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

[SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius]

New thread for all the Chalet School fans!

I went to university with a lot of Mary-Lous - people who had been top of their class since the age of four, effortlessly popular and fawned over because they were the shining light of their school, Head Girl / Boy, basically encouraged to think they shit glitter, and when they got to university (or worse, the job market ) they all ended up massively depressed after realising that they could compete with 30 other A level students but not with 6 billion other human beings.

I reckon the reason Mary-Lou is so cheerful in the later books is that she's on a heroic dose of citalopram.

DeWee, have you read the bilge that Vi ruminates (in both senses of the word!) in Mary-Lou at the Chalet School.
It was cut out of the Armadas and it appears just after The One And Only has helped Jessica with her prep.

You'll just love it

I have very few that aren't the Armadas. And our M-L at the chalet school looks like it met Evadne in the Chemistry lab. Last time I saw it it was in about 160 pages floating round dd2's room with her desperately trying to put it in order.

Toospotty - just spent my lunch break reading that fanfic page, those are inspired!

Just reading exploits, in it Jo is head girl (the best ever obviously), but she's been thrown out of art class and never allowed back in for basically messing about, it's been said she's a problem because the only lessons she likes is english/languages and intimates she messed about in the others and she's in bad mood after bad mood, it doesn't exactly sound as if this is the makings of the best head girl the school has ever had!!

So who was the best head girl?
I think Gisela did a pretty good job!

Gisela was great. Mary Burnett was pretty solid and I think Hilary Burn did a good job. They'd be my top three.

Whyamihere, yes, I meant to come on and post that too! She's incredibly badly behaved - it says she deliberately sets out to be as annoying as she can be, and yet out of class she and Herr Laubach are firm friends! I wouldn't be inclined to be friends with a bratty 17yo at the head of whom I had just thrown pencils, rubber, notepad etc! Although I might have been sacked for doing so.

I have been reading The Wrong CS today - I never knew that the book Jennifer Penrose has smuggled in is Gone With The Wind! The actual book title is cut out of the Armada version. The mind boggles - there's the scene where Rhett carries Scarlett off to bed for a good shag, plus the bit at the beginning where she spends her wedding night making poor Charles Hamilton sleep in an armchair, not to mention attempted rape when she's driving in her carriage alone, and the whole loving-Ashley-who-is-not-her-husband thing. What would good CS girls make of all that? Plus Scarlett lying, conniving, stabbing various people in the back and being vain and selfish. I suspect EBD would have adored Melanie, though - nearly dies in childbirth? Check! Sweet, unselfish and brave? Check! Dies tragically in a decline? Check!

Furthermore, Jo has been described twice in this book as 'saucy'. Ewww.

I like Grizel. She goes through heaps of character development and winds up really grown up and responsible (which sadly is totally forgotten about in all subsequent books and she reverts back to being 'hard'), and she really tries with Deira. Plus she gets to have adventures and helps save the Robin from the madman, gets her hair burnt off and knocked out with a brick and she does it all without once fainting from emotion or exhaustion.

If it makes you feel any better Cheddar, 'saucy' was often used as a synonym for 'cheeky', 'irreverent' or 'impertinent' back in the day as well as having the usual meaning suggestive of sex. That's how I always took the references to Jo as saucy.

I thought Gisela was cool. Agree about Grizel - didn't her father get remarried without telling his new wife that he had a daughter? The mind boggles...

I have a disturbing image in my head, triggered by this thread. Picture, if you will (and can bear to), the video to "Blurred Lines". Except, instead of Robin Thicke, Pharrell, and... the other guy..., I can see Dr Jem, Dr Jack, and Reg Entwistle, surrounded by Chalet Girls and an inflatable St Bernard...

Jo wasn't the best head girl. Madge does tell her at one point that there's no one else (not very complimentary!), but she dismisses Marie as "no leader". Then in a prefect meeting it says along the lines of "they waited anxiously to see what Marie said for she had considerable following in the school." Not bad for someone who was "no leader".

The biggest problem with Jo and Mary Lou is that they're pushed again and again at the best of this that and the other-sometimes having been told previously they weren't good at it.
Both of them are presented as very likable younger girls, with faults and people that don't get on with them. And other people are allowed to have gifts and help others, they praise others, and don't have every singly idea that does anything in the school.
Then as they grow up they're pushed more and more to the fore. Anything they do wrong is excused, and the people round them are blamed for not reacting "properly".
I think as people I probably would get on quite well with them. However the constant pushing of them by EBD through the other characters makes them dislikable.
To a certain extend I can compare to my bil who is liable to say things like "the whole company was so upset when I said I was leaving that they presented a petition of 1000 signatures to stop me going". "How many in the company?" "200!" He means to make us go "wow! you must be brilliant", I think . He (or EBD) is trying to make people admire him (or Joey/M-L) by telling them how brilliant he is. What actually happens is the listener (or reader) thinks along the lines of "show off, you're not that brilliant, and I want to show that".

Dear Ladies,

This link may help to give an overview for anyone who is missing books, particularly the unabridged ones.

Thanks Tanith that'll be handy :)

I agree that Joey was too emotional and immature to have been head girl. Strike me down if I said had she not been Madge's sister she wouldn't have been? (incredibly poor grammar there, sorry!)

fairnotfair that's a disturbing thought.

What time is reasonable to try a kaffee mit Irische Creme?

I suspect anytime after breakfast.....

In my copy of The Wrong Chalet School it's Forever Amber that they are reading. Which is, I believe (not having read it) even ruder...

Oh gawd, just had horrible thought. 50 Shades of Chalet, anyone?

The paperback version is different to the hardback, SGB. In the paperback, it's Forever Amber and in the hardback, it's GWTW. Can't think why! Unless, by the time the paperback was published, GWTW was thought of as really tame, thanks to the film.

Or just that the title was shorter :)

hels71

Has anyone read this? If yes, what did you think, and is it worth getting for holiday reading?

I would buy it for the cover alone. It looks gorgeous.

I have just finished it and enjoyed it.

50 Shades of Chalet!

Yes posy - DH is an academic and knew many Mary-lous who cannot at all deal with the rejection after rejection that greets their research papers! It's the kind of stress that they never thought would happen to them, and only the ones who can then come up with a strategy for coping with the usual stream of rejection can stay in academia without going bonkers.

Joey's Dom/Sub Contract a la 50 Shades:

1. You will marry Jack Maynard (hereafter referred to as the Dom) at the age of 20 after he has spent at least 5 years perving over you as a schoolgirl
2. You will submit yourself to multiple multiple pregnancies (see what I did there?) regardless of their probable effect on your undercarriage - after all, he is a doctor and he can fix these things despite being a TB specialist and not a gynaecologist.
3. You will drink anything he, or his Dom-minion Matey offers you, especially if it is milk-based
4. You will maintain carefully the fantasy of being extremely delicate by fainting if you fall into a box/see a Passion Play etc
5. You will wear a CS girl uniform to bed at all times and put your hair in pigtails every night
6. During the day you will wear your hair in earphones and dress exclusively in jade green knitwear so that no other man can get off on your schoolgirlish mien
7. The Dom will make all decisions regarding little things like, oooh, sending your 8 yo daughter off to Canada for a year and will inform you when, and only when, he sees fit.
8. You will refer to the Dom as a 'solid lump of comfort' at all times. This helps him maintain his solid lump of comfort.
9. You will maintain an unnaturally close relationship with the Chalet School, thus ensuring a constant stream of underage schoolgirls through the Dom's house and/or San

10. You will pimp your daughter to a doctor at the age of 16, thus ensuring that the cycle continues

That's all a bit too close to reality the truth, Cheddar