To start a new term at the Chalet School?

[Vintagejazz]

Happy for this to be moved to Chat if posters agree but thought I'd start it here as this is where we've all been loitering without permission when we should be doing our housework homework.

So welcome to a new term everyone. Cases upstairs to the dormitories, form lists on the notice board. And you'll all be pleased to hear that even though we've moved to a different location, Joey has tracked us - -down moved in next door, so we'll still be seeing too much-- plenty of her

Downamongtherednecks

I are the sardines and have been vomiting all night. Matron has given me sal volatile and brandy!!! Obviously that's cured me.

Every scrap of my pretty colour has gone.

Don't worry though the foreigner gets expelled. Serve her right.

thebody not only does she deserve to get expelled, but her whole family deserves to disappear in Germany during the war. Quite right too! (Given, that it is only by the grace of God that she is not a MURDERESS!)

Enid Blyton's characters had much more robust insides, didn't they? ISTR a midnight feast where they dipped prawns into ginger beer or something equally avant garde and not one of them was shitting through the eye of a needle the next day.

SGB they weren't delicate though and at constant risk of the white mans plague!

When Alex Rutherford didn't change her wet stockings I could have told her myself that she was looking at 2 years in the San and a long sea voyage.

Joey stands by an open door and is in bed for a fortnight with pneumonia amd force fed calfs foot jelly.

That's how it starts!!

Enid Blyton's characters weren't eating every minute of the livelong day as well as having a midnight feast, either. I'm surprised the Chaletians weren't all 17 stone - and no wonder they were always at the sodding dentist. Herr Thingy was probably able to buy himself a small tropical island off the back of the profits from the Chalet School's cream, cake and sweet bread twist habit

They walked several miles a day though!

I came across an interesting difference of opinion recently. The New Chalet Club has produced guides to the Achensee (Tiernsee) which include guides to walks in the area taken from the books. The NCC people think that EBD shrunk the lake a bit to shorten walks. But a newer blogger disagrees, suggesting that modern, slightly older women might find the walks more challenging than 1920s types would have done. One of the walks that springs to mind is the one to see the Tzigane, which they do on a hot Sunday afternoon, is about 10 miles in the round trip.

I see a ramble coming.

Cue a snowstorm/rain/thunder/lightning hit tree fall/flood /avalanche/forgot the lemonade/rescue by huge bearded peasants/wood smoked huts with lots of singing to keep up the spirits/home to hot baths/supper/hot bottles/ drugged milk.

Verity will sleep through the rescue/bath/bed. As you do.

I think I must have had 2 glasses of milk the other day. I slept right through a 10 mile ramble, an avalanche and falling into a crevasse.
I believe I now may be betrothed as a doctor keeps coming to my bedside looking at me.

Morning, girls. I'm shocked to see how late some of you were up last night. I went to bed at my usual early hour and straight into a drug-induced stupor slept the sleep of the justly weary, so I'm now ready for anything. I see storms are forecast for our part of the world. I have songsheets at the ready in case the school is hit by a bolt of lightning setting fire to everything around it. I'm sure we'll all be bold as lions and sing our way through the ordeal. What fun!

Ok.

I'm drinking coffee with no cream in it at all. Will I waste away? Also my bed is still unmade, unaired, unhumped and unstripped. I think I need Mary-Lou to do it for me while I moon about please

Phew. Got here at last and only a week late. I went to St Briavel's and when I couldn't find the school there I went to mainland Wales but still no sign there. Then mummy remembered it used to be located in Guernsey so we tried there but no luck. However we met one of the Lucey girls who said, as far as she could remember, the CS was in Switzerland now. Mummy rang the Abbess who was awfully decent about it and admitted she sometimes forgets where she's supposed to be as well.

I have just got my washing in and unfortunately got wet feet and wet hair.

I am immediately putting myself into a boiling hot bath and hot bottles in my bed with my lacy French pillows propping me up.

