To wonder why MNHQ still haven't given us our Chalet School topic?

[TheObligatoryNotQuiteSoNewGirl]

Because we probably shouldn't still be hanging out in AIBU, four (or is it five?) threads later.

I've been reading all the lovely transcripts, and although I started Prefects yesterday, I don't want to finish it, because it's the last one! :-(

Nell I would suggest Exile, simply because I think it's one of the best, but also the reality of the situation contrasts quite nicely with EB's nice middle class where the worst that can happen in getting extra French poetry to learn.

Alternatively I'd suggest Jo of, because it's early enough in the series to still have that family feel, but the first one is a little too much on the setting up the school to give a fair compare to EB.

One of my friend's from school's mum had a story about a knitted swim suit. It was knitted in a sort of elastic, so it looked tiny, then stretched when you put it on. She was swimming with a friend, when the friend dared her to jump in from the top diving board.
So she climbed up to the top, looked down, and jumped... and as she jumped the stitching in the crotch burst, and the elastic retracted, and the eyes of the swimming pool watched as this small naked, apart from a small scarf-like garment fell into the pool.

Nell I also think Three Goes.... would be a good choice. It is set in Amishire (which I think was wherre the Chalet School was at its best) and includes all of the main characters, but with none of them being uber annoying.

Elisaveta are you taking orders for these items? How much lime green wool have you got, as I think that nightie and the balaclava would be a most fetching combination.

Nell, is that book different in the Armada? Because I only have the Armada version and the way I read it, he doesn't tell Len off at all. He asks her what she's done for him and tells her it was the right thing but that he needs something more. Maybe you read something else into it because you're an elder sibling but it doesn't come across that way to me. Unless they have cut the telling off, which wouldn't be unusual!

BTW I'm giving up on knitting - I've dropped too many stitches and it looks like a dishcloth!

I was going to suggest Jo of as well, DeWee as it's one of my favourites and I love the Christmassy bits.

I don't know if the transcripts are missing something there but all I can find is Jack and Joey praising Len. Jack even tells her she did the right treatment. In my opinion the only bit which I think is phrased badly is when he says to her "since you are up and awake, you may as well make yourself useful." Which implies that she wasn't being useful before. What EBD should have written is you may as well continue to be useful..

This is honest truth - I did have lime green wool (leftover from making a twinset cardigan for myself) but I just used the last of it making items for a Sale of Work to raise money for the heart unit at the hospital the San.

I may have absorbed more CS into my unconscious than I realised!

DeWee - a propos your message about Mary-Lou as HG - was there ever in the annals of the CS, ever, another Head of the Middles? I don't everv remember one and I've been reading these bloomin' books for well over 40 years...from lime green bootees, through lime green hotpants, lime green ra-ra skirts to my twin-set with matching trimmed hat.

Margia is described as head of the middles in one of the Tyrol books. But not sure if it's an official position or not...

Don't think head of the middles was an official title really, more of a "noting the person best fitted for Prefect-ship and Head Girl possibility rising to the surface" kind of way, apart from Mary Lou who obviously apart from her exhausting her brain in her first term naturally showed amazing talent and responsibility and likely to do Great Things after leaving school.

Maybe she wore a fetching lime green scarf or hair ribbon in her Kenwigses so identified herself as such?

Interestingly, both Margia and Mary Lou actually made lives for themselves and didn't just go back to the school to teach until they met a husband.

Funny that someone should think armishire was the best location - I always felt that st briavels was 'peak chalet'.

I should reread Joey and Co soon then - it has been years and years and I seem to be being v unfair in my recollection. probably because I don't like Dr Jack

Thanks for one-off book recommendations btw. Still mulling it over.

I love dr jack. Not so keen on Jem. Silly name for a start.

Dr Jem is far worse than Dr Jack, but Jack still has the odd habit of tranquillising his wife. I also don't much like the bit in Exile where he tells Joey to stop being silly. And - possibly this is unfair - but the bit in Camp when he tells Jo she needs to grow up sooner or later makes my skin crawl.

And I don't like the bit where, in Joey's absence (busy-ness? I can't remember) Miss Annersley consults him on some 'social issue of schoolgirls' thing. That's not really the character's fault, but why an experienced headmistress is consulting a random doctor about this I do not know.

She did need to grow up though. I don't think there was anything creepy about saying that (but I always read that one with 9 year old eyes so...maybe I miss nuance).

Sad really but my 10 year old wouldn't miss any nuance of dodgyness. Shows how the world has changed. She won't read CS though. :(

I'm not sure whether I even read that book as a child, so not sure what I would have made as it then. Certainly I think if it wasn't for knowing she would eventually marry him I wouldn't have thought anything of it. But she's, what, 17? And he's a 'proper' grownup telling her she needs to grow up... I just struggle with the transition from this (effectively an adult-child relationship - even if I'm wrong and she's technically 18, she's still a schoolgirl and he's a working doctor) to a romantic/sexual relationship.

I'm fully aware that's me imposing a more modern viewpoint on it, and also that EBD isn't the only one to treat this as normal and fine - I particularly remember Max and Jacqui in Brookside, many many years later. But it still, unreasonably, icks me.

Nell Oddly enough, Brookside's Max and Jacqui popped into my head the other day and I cannot think why?

I agree with you about Jack and Joey's relationship, it does seem contrived and a bit... ick.

Saying that, my OH is 16 years older than me - but I didn't meet him until I was an adult so that's better. Still made my parents go

Ok, I give in.

Please may I have the link to the transcripts?

I've tried so hard not to be sucked back in - but I don't want to be the only obsessive who doesn't have them.

Heh. My most recent ex was 19 years older but, like you, we met as adults so no Max-and-Jacqui-style ick factor here.

Is it more reasonable to say ICK to Reg Entwhistle, who does basically the same thing, a generation later?

Have messaged you Zero.

Thank you so much!

There go the next two or three decades of my life...

Yes, I do think these doctors "waiting for the girl to be old enough" is definitely ICK. Not quite the right phrase but it would have made your skin crawl if you suspected it IRL. And Reg Entwhistle, apart from being a perv, has the most odd name so that's 2 strikes against him.

It may be because we're looking back and using current thinking to judge what was a different time socially. The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

It's true, but it's also surely reasonable to do so, provided you're aware that's what you're doing. (Judge characters through modern eyes, I mean - not wait for your chosen schoolgirl to grow up.)

I suppose all the CS romantic relationships suffer from EBD's difficulty in describing them - whether that's an outright difficulty, or just a difficulty in terms of doing it in a way she felt appropriate to her readership at the time. I think the same is also true of the characterisation of men in the books. Either she just didn't know how, or she couldn't make it feel appropriate. Both stand in stark contrast to when she's writing about the things she clearly did know really well.

I always think Reg sounds like he should be a comedy character, with that name, so I suppose it's then particularly jarring that he's just sleazing over poor Len who really just wants to go to university and not worry about such things.

And that EBD was aiming the books at children, so may have approached relationships in a different way than if it was aimed for adults to read? I don't know for sure, as I haven't read any of her other books bar CS - but I will do once I've finished CS...

I know when I hear someone say now that they're busy, I immediately think when they actually mean they have too much to do!

I think the Julian/Janie Lucy relationship is the most successful one that EBD wrote. The CS ones are less successful, maybe it's because there are too many doctors wielding soporific drinks.