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! :-(

I have to say, when Joey hears about the coach accident in Gay from China she doesn't seem overly shocked or anxious - which, given that Miss Annersely is at death's door - seemed a bit unrealistic. She was more concerned with sorting out who would take over from the various teachers who had been injured, before sitting down to a good tea and bringing Madge upstairs to admire the triplets.
I found that quite annoying, as we've always been lead to believe that Miss Annersley is extremely close to the Russells and Maynards.

Yes! And this is Jo, who is supposedly all about the out-of-control empathy, rather than any kind of pragmatism. (I could kind of buy into that kind of practical "right, let's look at our options" approach from Bill, or Matey, or Jem, for example. Jo, I'd more expect to swoon and end up in bed being useless, but not callous.) Also, she begins to reel off a list of other people who ought to be called upon to fill the void, without seeming to consider herself capable of doing so - Jo, champion butter-in?

The "get out of bed and come and fix it" letter to Bill is similarly awful, but slightly more plausible - I can see Jo being a bit over-hopeful about Bill's recovery, and it does fit perfectly well with Jo's eternal schoolgirl status, her relationships with both Madge and her former teachers, and her personal fragility - it never occurs to her that it might not be OK to just ask for help (and it also never occurs to anyone to say no to her).

Btw, on Jack Lambert and ML: I haven't read enough with Jack in it, and nothing at all recently, so can't yet comment on this, but in terms of ML goody-goody nature - this is an interesting contrast, isn't it, to the Tyrolean books? Grizel and Jo, for example, continue to have v plausible lapses in behaviour right up to their final terms, in spite of being Head Girl. I know some characters have always been fairly well-behaved (thinking of Frieda and Marie, for example) but the really vocal leader types are usually shown to be more challenging on occasion, and especially as Middles. Whereas ML is obnoxious but never really convincingly naughty at any point that I can remember. It's a really unappealing combination!

Step sisters vs. sisters-by-marriage.
I always assumed the seriously obnoxious ML (except for her first appearance in the apple orchard) was because she and V did not have a biological relationship ie. no common parent. Perhaps that was important to EBD because she had a half brother/step brother herself.

I liked Clem very much.

Transcripts. My ancient mac will not open them. Any tips/advice?

I've downloaded Calibre but not sure if that works on a mac.

I'm going against the grain but I always liked Mary-Lou and never really warmed to Grizel until the Reunion. Not sure why.

I'm distraught - I've finished all the transcripts. I have no idea what I am mean to do now.
Also, I have some questions please, so if anyone can tell me "what's the why of them"

What exactly did OOAO ML do to herself to need her head shaving? I gather it was something to do with Margot and Emmy?

Who is Erica Standish and the Marie-Claire baby person that appears in the last book? How are they suddenly wards of Joeys?

Also was the series meant to end when the Trips leave school or is that when EBD died?

From memory (I haven't got to that book yet) ML had an accident caused by Emerence/Margot tobogganing down a hill when they were told not to. She hit her head and,of course, the cure for that was shaving your head. Not sure which book that happens in.
Think the Marie-Claire story is in A future Chalet School Girl but I may be wrong.

Emerence was sledging somewhere she shouldn't have been (IIRC Margot went with her but chickened out at the last minute), crashed into Mary-Lou who was running up to stop them, and sent ML flying into a tree. Mary-Lou presumably had some kind of head injury which back in the day necessitated head-shaving. And a good dose of singing from Joey, probably.

Not sure about Erica Standish/Marie-Claire, I have lots of gaps in my collection at that stage.

I think EBD died before Prefects was published, but not sure if it was intended to be the final one in the series.

It's in Mary-Lou. I've got an Armada copy of this- I'm fairly sure it's one of the few missing from the transcripts. Theoretically happy to type it up after I submit my dissertation in Sept, if this is the case, and if nobody with the unabridged copy wants to do so.

I suspect EBD had realised that, if she rushed, she would get to the triplets leaving before she died - it makes sense of the tying up of loose ends (we know exactly what they intend to do, including Len's engagement, in a way that feels to me unusually rushed). If she hadn't, I wonder if she would have done a bit of a 'series reboot' book. I think she was teeing Jack up for Head Girl, and also Nancy Wilmot for headmistress - though I wonder if she would really have followed through on that one - so I don't think she viewed it as properly having ended.

Erica Standish is a Jo Scott kind of character, her parents have both died and they have picked Joey randomly to be her guardian. They (Joey and Erica) rescue Marie-Claire from a train accident where her mother dies. Her surviving relatives are then found to be unsuitable at least in Joeys eyes so she becomes another ward.

Has anyone else read The Feud in the Fifth Remove?
People calling each other 'shopgirl'

I've just spotted someone with the username of OOAOML! Help!

Ah, fab. Thanks all.

I'm just starting Feud Marcipex with the St Hilda girls - is that what you mean?

Just finished Future CS girl which feels like EBD gave up all pretence of trying to write a story, just random trips with Joey lecturing about history. Am hopeful Feud will be an improvement but I'm also aware that I've reached the downard slope in the transcripts!

Is she being patronising in a way only Mary-Lou can get away with Robin?

She grew up with old people y'know.

It's EBD but not Chalet School Stokey, I think it's from 1932.

Philathea Marriott loved first things. The first strawberries; the first tennis; the first swimming; the first day of a new term....

Joey really was totally absorbed with the school and less than interested in the suffering of family and friends in Gay from China. Apart from her rather casual attitude to poor Miss Annersley lying at death's door, and her coercing of a still not well Bill to come back to the school (and then throwing a strop and threatening to walk out herself because Stephen had been left crying for a few minutes) she was also quite cavalier about the fact that her niece had almost died after a serious accident. She was actually more concerned, when the news came through, about having all the new girls to tea and being 'Saint Joey of the Chalet School'.