Please can someone deliver me calfs foot jelly, veal, or alternatively a lightly boiled egg over breadcrumbs.

And lots of that sleepy milk.

joey my lamb it's quite normal for young teenage girls to marry young here. Keep your rosary beads handy and embrace being a wife and mother. It's the main reason god made women.

The attitude to walking distances seems to change continually, mind - the girls can climb up to the Sonnalpe easily enough, despite it being a good 4 hour hike up a mountain, but doing the Dripping Rock/Tiern Pass walk in Rivals knackers them all completely, so much so that half of them have to stay in bed the next day. Compare that with the walk when it snows - they've been round the lake a bit, and it snows, so they race home through a blizzard and we get the following quote: "Joey was done and dropped as soon as she got in. One or two of the others weren't much better." So Joey can climb mountains quite happily but not run for a bit along a level path.

Why, pray, does Maisie Gomme decide to name her child after Joey? She has the most tenuous connection to her, but all the same, she adored her so much that she simply had to give her girl Jo's name. (I started A Chalet Girl from Kenya last night, can you tell?)

MissAnnersley, PM me your email address and I'll forward you the transcripts some kind soul sent me last month. I have done nothing but read CS ever since - there are about 30-odd transcripts and I think most of them are unabridged (Exploits is, though). There are the first 14 or so, followed by a random selection of the later ones. I had some more on my old laptop but I can't get it to stay on for long enough to forward them.

Ah a bug bear of mine are children named after Joey.

I do remember in one sentances Joey telling Biddy i refused to have another baby named after me

The insane egoism of this remark.

Maisy is also fairly illiterate from her letter to Jo.

I've rejoined MN after a little absence because I have been loving these threads! CS reader since age 8 - now 55 - adored them, but since I've got older am reading them with a much more critical eye - as is everyone by the look of it.

However, my lambs, I will now do what in me lies to be a REAL Chalet girl....

In fact, not really a girl, more like a much loved mistress, as I am tall, fair and jolly, in the Nancy Wilmot (or as a pupil, Dickie Christie??) I don't have five brothers but I can climb a mean tree.

I'm generally regarded as a complete poppet (as it seems is just about everyone in the Swiss books). I am always fair in lesson time and huge fun out of it, and of course in the best school tradition, I am past master of sarcasm, with a tongue that can take the skin off the lot of you, if roused.

My favourite books are the Armishire ones and I always read with huge envy the cosy opening pages of "Bride", where the Bettanys are all at home, looking after their invalid mother.

My own Mum was 28 when she had me and I always felt wistful when EBD was going on about Jo and Mollie being such young mothers, more like friends than sisters, to their squads of daughters.

Hope I make the grade - if not, I have a jorum of Matey's hot milk on the hob....and something ready to slip into it....

I think you're very mean thebody. I want to have triplets when I leave school and I shall call them Joey, Bet and Annie.

Nancy Wilmot mould, I meant to say...I'm so excited to be on the thread at last!

Any of you out there members of Friends of the Chalet School? I am and I feel a bit disloyal

YY thebody EBD obviously shared my attitude towards random underlinings!

Lazurda, I am a member of FOCS, I love getting the magazine and reading everyone else's views on the Chalet School. Until I found FOCS and then these threads I thought I was the only one who still read children's books so I was very happy to find others. I'm now reading the series to my dd who is 9 and she is now a huge fan and makes me read loads to her every day (and I'm loving reading them to her and seeing her reaction to characters/situations).

I do not know what you mean Lazurda by "a critical eye". It makes perfect sense that I should have French as a mother tongue with a Greek mother, English father and growing up in America....

And as an Irish person I find Biddy's brogue totally authentic Lazurda. EBD obviously knew lots of Irish people and had really picked up all those phrases we use on an everyday basis.

I say, there's an awful rumour going around that this term there's going to be NO near fatal accidents involving treks up mountains and icy lakes' NO teacher getting engaged to a doctor from the San; and NO multiple births to a member of the Bettany clan.