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.

Ooh, the same thing happened to me, NewYear.

Glad I'm not the only one Select.

In the end they decided I probably had natural immunity from my mum (a nurse at the time) coming into contact with someone with TB when she was expecting me!!

The heaf test doesn't involve a grading card, you are talking about the mantoux test.

CorusKate, TB has had such a resurgence in London that all babies are now vaccinated around 10 weeks. Part of the scary stuff going on out there. Keep your fingers crossed tight for those antibiotics.

Yep DD had to have her BCG as a very young baby as we live in London. It's also essentially mandatory for certain racial groups in other parts of the country.

My father and my aunt both had TB in the 1950s. Neither of them were sent to open air hospitals. I wonder when that treatment died out.

Dh can't believe that there are enough people talking about the Chalet School there's over 900 messages. He's just walked away muttering under his breath...

Toospotty it's not in all boroughs - none of my kids (age 7, 4 & nearly 1) have had a TB vaccine and we're in London.

DeWee :o and you can tell your DH it's not the first time either :o

Having read this whole thread, I'm now annoyed that my previously complete collection of Armada paperback CS books has now got about 8 missing - they must be here somewhere...

I've got duplicate paperbacks of Exploits, Mary Lou and Theodora - happy to post if anyone wants?

The thing that gets my DH is when we are playing trivial pursuits and I get a question right because the answer was somewhere in a chalet book!! (Often book related!!!)

I've got natural immunity to TB too. I'm such a hypochondriac that every time I got a cough for years I thought at last the second stage was getting under way. I always wondered about our green top milk as a possible source. Nobody in my family had TB to my knowledge and I was born in the early 60s when there was effective antibiotic treatment anyway.

Joey as a baby was fragile from being born in India, but thrived in the soft Cornish air until the age of 4 when a neglected cold brought on pneumonia. Since then Madge lived in constant guilt fear that she would develop it again. Can having pneumonia at a young age leave you with a disposition towards it? Oh, and there are bits when Joey fights for breath after running around - perhaps she was asthmatic after all.

I think there is something in the asthma theory. Well, bearing in mind that we are talking about a fictional character of course - probably EBD was either asthmatic herself or knew someone who was (ie had all those sorts of symptoms and was treated similarly) without knowing what it was called.

A friend's DD had pneumonia as a toddler (about 15 months old), every winter since she has had serious problems with bronchitis/chest infections/wheezing and has been given a reliever inhaler to try and stop further hospital admissions. She's now nearly 5 and this winter has been the first without real problems. So there may be something in it, TooExtra...

Can you get pneumonia from a cold? Isn't a cold a virus and pneumonia bacterial? Though you can develop pneumonia after flu...I think Jo was simply a hangover from Victorian heroines who swooned a lot.

Pneumonia can seriously damage your lungs and leave you vulnerable to chest infections all your life.

Soft Cornish air in my experience is more like to GIVE you chest infections. Certainly I'd never in my life been more ill than the first winter I was here and developed bronchitis and pleurisy.

I agree, Hester - while there are some aspects of EBD's depictions of illness that reflect pre-antibiotic treatment methods, a lot of it doesn't reflect any medical reality, and is more about her heroines' literary descent from fragile, swooning Victorian heroines, but updated to the school story era, so now they have to be 'jolly' as well.

Robin is a kind of non-dying combination of Little Nell and Little Women's Beth, and Joey faints as frequently as Gothic novel heroines - including one adult 'faint' where, having seen her son climb over a cliff to get at a bird's nest, she swoons and apparently stays unconscious for two hours, which would presumably merit an MRI these days at the very least.

One of the medical implausibilities that struck me was that Joyce and Gillian Linton's mother discovered she had advanced TB and was forbidden from attending public gatherings in the UK by her doctor, presumably for fear of her infecting others. She then travels to the San, becoming seriously ill on the way, with her two daughters, who are presumably at some risk of infection by proximity, and what's Joey's response? Annoyed that Joyce, potentially pullulating with TB, didn't give the delicate and TB-prone Robin a good-night kiss on her first night!

(Though as we have established, Robin is a cyborg 'trained to instant obedience', so not in fact at risk.)

To refer back to the age thing for a moment; I'm now onto "Princess" (am re-reading all the unabridged transcripts in order, thanks to Empress and NewYear) and Madge - who by this stage must be 26 or 27 - has just been referred to as "a mere girl". Bearing in mind she isn't married yet, she must have been pushing 30 by the time she and Jem started their family, which I would have thought was quite old for the time to have a first child? And is certainly at odds with many of EBD's other heroines who start pushing out babies practically before they're old enough to vote, yet so much is made of Madge's "girlishness".

Select, somewhere it says that she was 23 when she started the school and was well married by the time Joey is head girl 5 years later so she was married and a mother by the time she was 28!

Wabbity,

It was definitely a Heaf test - 7 needles in a circle punched onto the inside of my forearm. And then the test was read using a card with holes in about a week later. This was back in the 1980's.

I went on to work as a children's nurse and we did a lot of Mantoux tests in the hospital I worked in (London) because of a high immigrant population who were diagnosed with TB so extended family members were tested - we got the children back (at weekends generally) for the tests to be read (or for daily gastric lavage if they wanted sputum specimens).

Thanks NewYear, I recently finished The School at the Chalet and could have sworn she had her 25th birthday during that first year, but I could well be wrong.

I thought she was 24 when she started the school so would have been 25 at some stage during that year?

No, I was right (amazingly). From TSATC:

"'Madge run a school!' Jo sat bolt upright, 'No! She's much too young! Why, if her hair wasn't up she'd look like a kid!'

'I'm twenty-four-' began Madge heatedly, when Dick interrupted her."

And then she has her birthday in the summer term of that year, when they start the tradition of serenading her under the window and giving her flowers. By the time 'Princess' starts, there has been a complete school year - Gisela, Bernhilda etc have left AND Dick and Molly, who we saw getting engaged in Jo of the Chalet School, have been married a year and have just had twins. At this point Madge is engaged but not yet married to Jem. Going by the Dick-and-Mollie timeframe alone, Madge should be 27, approaching her 28th birthday ('Princess' is set in the summer term, and Madge's birthday is July 4th) by now.

I appreciate this is EBD age-maths we're talking about here though!

Don't you just love the way everyone talks about them as though they are real!!!! I went on a FOCS weekend to York a few years ago and everyone talked about the books and characters as though they were real. It was fun and slightly odd at the same time!!