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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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

999 replies

Vintagejazz · 29/04/2014 16:31

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.

OP posts:
DeWee · 08/05/2014 15:16

I think it says Thekla wrote "in later years" thanking Mme and saying it was a turning point for her, in the book she was expelled in. Chalet school and the Lintons, I think.

However I think in a later book someone wonders what happened to her and is told that Mrs A got a letter which was a bit strange, half sorrowful and half resentful.

Given she was a sort of cousin of Marie's you might expect that they knew more of what happened to her-although of course the war might well have stopped that.

squoosh · 08/05/2014 15:25

Oh good, 'half resentful' cheers me a little!

You are so right flugella she would have been a high ranking Nazi who then escapes capture to live out the rest of her days seething in Argentina, seething not over how WWII ended but the injustices she endured at the hands of the Chalet School.

EmilyAlice · 08/05/2014 15:32

Please, if someone has got an original copy of the one where they have to leave Guernsey, could they check if there really is a line about Joey being so upset that she "must cast her babies". I have never seen this used as a euphemism for stopping breast feeding before or since....

EmpressOfJurisfiction · 08/05/2014 15:44

Does anyone know how Matey became "an adept" at blindfolding people?

DeWee · 08/05/2014 16:02

I always wondered why the Peace League was such a secret doccument and the Chalet school was considered such a threat to the nazis too. Such a dreadful school obviously needed a spy putting in their midst. Hmm

Emily I don't have my book, but there definitely has a line about weaning them, after Joey collapses (again) leaving the others literally holding the babies on the trip over to England from the Channel Islands. Frieda says "and they look so sweet with cups and spoons", which could just as easily be stopping using bottles as stopping breastfeeding.

Burren · 08/05/2014 16:15

Emily, I don't have a copy to hand, but Joey is definitely upset that she's told she has to 'cast her babies' on medical grounds, after she has that kind of feverish collapse on the trip across the Channel and is weak afterwards - so I think it's definitely that she has to stop breastfeeding, because it's considered to be a strain on her system.

(Though I know you can tandem feed two babies at once, how in God's name do you feed three newborns without one continually going crazed with hunger? Pump and someone else bottle feeds the 'leftover' baby with expressed milk? Or perhaps Joey's 'wholesale' personality involved her growing a handy third breast?)

'Cast her babies' always sounds to me like either the babies are ejected violently off her breasts, like rockets lifting-off, or something to do with knitting. Though I suppose it's a nautical metaphor, isn't it? You 'cast off' your boat from its moorings?

thebodylovesspring · 08/05/2014 16:35

Joey converts yes but Jack was always a catholic as in Highland twins Jo gives the twin who has the second site!! (As you do) rosary beads he had had since boyhood.

Seriously DeWee I have invested too much if my life to the Chsket school Grin

thebodylovesspring · 08/05/2014 16:38

Looked through my copy of war And it says Joey is told not to feed her babies herself.

It's a paperback so wonder if the casting phrase was in the original form.

Never heard of it must google.

thebodylovesspring · 08/05/2014 16:40

Oh and the doctor who attends her becomes Juliet's sils second husband.

Fffffs I need to get a bloody life!

DeWee · 08/05/2014 17:11

My copy is also Armade. I have the original of Exile though.

thebody surely to be a Good Chaletian you do invest your whole life in the school. Otherwise how can you be expected to be considered The Spirit of the School?

Summerbreezing · 08/05/2014 17:14

There's now nearly 740 messages on this thread. How sad are we.

WilsonFrickett · 08/05/2014 17:59

The phrase used in the paperback is 'she had to stop feeding them herself' which as a young girl who had never been exposed to BF made for a lot of Confused round my house. 'What, so for the rest of her life someone else has to give the trips their dinner?' The BF thing was lost on me till I re-read as an adult. Bless.

EmilyAlice · 08/05/2014 18:22

I must have remembered the "casting" the babies bit from when I first read it, probably back in the fifties. Very strange the things that stick in your mind... And yes, images of knitting.
I read the books from the library, bought them all for DD, we got rid of them and now I want them for my DGDs.
Sad

DorisAllTheDay · 08/05/2014 18:34

The issue with the Peace League document was that it was signed by lots of German and Austrian (and later other occupied countries) girls. If it had fallen into enemy hands then those girls would have been at risk.

