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....

*figured... can't type

Oh agree ^^ you just can't sort out EDB isms. You would go insane.

in peace comes to the chalet school by Catherine Bruce she makes a great attempt to sort some of these mysteries.

It's a great read too.

I'd love Peace as I've never read it, however on Amazon it's 110 which is way too expensive, I may have a look round to see if it's cheaper elsewhere.

I'm just reading Returns and I love the bit where Joey is writing her first book and she writes out lists for the whole school, staff and all class by class. I can only assume that EBD didn't take her own advice or did do that but ignored any thing that didn't fit in with how she wanted.

The errors infuriate me sometimes because the make my brain ache as I try to work them out and justify things, but I try really hard to ignore them. Even my 9yo dd is picking up on them.

There are so many inconsistencies... I've just reread the Plas Gwyn books and Barney Lucy is born in summer 1939, a few months before the triplets. Yet by Three Go the triplets are nearly eight while poor Barney is still only five!

The Maynards know the Doctor

They must do! And then there's this wonderful bit in Challenge:

^“Now, IIIb, you go with Miss Burnett and Miss Moore, and your prefects are Primrose Trevoase and Jeanne Daudet. Your ramble is up to the toboggan path and down by the stream through the pinewoods.”

“And our escorts?” demanded a small voice.

“Miss Carey and Miss Lawrence, and Maria Zinkel and Con for prefects.”

Exit IIIb, highly delighted!^

Italics fail...

I avoid reading in the right order - it means EBD's errors either disappear from view, or at least far smaller than the ones I make myself in doing so.

I am about to spend silly money I don't have on three fill-ins... If only the ggbp website and my iPad can communicate a little better that is...

I am reading The One With Naomi, and Jo tells the staff she is hoping for a girl when she is 'busy' next, as their education is free. Do the Maynards go to CS for free as the nieces of the owner?

I've read them in order up to Highland Twins so far. From info given in each book as it goes along, so far I've worked out:
1929/30 CS established (ref Goes To It)
Given that Joey was 12 she must have been born 1918ish - maybe parents dead of Spanish flu?
Which means Madge & Dick born c1906.
Triplets were born 3 Nov 1939.
The school was closed from June 1938 to sept 1939, was in Guernsey sept 1939 to Easter 1940 then moved to Armiford.

I'm sure somewhere it mentions either Jem or Jack being 8 years older than their DW but I can't remember which one or what book I read it in now. Anyone?

Elisaveta I read this mini-fic a while ago which suggested free for the Russells and 10% for the Maynards, but I don't know whether that detail was actually taken from canon or not.

I quite like Trials - I find Naomi one of the most likeable minor characters though I'm not sure if that's intended really.

WhyamIhere - peace is on ebay at moment - £2.19 with 3 bids and 3 days to go!

I liked Naomi too. All these books that I had never read before but when I was a child I didn't have my nose out of a CS book, ever, it felt like! Fab.

Trials was the first CS book I ever read. I had a 2-in-1 of Trials and Theodora - that one was a gift (from a great-aunt), subsequent ones I sought out in the library. I remember Eustacia, Rivals, Exploits and New Mistress were among my earliest, too. In fact I distinctly remember, reading the list of other titles in my copy of Trials, that I was particularly keen to seek out Eustacia because I thought it was a lovely name.

I'm still v fond of those six, though my real favourites are Exile (everybody's favourite), Gay from China and Goes To It. I wonder if it was just that I was fortunate in my first few CS books, or if my continued fondness is about happy memories? I actually now feel kind of ambivalent about Exploits - it has all the comfort that I love about the Tirolean books, and some v nice moments, but I don't know now what to make of Thekla's character.

Rue, I'm now leaping miles ahead of your carefully worked out ages (see, this is why I can't read the series in order), but roughly how old would Mary-Lou have been in Prefects? Still in her 20s, say?
Or, my real question, I wonder whether Mary-Lou, who is basically Joey mark 2, would eventually have been married off, or whether she really was going to be a proper Career Woman (or if society/EBD had finally reached a point where these options weren't so either/or)?

Such a big thing seems to often be made of the central desirability of marriage, but actually it seems to me that EBD offers a fairly wide range of possible life plans. I think this is all the more emphatic if ML doesn't end up following the Daisy Venables path of career then marriage - not that that's not a reasonable (and realistic) choice, just that ML doing differently adds greater breadth to the possibilities for the beloved main characters especially.

at that fanfic, thank you Nell !

In Three Go, ML was 10 at the beginning. And the trips are 7 or 8 I think. So...I think it's probably another EBDism, since the trips in Prefects are about 18, which makes ML all of 21 or so :o

I'm so tempted to dig out my old copy of Family Tree Maker and have a bash at the Bettany/Russell/Maynard/etc clan :o but I suspect either it would crash repeatedly or I'd go mad at the internal inconsistencies of age/name/EBDisms.

Just reading A Future CS Girl and Joey has just met an Old Girl - Irma.

I don't remember an Irma. Did I skip that page in prep?

This is the book where they get the minibus in the tasteful colours.

Irma von Rothenfels? Paula's sister?

Many many lols at lime green being described as a tasteful colour, in any context.

Rue, the gap between ML and the triplets grows considerably, right? She's not really still 21 by the end of the series? The triplets seem to age in a really odd way - on the one hand, it takes 30 real years for them to reach 18, and on the other, they fly through the school years so quickly that Inter V has to be invented to slow them down. It's like quantum physics or something.

I found this so we can plan many many happy birthdays throughout the year.

What on earth will Jack Lambert Day be like?

Isn't the child who falls in the lilly ponds in Carola a niece or daughter of a Irma?

There's also a Irma, I think, who's friends with Robin, I think she's the friend who visits her in "and Jo".

Ha! Jack Lambert Day would have to start with a morning spent on the lake in motor boats. In the afternoon everyone tinkers with her own favourite piece of machinery. Before bed the cats have to be hidden ready for a night of cat rescue.

I'm getting excited about my own trip to Austria, the weekend after next. DD1 and I are off to Mayrhofen for three wonderful weeks of trying not to kill each other mother-daughter bonding in the Alps. Does anyone remember which book has the visit to Mayrhofen? I'd like to read it in situ as it were, though DD will disown me if I appear in public with it. I've checked and there is good public transport to the Tiern See Achensee so we'll definitely go there at least once!

Irma von Rothenfels is Robin's friend. The child who falls into the lily ponds is Ingrid (Bjornnsen?). Her older sister is Sigrid, who was friends with Corney Flower.