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.

What a great thread! I read these books from a tiny bedroom in a council flat in Bradford many years a ago. Talk about not relating to any of it! Saying that, I loved all of the books, even though I didn't have clue what was going on half the time! And my favourite was Eustacia. I couldn't even pronounce her name! not really stupid

clickers me too really and I think it was the contrast of my life to the chalet girls that I absolutely loved. Pure escapism.

Sorry thebody were you talking to me? I was vair busy reading the Greek classics. In the Greek. Do you have a story for the mag for me? I'm editing it today, after Abendessen, of course! Topping!

Neither, but I'd love Kingscote!

Actually, I'll be fully honest looking at my book collection.

I want to go to the Farm School. (Josephine Elder)

Anyone else read "Jenny and the Syndicate"? Very similar to Kingscote stories, I suspect the author was (possible subconsciously) basing them on it. There was a Lois like character, a Tim like character and the main character had sisters to live up to. I think there was a series, but that was the only one I've found.

I thought the Naughtest Girl school sounded dreadful. I mean you get 5 for your birthday and have to put it in the pot, fair? All those with the slightest bit of common sense would just ask all their relatives not to send it to school, and those who had birthdays in the holidays wouldn't have to give anyway. And all boarding schools I've ever known have set amounts of pocket money for all pupils (amount set per year group) anyway.
The school council sounds great until you realise in reality it would end up with the queen bee popular characters who would use it to fix their own ends... and certainly some of the "complaints" brought up would be petty arguments and ways of settling a score...

I'd have been a disaster at the Chalet School as I could never keep track of where they were. I'd have been on the Channel Islands when I was supposed to be in the Tyrol and in Switzerland when I was supposed to be in Wales.

I'm taking the sleeper next month and will be using Joey and the Robin as my models: tam o'shanters, blanket rolls, blow up pillows and all!

This is a brilliant thread! Burren, your first post has made me properly chortle.

I have two v young dds and I'm sad to hear CS not readily available any more! Mind you my Dad bunged me a box of stuff from the attic the other day - hope it included some CS books. At the time I would have said MT because I found the CS books harder to read. But in retrospect, I am frankly not enough of a sturdy hearty to cope with MT. And Darrell and her terrifying violent temper might have scared the bejakers out of me!

Chalet school for me :)

Although my favourite school book is Stalky & Co by Rudyard Kipling - I live near the place it is set and see the college buildings regularly.

Chalet School. For sure. Lots of outdoor mountain climbing (still remember a tip from the books (Lavender Laughs at the CS I think) that when climbing a mountain you should take smaller strides than normal so that it doesn't feel so difficult. And fantastic morals all the time (albeit a bit old fashioned now as they were written in the 50s). I'd love to be fluent in 3 languages as well.

The Chalet School books were written between 1925-70!
The reference to a liberty bodice up thread made me squirm. Goodness how they used to itch. Happily they went out of fashion when I was about seven.

I think the earlier ones were written in the 1920s and the final one was written around 1970, so they cover nearly fifty years of the twentieth century.
Mind you, the kids in the 60s books were still behaving like their parents' generation - no mention of record players or mini skirts (Heaven forbid) or television.

Chalet school obvs. Though I read all Malory towers, st Clare's and trebizon too. I wasn't sporty enough for the first two or cool enough for Trebizon. I think the languages at chalet school may have been a prob, but I'm sure someone would have taken me under her wing to sort that out. Mountain air and cafe and kuchen. Topping!
I gave reading all the chalet school books a good go, I wonder if my mum still has them...

Do you think that if I'd been to the CS I would have been better at getting DD to be "trained in instant obedience"? She's generally quite well behaved but there are times when I look at her and think "I bet Frieda Mensch was never allowed to get away with this as a child".

Malory Towers.

I loathe snow so a Chalet School would be my idea of hell even without maths thrown in

Chalet school, and found a secret atheism society and get expelled. .

