To think we are all ready to remove to Inter V at the Chalet School.

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

New thread for all the Chalet School fans!

...oddly enough, I was reading in the garden today. The Princess book. I went to the fridge and got a glass of milk - my DD asked was I drugging myself now? (it was that most calamitous of situations, NO wine chilled and NO pimms! - I ran girlishly to the cupboard to check and wept with despair before falling into a faint)

On the subject of staff/prefects' evening, what in the name of arse is a progressive game?

It's when you move around the room I think. So the winners and losers move tables. This is entirely my understanding from reading Problem as my family has signally failed to play progressive games at any point.

On the subject of staff/prefects' evening, what in the name of arse is a progressive game?

Could it be like a Beetle Drive? Where you throw a dice to make your beetle each part depending on the number thrown? And move a table ahead or behind depending on if you were the highest or lowest scorer.

I may be wrong. :)

maybe if I spent less time reading this thread I'd have more time to read the actual books...must put myself of a mn ban for a few days till I've got some stuff done

Good help is hard to get bird. If only you had a Coadjuter to help you with those essential tasks, you'd be able to fit it all in my lamb.

Good point wilson don't suppose you'd be able to persuade joey to lend anna to me for a while, just until she has her next baby and actually needs the help

Right now, this horrid Monday morning, I want a Coadjutor!!

(Always burned with annoyance at that title.)

I try to ignore the inconsistencies but fail everytime, I always end up having a little rant to myself, especially about the age ones, when someone goes forward or backwards a few classes. Even my dd has picked up on some of these already.

With progressive games, four people on a table, games last 2 minutes, winner goes forward a table, loser goes back, others stay put so presumably at some point in the evening girls would agree to thread needles really badly so someone could escape.

Having people move 1 or 2 tables at a time never occured to EBD. I was however pleased to hear a news story on Ukraine recently and found out where the Dneister river was. "Goodness, Con! Have you forgotten it's spelt with a D at the beginning?", says Len, smugly. Odd how Jo and Con are supposed to be literary geniuses, but with wild spelling "verging on the phonetic"...

I hate those bloody geography-based games with all the rivers and cities I've never heard of! Entertainment my left foot.

Yes, I was just thinking today that Cornelia stays at school much longer than any of her contemporaries. She's the only one to come back to school after they move to Guernsey, although Evadne/Margia etc are all there at the beginning of Exile. Doesn't Corney come back as Head Girl in CS Goes To It/War? Maria Marani is Head Girl at the end of Exile, and then isn't Corney Head Girl in the next one? She must be at least 20 by then, surely.

I want an Anna, who is so devoted to me and used to my inconsistencies/bloody annoyingness in suddenly producing an extra 10 people for tea and telling her to just sort it out and use up bottled fruit to feed them all. Honestly, their food bill must have been something else, even without Jo randomly inviting a whole form home for meals with no advance warning. And doesn't Anna get up at dawn to pick lettuces in one book?

Actually, what I want more than that is the EBD model of having a month in bed after childbirth. There are numerous references to Gisela/Wanda/Biddy etc along the lines of 'the baby is only a fortnight old and she (the mother) hasn't come downstairs yet'. I want that! (30 weeks pg with DC3 and dreading the early baby days.)

Cheddar you forgot to put in "Joey saves the day by sorting out the prefects problems/new girl/how to do a simple everyday teaching thing/etc"

Going back to the demon headmaster angle, I think it must be the only explanation for Anna's 'devotion' and 'love' etc. for Jo. I mean, what other possible reason for the poor woman's attitude can there be?! Ugh.

3 weeks in bed isn't it TOIC? That's what my Nana did too. My health visitor did warn me about "doing too much like the young mums going down the metro centre shopping the week after they've had the baby. But you're too sensible old for that"

When dm had us, then it was usual for a firstborn to stay in hoispital for 10 days assuming no complications. Even for my db (7 years younger than the oldest, and dc#3) she stayed in 4-5 days. For my dc#3 I wasin less than 4-5 hours including the time I was in labour.