I think EBD was fabulous the way she kept making the distinction between being German and being a Nazi/Nazi sympathiser, and being forced into collaboration with the Nazis. At a time when anti-German feeling was running so high she was taking a big risk. Despite the ever-increasing bonkers-ness of the series as it went on, she deserves bucketfuls of credit for that.

alterego2 · 08/05/2014 18:59

It's taken me days to read this whole thread and the end result is that I've -

  • bought Summer Term by Antonia Forrest and Shirley at Charterton
  • ordered copies of World of Girls and You're a Brick, Angela so I can Learn More
  • realised I'm seven books short of a series Smile
alterego2 · 08/05/2014 19:01

Oh and I've lost two of the CS books I know I had - but as they are Jane Goes and Two Sams perhaps that is not a disaster!

birdbrain21 · 08/05/2014 19:09

I thought I'd read most of the books as a teenager but a lot of titles seem to be mentioned on here that I haven't heard of. How many books are there in total?!

alterego2 · 08/05/2014 19:11

There are 62 in the Armada paperback series. Slightly less in hardback as some title were split.

DeWee · 08/05/2014 19:12

The nazi stuff was very well written. With the gentle threat getting stronger, and the final stand the children make when the nazis are chasing the Jewish man. And the distinction between the Germans and the nazis, plus all the stuff with Maria Marani and her father. Very good, and very impressive for a children's book at the time, when they didn't know which way everything would go.

I understand the issue the Chalet School had with not wanting the Peace league to fall into the nazis hands. However, I maintain that it is totally silly that they're going on a picnic and a spy happens to see them, sees a piece of paper in one of their pockets and immediately jumps to the conclusion that the schoolchildren have an important dokkerment that they're going to be hiding. How many school children carry important enough stuff for a spy when they're going on a picnic. Maybe if Frau Whatever and Herman had come into the school at some point and seen it and determined to get it?

But then, on the basis that the nazis weren't exactly known for their justice system, I suspect that Madge, and probably Jem and possibly the children might well have found themselves on the way to a concentration camp after the others were found to have escaped. Or the mob who attacked the Jewish man, obviously knew Joey because she addressed them by name, so would have immediately gone round to Madge's house or the Chalet School and attacked that.

But no, the group have escaped, so the rest of the school is allowed to leave calmly and carefully, with apparently no risk.

However the School is considered so dangerous they send a school girl spy to check it over when it restarts...

DeWee · 08/05/2014 19:14

alterego

I haven't come across "Summer term"? I have "Autumn term", "Spring Term", "Cricket term", and "Attic term" Is this one I haven't come across?

alterego2 · 08/05/2014 19:22

Sorry DeWee - no. It was Autumn Term. My mind was on this term and the kids' exams as I wrote! I am a muppet Blush

SockQueen · 08/05/2014 19:32

I have now created a list of all the CS books, marked off which ones I own, which ones I have read but don't own, and creating a wishlist. I have also bought two more from Amazon, plus Chalet Girls Grow Up, though I suspect I may live to regret the last one...

Burren · 08/05/2014 19:48

DeWee, you are overlooking the influence of Jem Russell - Madge and co are all 'under the protection of the great doctor'. Nazism would quail at the prospect of Jem. Though, come to think of it, doesn't Jack have to go down to Innsbruck for questioning at one point, so I suppose he has his limits...?

Not to be flippant, though - the scene where the Robin and the rest run out into a Nazi mob to try to protect an elderly Jew, who ends up dead, and his wife dying, is chillingly understated. Doesn't the priest who helps the girls escape also die as a result? The whole section involving the Anschluss is powerfully written.

(Though it does subsequently descend into farce, with Bill, Jack, Gottfried and the girls dressed up as peasants, and some Nazis chasing them on horseback and Joey throwing them off the scent by her grasp of Romany... And the bit after the school has relocated to Wales, and Karl Mieders, an unwilling conscript to the Luftwaffe, manages to drop an anti-Nazi message directly into the school grounds in sight of Hilda in the middle of a bombing raid!)

WilsonFrickett · 08/05/2014 20:06

If only Herr Hitler had visited the Sonnalpe himself, Jem could have slipped him some drugged milk and the course of history would have been changed...

Burren even as a child desperate to suspend my disbelief the Karl/Luftwaffe/Streamer drop was waaaaaay too silly!

flugella · 08/05/2014 20:52

It would be Joey who knew Romany, wouldn't it?

If you met any of the Chalet School folk "IRL", who do you think you'd get on with and who would you have the overwhelming urge to slap? I would be fighting in the queue to slap Joey but would quite like a pub trip with Bill!