous of all.

Oh another one! Why do people seem to grow curls after being shaved?

MaryLou and Adrienne do. Surely that's down to genes and nowt to do with shaving.

I think curls is to do with shaft shape (no sniggering at the back) and follicle shape not matching. Now where the chuff did I read that?

::hopeless Googling::

fatal yes she was Definatly a Quaker.

Doris yes indeed and Con sleepwalks at any stressful time too.

None if then have the strength of Joey.

In other hair-related stories, don't forget Bill turning white overnight when they escape from the Nazis.

one can't arrange these matters to suit yourself says Jo to Hilda after announcing the fact that Jack doesn't think they can afford quads as they arnt millionaires.

wear a condom then doctor ffs.

"If only it held the solution to the mystery of why Adrienne turns out to be a long lost cousin on Robin's father's side, when she apparently looks strikingly similar to the Robin, who is the image of her mother...?"

So glad I'm not the only person to be annoyed by this.

Len does kill a viper, though. You have to respect that.

She did Doris although the red bobs back again in later books.

She does kill a viper but turns pale.

I wish I had a golden voice like Joey! I think I will wear my hair in massive flat earphones for work tomorrow.

Can you imagine they woman's maternity leave entitlement?

Doris, of course Len needed to be consoled with much Kaffee und Kuchen after being Wrongly Accused - remember her mother needed to be sedated after falling into a box while moving house!

The 'cropped hair growing out in curls' seems to have been a widespread idea - in What Katy Did Next, Amy Ashe's hair is shaved when she has fever in Rome, and not only does it grow back curly, but because Amy insisted that her doll have her head shaved too and hopes said doll's hair will also grow back curly, Katy shops until she finds a curly doll wig ...

Talking of hairstyles, remember the Huge Sensation when pre-crop Mary-Lou decides Kenwigses are babyish and makes her form's collective jaw drop by - wait for it - plaiting her hair in one plait instead of two! So then they all do it.

Can't imagine my dds fitting in there. They are more your Betty Wynne Davis/Joan Baker types and wouldn't conform with the cold baths, no makeup and saying jolly marvellous.

Nor can I imagine them giving a toss about the sale or hobbies club.

I am a bad mother.

I remember for the end of term fete in Carola Storms the Chalet School they built a dolls house, to win this amazing prize people had to guess how many materials had gone in to building the dolls house.

One would indeed need sedating after such excitement.

Oh thank you Ive loved this thread. DD is out with DP, DS is asleep in his cot and I've just enjoyed kaffe und kuchen and read every last word of it.

It would have to be the CS for me. All that travelling at a time many girls barely ventured out of their own towns. Expeditions to amazing places. Winter sports (would have been rubbish at those as no sense of balance), livign with girls from all over Europe. Escaping the Nazis (sounds bloody terrifying).

Fabulous food.

I'd have found little Robin insufferable but IIRC she becomes quite sensible and level headed during the war books. No longer the baby she was in fact a big help to Joey and seemed a normal albeit very delicate girl in her mid - late teens. Reread The Highland Twins or The Chalet School at War and you'll see Robin in a different light I think.

Definately the Chalet for me. I want to learn 3 languages, go to school with a princess, do bad cooking, dance or play paper games on Saturday evenings, learn to keep my cubicle tidy, join the guides, climb a mountain or two, find out how to argue from cause to effect and use synthetic maps (wht the hell were they?) and finish up by being head girl and going to a university of my choice

I fear I am with Joan 'Frightfully Common and Permed' Baker on the matter of paper games on Saturday nights. If someone asked me to name ten rivers beginning with N or to pick up peas with knitting needles in what is supposed to be my fun leisure time, I would throttle them. Even if I won a lavender sachet or a blotting pad.

Would far rather be eating chips on the street and sitting in the back row of the cinema with the 'unsavoury' Vic Coles.

And scream at every pantomime and Mrs Jarleys wax work lists.

But do be prepared to be sedated/engaged by any of the doctors from the local San.

I seem to remember they were forever performing tableaux representing famous paintings.

Probably not the nude ones though.

I'm still not really sure what a tableau is. Do they just stand there and let people admire how they've draped curtains over themselves for a few minutes?

I think they were performed in a 'Guess the painting' kind of way.

Was there no end to the fun?