My mum was kept in hospital for two weeks after having me! I wish i could have had that long in bed............

How on earth didn't I know about this thread until now? The CS books are practically my favourite thing ever. I have nothing to contribute at this point but I'm just revelling in it.

And yes, the ages in Tirol/Guernsey/England were distinctly ropey. How the hell old were Kitty and Peggy Burnett by the time they were finally allowed to leave school? And Amy Stevens must have been about twenty, given that she was 2 years older than Robin and still at school when Elizabeth was Head Girl.

I have just read the maddest scene in Peggy of the Chalet School where Jo decides to teach Eilunedd a lesson about spreading rumours. She bascially lets a bag of feathers blow all over the garden and runs from window to window cackling like a maniac while Eilunedd tries to catch them. I really think a strait jacket and some drugged milk was in order.

I've just read a GGBP edition of Summer Term, where we discover that before being snapped up by Jack, Joey Bettany was pursued so hard by an unsuitable doctor from the San that she had to be packed off to India straight after leaving school for a month to escape his attentions!

I'm in shock at

a) the concept of an unsuitable doctor and
b) I'm sure she was still at school when she found her solid lump of comfort so where did all this unsuitable pursuit come in?

There's an add in book about Joey's time in India, two chalet girls in India I think. In EBD's books it is a bit off a black hole and I'm not sure when it was supposed to happen, before Exile and after Returns I guess. I have read it but can't remember much, I may need to re read it now.

EBD does mention several times about being in India, Robin was there as well I think, although not sure how the Indian climate would have suited her delicate constitution!

Hello chikabiddies,

Anna is my rock, she would have married and made a good wife and mother but she was convinced I would never get on without her so she gave him the order of the mitten. And devoted her life to pulling lettuces at 5am, helping to polish the floors of various friends houses and helping with their children, bottling jam and fruit, making tisanes for hair wash and bossing us all around.

I am off to penny rest soon as my constitution, always delicate and highly strung, hasn't responded to either lots of sleepless nights or indeed jacks drugging me and shaving my head to make the the difference between maddness and sanity ( hang on that was Mary Lou) getting confused again. Silly feminine brain!!

I detect a slight whiff of 'women's lib' on this site my lambs. You need to attend to the ways of your households and children.

I remember reading somewhere that EBD actually wrote a book about Joey and Robin going to India, but it was never published (perhaps the publishers pointed out to her that it was completely inconsistent with the chronology she already had) and the manuscript disappeared years ago.

Loving this thread. I have just started Changes, thanks to NewYearNewName and Dickie Christy's father has found ancestral pirate treasure on the extensive grounds of his massive property so is no longer poor and is evicting the school, but that's fine because they're moving to the Oberland. What a great opening.

My CS knowledge is very patchy especially about the Guernsey and Wales years so I only knew Dickie as a senior always qualified as "big", and playing male roles in concerts, pageants and the like. Great to find she has a back story.

Oh yes, pirate treasure. They've lived there all their lives but it takes the CS to find it. Isn't it through Emerence that it is found because she blocks up one of the drainage tunnels (I think). Emerence was another 'only' bought up by parents who spoiled her. I fear Joey would have looked down on me as the mother of only one child, but I'm sure she would have gathered my dd to her metaphorical bossom and guided her genltly to the right way to be a CS girl.

I still can't believe there is a whole thread dedicated to the CS. I read them as a child and then carried on as an adult reading ones I didn't have as a child and also re-reading them. I always felt slightly ashamed of reading children's books and my dh mocks me when he sees me reading them. Now I can tell him there are numerous like minded people out there and read them with pride.

EBD's book about Joey and Robin in India has cult status in Chalet School lore as it was actually announced by the publisher but never appeared in print. As a child I was desperate for it to be found so I could read it... with the benefit of maturity I suspect EBD's depiction of life under the Raj would have been pretty teeth-clenching.