To ask all Chaletians to get ready for Madame's birthday?

[LonnyVonnyWilsonFrickett]

Pop to the splasheries my lambs and after you've brushed your hair till it shines we'll have a quick practice of 'I sing of Margaret so fair'.

Once we've finished casting the movie, that is....

TooExtra yes actually you are right as when Jean mcKenzie writes to ask Joey to have the twins she tells Rob she is busy but will be busier still soon and it's not a new book!!!!

Being busy is a favourite knocked up phrase for EBD along with hands full..

I think EBD write chapters, went in holiday/slept and then carried in writing without reading back to see if it made sense sometimes. That's why they are great really. It's fun spotting the mistakes.

Edna is the "priggy" one in Oberland I'm reading it at the moment.
She seems to have social anxiety always feeling out of the crowd but I suspect not wanting to be part of the crowd. I feel a bit sorry for her myself.

notcitrus THANK YOU!

Edna is the girl from Scotland who sounds "Priggish" and talks a bit like a textbook. She has an extremely neat cubicle (even Peggy feels hers is messy in comparison), and she over reacts to aches after skiing the first time. She was educated by her Professor parents at home until she was 15, and then was miserable at school.
I don't think EBD totally understands her, which is why I think she must have known a girl like Edna.
She does undergo one of those "removes glasses and loosens hair" transformations, when the sainted Peggy helps her wear a bit of lipstick and powder and alters her hair style a bit.

Crikey O Reilly, Jacynth's Auntie has just died.

Cue massive weeps.

Sniff, sniff.

If only I knew where my hanky was...

I was wondering about Joey's quads she mentions on a few occasions.
Do we reckon that EBD was planning on giving her quads at some point but ran out of time?
Or that EDB wanted to give her quads, but publishers/someone else said "no"!
Or that EBD was having Joey joke about it? Because I think every other time Joey says "I hope for twins" she gets it.

I rather liked Edna (apart from the name). I can very much identify with not really being of the crowd and not quite knowing how to fit in. No one would call me too tidy though.

So EBD had slipped up re Hilary Burns engagement and another writer invented the fiancé killed during the war?

I'm really liking Bride and Sybil's characters in Lavender Laughs....

They sound like real kids with personalities of their own. Bride remains like that to an extent, but Sybil is totally dulled down in later books. I really wish EBD had stuck to just a few cousins and given them all strongly individual characters and different relationships with each other. A bit like the Cazalets. It would have been much more interesting than all these twins and triplets and unexpected arrivals that were just too many for her to write convincingly about.

How long was Peggy a Millie for? I'm reading Trials and she is still there!

I think she was a Millie for at least two years as in one book she talks about having time with Bride there too...

She must have been about twenty when she finally left.

Sybil seems to end up as a child version of "that sweet woman". Or you could read her as totally cowed after Josette's accident and her family's reaction to her (except Madame)
I think she would have been better with a slight edge to her still. As a young child she comes across as determined and it would have been good to see that continuing. And it would have been nice for her to be a prefect in her own right rather than an afterthought.
Peggy only has any personality other than "sweet" in the episode with Lavender. I think as a child I would have quite liked her, but she wasn't really head girl material.

Bride has a character, I suspect because she's one of Tom's crowd, a bit like Josette has a character while she's one of The Gang.

I do think the sheer volume of Russell/Bettany/Maynards meant that most of them had totally diluted personalities. EBD should have gone for quality rather than quantity with the second generation. It's strange to see women who were as individual as Madge and Joe have such dull, indistinctive daughters. Bride and Margot are the only cousins who have any personality really. Peggy has all the charisma of a damp dishcloth, Len and Con sound like a pair of drips and Josette and Maeve aren't really given much to do in the books. Joe's younger daughters are even worse. They sound like wind up dolls most of the time. And Ailie Russell hardly features.