Toospotty, I have read Chalet Girls Grow Up/The Chalet School Grows Up (whatever it was called, by Merryn Williams). It was rather grim, even though in many cases, it took bits of the series to their logical conclusions - eg Joey thinks she's an Eternal Schoolgirl, despite being a mother of eleven, because she's losing her mind. Reg, who emerges as almost sinisterly entitled in the series by wanting to 'bag' Len while she's still a schoolgirl, turns out to be a rapist. Bumptious Mary-Lou turns her' irrepressibility' into home-wrecking.

Yes, lots of the weirdness of the CS - especially the uneven later Swiss books with kidnap gangs, child-snatching, the Robin rescuing an orphan who turns out to be a long lost relative etc - comes down to the fact that the now-elderly author had been writing them between the late 20s and the late 60s, and - apart from a few disapproving references to television and Beatniks - hadn't really updated her worldview since the original novels.

Everyone (other than one or two bad apples) is still very pious, eyes squeezed shut with sincerity at Prayers, boy talk is still frowned on, ponytails are regarded as 'fast', everyone likes to look 'fresh and dainty' etc. Of course, what you really want is for Joey to go on the Pill, or at least to stop talking about 'those quads I'm always threatening you with!', as if she could conceive multiply at will purely in order to provide the school with a 'sensation'.

I laughed at whoever it was who was speculating on the state of her pelvic floor...

Dear wilson

don't forget the black cherry jam, it's scrummy!

Glad to see you are being a jolly sport and editing the mag. I
Do have photos for you. It's of Corney playing the sax at the St Claire's band.

You may need 2 hankies it's so screamingly funny!

Oh hang on popping out quads. Don't worry be back in harness soon.

Joey.

I would love to have seen my parents' reaction when I wrote home:

Dear Mum and Dad

Hope you are both well. I got an A+ in History last week and an A in English but I'm afraid I only scraped a C- in Maths. I had English tea at Mrs Maynard's last week which was great fun. There were babies crawling around everywhere. We're putting on a production of Little Women next week and I am playing Beth which is good as she doesn't really say much and only appears in the earlier scenes.

Love Vintage

ps I've just got engaged to a lovely doctor from the San. He's 34 and really nice. I know you'll like him.

Burren that would be me and my pelvic floor.

Don't worry though it's the main reason God made woman.

Oh that and to knit/darn Jacks socks and to plan sales of work ( tinkly laugh)

vintage don't forget to tell them you fell off a cliff/into a lake/got caught in a flood/snowstorm/ while on expedition.

It's ok though it was all your fault for not paying attention so you had nasty medicine from
Matey and your fiancée drugged you with sleeping pills.

Tally ho.

SGB are you Betty Wynne Davis?

I expect my children to "obey on the word"

Oh, hang on, no I don't. I think I'll just carry on reading The Mask of Apollo.

Well, Martorama, you just failed the Gina Ford/Jem Russell School of Parenting - remember that bit in one of the Tyrol books where David, who is a small baby, is crying in his pram in the garden, and Jem forbids a desperate Madge to pick him up because it will spoil him? And Madge obeys. (Jem being an expert on childcare, despite this being his first child too, because he is a Great Doctor, and they know everything, including how to instil a sense of discipline in infants.)

Mind you, he seems to manage it with the Robin, though I suspect she's actually a cyborg.

Or he uses mind-altering drugs. The Chalet School doctors are always dosing their wives without telling them, having taken over from Matron, who seemed to spend her entire life dispensing either sleeping drugs in hot milk or castor oil to deal with 'greed'.

There's one obvious reason why Malory Towers and St Clare's are better than the Chalet School, and that's the fact that MT and SC have a constant stream of successful midnight feasts, where people eat pork pies and tinned peaches at 3 am, have a great time, and don't get caught, whereas at the CS, any poor attempt to eat something after lights out is either immediately detected by Matron, or involves all involved throwing up violently the next morning and being dosed.