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! :-(

Actually, that's not quite fair. I kind of love the absolute mad plots, but in a much lesser way to how I feel about the comfort of Tyrol or the more plausible (sometimes!) wartime drama.

Oh dear, Zero - I googled it too. I will go and report myself to Miss Annersley immediately.

Oh no ZeroSome, I have inadvertently ruined my life :( Please, no one follow my ignorant example.

For me the Swiss books lose the family feel of the first half of the series... with the gruesome exception of Joey and family there is no sense of a wider community as there is in Tyrol, Armishire and St Briavels. No local girls and no regional context. It's all so much more generic school-story, and generic school stories don't, usually, include family tragedies.

I suppose Three is so ever present in my mind because almost all the other CS deaths (particularly the earlier ones) happen in clean, white space; a mountain or a clinic. I worried for decades about ML's mother and grandmother waiting twelve years for her father to come home....

I like the wartime setting of most of the Armishire books and the sense that the school is part of its rural suroundings. The Major coming in to give out about the blackout being broken, Daisy and Robin cycling to and from school etc really give the books a sense of time and place.

In the Swiss books the school is just an entity of it's own, very much detached from it's surroundings. Even Joey practically lives in the school grounds, whereas in Armishire she lived a bit of a distance away which broadened out the scope of the stories a bit.

Zero If they were waiting twelve years then we can ask questions about ML. Surely she was only 10yo in Three go.

What about 'Princess' as a first book? I don't get to feature in many...

? How many years was it?

Seven years, I think. Which has always slightly annoyed me as it would mean the expedition set out in 1940 or thereabouts, which just wouldn't have happened. It would have made much more sense to have the expedition set out in 1939 and get stranded as a result of the outbreak of war.

Is there a Mary Shand and a Mary Shaw in the same form? I'm reading Exile, and Mary Shaw is reported to be in the Fourth, and then two pages later, there's a Mary Shand. I've been puzzling with this for ages - if there are two of them, they're both American, and Mary Shaw has a reputation for trouble, but Mary Shand doesn't seem to. Both names appear in several books (I think they're first introduced in New House, but there's never anything about how there are two Marys, and oh they have similar names (unlike when you have the two Sams ages later). I'd just about got myself convinced there was only one, when I read this:

"Very well. Elizabeth and Betty, go on fixing the strings for those seed-lines. Biddy and Nicole, begin to dig at the first ones. Myfanwy, you can sprinkle the seed — very thinly, please — and Mary Shand may help her."

Why is Mary the only one who gets given a surname? Is it because there are two Marys and Miss Everett wanted to distinguish between Mary Shaw and Mary Shand?

Veta that's just partisan and unhelpful, Robin will pop up in a minute insisting on Adrienne for a similar reason.

Today's fic recommendation is Chalet School, Bridget Jones style. Made me laugh.

I don't remember Mary Shaw. Mary Shand is eventually HG though, I think?

Veta I didn't really like your book even when I was little I think it was a bit too boys own adventure for me.

I'm finding EBD's attitude to looks a little odd. Pretty much every one at the Chalet school is a vision of loveliness or sharply pretty (except for poor old Bride) but there's a bit in Oberland at Daisy's wedding, where someone compliments the triplets on being pretty and Len has a right go at her. "Looks are just what God gave us" or something similar. Then why does everyone have dark-lashed dark violet eyes?

Loved that Nell

I never really picture Len or Con as being particularly pretty. But yes, EBD does harp on about the girls in general being exquisite or lovely or having a dainty prettiness

These kinds of contradictions are one of my favourite things about the books - makes me smile. Everyone is pretty, unless they are a borderline baddy, or otherwise have a face which is "clever", "has character", "makes you want to look at her again". And I never entirely understand the nature of Sybil's ambivalence around her own prettiness.

EBD has a particular affection for what she usually describes as "quietly pretty" (eg Gillian Linton), which I suppose goes some way towards reconciling the preoccupation with violet eyes and a less shallow religiosity. But not completely.

One of my favourite Nell moments is in Exile when she considers her own reflection and says something like "I may yet take a violent interest in my appearance... On second thoughts, nah."

I also love the way everyone agrees on who are the loveliest girls, and who is 'even lovlier' than xxx who was at the school years ago.

When I was at school it was always a matter of debate as to who was 'better looking' than who. There was never that common agreement as to where everyone stood in the good looks pecking order. And we didn't even have that many contenders to discuss, unlike the Chalet School where 80% of the girls seem to have been contenders for Miss World.

The Chalet school is characterised by universal agreement! Is it ML winning the Margot Venables prize where we're supposed to believe every single girl in the school voted for her?

Just wondering if I could have a link to the transcripts too please?

Cheeky I know (given my username) but CS was my first love, I promise.

Nell every single girl-which presumably includes ML voting for herself.

EBD was totally obsessed with looks. You even have the staff musing one time about what a good looking staff they have at one point. Which is strange considering how much she protests about looks not really mattering. Another case of protesting too much, I guess.

Anyone applying for a job at the Chalet School had to send in their photo, in the first instance to ensure that all the applicants had either soft pansy eyes, eyes that will have never needed glasses, eyes capable of giving an icy glare/stare or laughing/dancing eyes. The latter of which sound very unstable - you think how you would feel if someone's eyes are permanently moving around while you're talking to them!

Anyone who had an eye that looked at their own ear would have been rejected.

After that, they considered the tri-language requirement.

Personally Nells my vote would go for Jo of the Chalet School. It's the first book to feature yours truly and in that book I am very cute (if a little babyish).

Jo of is lovely with the Christmassy bits.

Exile is great but probably does need the context to really love it.

The wartime era are probably my favourite section of the series.

I find the fact that Miss Annersley tells them that everyone voted for the same person, but everyone is still dying to hear who it is. Even if there is hyperbole and ML voted for someone else, surely she is the only person to be surprised?

People do die in the Swiss books, it is just dealt with in less detail or they are peripheral. Compare how ML's Mother's death is dealt with - very much off stage (unlike her father earlier) with the Motorist in the Rutherford/Nina car crash.

Actually I like some of the Swiss ones, its just towards the end they get a bit formulaic (New girl comes with a problem, its sorted out in one book via some calamity, next book moves on to the next character). The last two break this a bit (although before and after half-term Althea has different groups of friends).

Len is given some chance to think about marrying Reg at the end, although her mother has been discussing it for about a year. Margot though is given no chance to consider her future (she just looks serious from time to time for years). And Con is going to Oxford and I'm not totally sure what she is going to study.

I quite like the Swiss books, despite how formulaic they are. I expect that's probably the novelty though - before the transcripts the only Swiss books I'd read were Ruey, Feud, Redheads and Prefects (my school library had gorgeous hardbacks of the Ruey, Feud and Redheads, and I'm fairly convinced that in the seven years I was there, I was the only person who ever read them...). It was interesting to finally get to read about all the new girls that everyone's always talking about.

On a fairly unrelated note, whatever happened to Rosalie Way? She seemed to just disappear after her book (rather like the later Swiss new girls), which is a shame, because I bought Rosalie recently, and was a bit taken aback with how much I identified with her... if I'd been a Chaletian, we could've been friends...

Rosalie comes up in later books as Tom's surprisingly feminine friend, though EBD has forgotten the incredibly funny rhyming surnames, and calls her Rosalie Browne for a couple of vooks. She's Way again by the time they are Millies though.