All fur coat and no knickers is springing to minde.

I've been thinking about Biddy today, having just reread And Jo. I do like Biddy, although the Oirish makes me wince a little. But I can't help feeling suspicious of how she manages to go from being the charity case they send to the local school with a mind to having her devote herself to being the Robin's free maid out of gratitude, to the quintessential beloved Old Girl mistress. I do realise she is a far nicer person than me but I would just feel so resentful, or at least awkward, about that transition.

Urgh, and is it in Gay or slightly later that she 'sympathises' with Sybil because if Josette had died, it would have been all her fault? Why does nobody tell Sybil that, whilst it was a really stupid thing to do, it really wasn't her fault? She's only little herself. :( And even if you do agree that it happened because she is spoilt, and that this is somehow connected to her beauty (I'm v sceptical about both of these connections), it still wasn't out of malice and it deserves proper forgiveness. That weird petulance reminded me a lot of Joey in Lintons when she decides immediately that Joyce is a bad'un simply because she doesn't adore the Robin, and makes me more annoyed that Jo ends up able to displace Madge as "the motherly one".

Probably Jo's general lack of empathy wouldn't annoy me half so much if she wasn't supposed to be sensitive, understanding, etc etc.

I can't understand the anger towards Sybil. She didn't deliberately pour the water on Josette and her father's reaction seems out of all proportion. Matey had to step in eventually and have some firm words with him.

I'm reading Three Go after this and feel that's really the last of the really strong, family atmosphere Chalet books. After that Madge is gradually phased out, Joey becomes a bit of a caricature with her competitive child birth carry on, Robin and Daisy only appear sporadically, Frieda, Simone et al are only mentioned in passing, and the books become more like typical school stories, focussed on prefects meetings, new girls and jolly japes etc.

Yes, Sybil was only a child herself and Josette ran into her. An Accident. OK Sybil had been told not to use the kettle but equally Josette was old enough to know you don't run around blindly! Grr!

Sometimes I want to give Jo a slap. Other times I feel she's being maternal and kind. Are pansy eyes meant to be soft and welcoming? I prefer a clear gaze myself. Much like Miss Annersley (who never needed glasses) would have given. Seems much more trustworthy.

ML, on the other hand I want to slap every time someone says "it's just Mary-Lou" My slapping hand is getting really sore!

The Robin, I loathed in books when I was a child, has now grown on me and I now quite like her. I was sorry in a way when she decided she would be a nun. I liked her style.

I wonder, had EBD not died, where the books would have taken us?

I bet she would eventually have moved the school back to the Tiernsee. The magic would not have been recaptured. :( The stories would continue in the formulaic style of the Swiss books (though at least they would no longer be so physically constrained to the Platz, a purpose-built CS expat miniature community) with the odd descent into sheer madness eg Miss Annersley threatened at gunpoint, Kathie Ferrars leaping from one motorboat to the next like James Bond. She would have a difficult time deciding how to combine Len's degree and marriage, which I would expect to yield another 'long' family, and would probably really struggle to allow anyone to retire, even Matey who must be about 90 by this point.

Or maybe she would have gone back and filled in some gaps - wasn't Tom written totally out of sequence, for example? The Austrian books are full of gaps which would probably be fairly easy to fill (and often it sounds as though she'd once had an idea what had happened in between books anyway); the wartime books also have some funny gaps but i think bridging these would be far more complicated.

Joey is just supposed to be too all-encompassing. So many of the other characters are really well-developed and plausible and I think they benefit from a sort of authorial benign neglect - she just takes them as they are and uses them (mostly) appropriately, whereas Jo is deliberately cultivated into something altogether less convincing. So, whereas I can happily ignore Bill's speech about the importance of domesticating girls in Camp, or describe the process of Madge becoming distant and a rather rubbish parent in the later books as an aberration, I never feel I really have a fix on which is the 'real' Jo and what isn't. (Bad bad English there, Miss Annersley would despair.)

What would you have done with Robin instead, Joey? Remember my lamb that Dr Jem doesn't think she should have a family because she is too delicate. I quite like to imagine that she basically becomes one of the nuns in Call The Midwife - this is probably my only cultural point of reference for nuns, mind.

Supposedly, my planned collection will only go up as far as Gay, or maybe Three Go at a push, plus a v select few thereafter (Tom, Oberland, New Mistress and Reunion). I don't know if I really will stop there, or if some sense of compulsion will push me on to the whole set. It will be a good while before I have to cross that bridge - logically, I know a lot of the books I dont really want to own a good copy of are also the most expensive so it would be a doubly stupid idea to buy them, but I can imagine 20-25 books looking somehow incomplete.

I'm relutant to spend money on most of the books after Three Go.... and unfortunately most of the Wartime books are very expensive to buy in hardback.

I'm reading Three Go at the moment and I really feel that Madge as Joey's big sister and a former headmistress, would be perfetly inorder taking Joey to one side and telling her firmly that growing girls going around callling their parents mamman and Pappa in post war Britain sound absolutely daft and are bound to be mimiced behind their back by every girl in school; so for their sake Joey really needs to get over herself and allow the triplets to all her and Jack mummy and and daddy like other girls their age.

Sorry, 'mamma' not mamman and 'call her' not 'all her'.

I think Robin had the makings of an interesting character as a young adult, she was written as quite sensible and intelligent with great empathy - pulling back Joey from stupid stuff sometimes and seemingly running the household at certain points during the war. I was disappointed EBD stuck her in a nunnery really - what a wasted opportunity. She would have made a good social worker.