In Chalet School & the Island (pre Carola), Joey makes some charming comment about sitting between 2 brides (Hillary and Gill) rather than 2 spinsters (Grizel and Mary Burnett). So Hillary was definitely engaged then. Weirdly it is Gill who takes offence rather than the 2 called spinsters. & poor Grizel, aged 30 and not allowed a chance of happiness.

I agree about all the cousins Summer very dull. But even Madge becomes a poor reflection of herself by the time she is Lady Russell. Sybil had great potential which was wasted. Still wish Dh had let me use it as a name for DD2!

My Lambs! I need your help. It's OK - I have the theme for the next Sale and all the costumes are sorted. It's just these transcripts. Has anyone else had a problem with Shocks? I've downloaded to Calibre and reformatted to MOBI but when I open it on my Kindle the formatting is dreadful and completely unreadable. Any advice?

IIRC Peggy goes home for at least a term to look after Mollie before a handy cousin steps in so Peggy can go back to being a Millie.

She goes home during CS in the Oberland, but at the start of the next book we find that her aunt is coming to keep house so Peggy actually does not really miss any time at school....

I've found out something really interesting!

The Chalet school perfected cloning before anyone else!

Just read the first couple of pages of "Changes..." and Commander Christie is staying for Coffee because he loves it the way "Karen makes it". Which is fine, except Karen is working at Welsen the finishing branch in the Oberland, not on the Island.
(We'll forget the fact that about 2 books back they bought Plas Howell but have now decided not to buy it and to just keep Glendower house going.)

Peggy was definitely way too saccharine to be interesting. Did the girl have any faults? And then when she got married she was sooo popular that all of the pupils did a collection to buy her a wedding present. In RL someone like Peggy wouldn't have even been made Head Girl, let alone still be remembered with such interest several years after she'd left.

Edna yes yes gotcha now. Agree definatly her character is totally believable.

Agree with the boring Peggy.

Mummy might have this wrong but I think there are 2 Karens. One was at welsen and one with the school proper, both cooks as during one episode, not sure which book, there's a storm that cuts off supplies and all are in short rations and Bill comes to the school, then in Switzerland, to discuss the shortage and tells Nell she would have to consult our own karen

Sybil's character changes beyond belief apparently after the shock of Josettes accident although how a 10 year old is responsible for an accident to a 4 year old is a bit much considering all the child care help Madge has!

Bride, Margot and Sybil would have made a great trio of cousins, and there could have been some really interesting storylines around them. EBD really slipped up with the second generation.

I think Sybil also becomes boring because she's supposed to be this kind of example of how being pretty, on its own, isn't enough. Like there's constantly a lesson being taught to both the character and the reader to this effect, and the moral purpose of this overrides character because EBD is so keen to shoehorn in this point (a bit like Bill's rant about the importance of housework in Camp). Consequently EBD isn't sure what to do with her and so she is this nothingy character who can't be too popular, too pitiable, too interesting, or too much in need of reform. She's trapped in a static message.

I don't think EBD totally understands her, which is why I think she must have known a girl like Edna.

Yes, I think this is true of a few characters actually. I also think it has to be true of Nell and Con who I can't read as anything other than an actual relationship, but I also can't imagine that was EBD's intention to include in a children's book in the 1930s.

^
Sybil's character changes beyond belief apparently after the shock of Josettes accident although how a 10 year old is responsible for an accident to a 4 year old is a bit much considering all the child care help Madge has!^

That accident annoyed me - IIRC Josette ran into Sybil who was holding a kettle of boiling water so why Sybil was blamed entirely, I don't know. And didn't Jem ignore Sybil for 2 weeks afterwards? Unreasonable. I'm sure that if a child ran into me while I was holding a kettle, I would be hard put to not spill water everywhere!

And then Madge carts Sybil off to Australia after she'd promised that she could go in for needlework.

Not to mention leaving her behind while she takes her other daughters to Canada and then casually announcing that they're going to stay on for another year.