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 really like the older Robin. It is v annoying when she gets shunted off to a nunnery, although not quite so annoying as when EBD decides that Margot will also become a nun. Margot, ffs. Not sure any Mother Superior is going to look very sympathetically on Margot's devil as she loses her temper yet again and chucks a bookend at a fellow novice's head. I do operate on the assumption that Margot gets to uni, discovers sex, drugs and rock n roll and promptly abandons the nun plan to drop out and exploit her marvellous soprano and beauty of face by becoming a pop star instead.

Oooh, I never thought about how Biddy must have felt about suddenly being 'upgraded' to a Chalet girl! That's why I like this thread. I suppose Biddy, being a product of her time as much as Joey/Vanna with their hairdressing/lady's maid notions, simply accepted that they had sent her to the village school as she was working class, but now they were being v generous and allowing her the opportunity to better herself.

I have read most of the chalet school books and just wondering if anyone else gets really annoyed that the French and German in them is all just totally wrong nearly all of the time (and also schoolgirls would not use Sie and Vous to each other). Could she not just have had a proper editor check the correctness?

Also, what's with the twenty o'clock and half past twenty shenanigans? Either eight o'clock or twenty hours. Getting increasingly annoyed with this (yes I need to get a life!)

But Biddy is fiercely proud of her roots, isn't she? While I'm sure she must have been in many ways very grateful, I think she'd also have refused to see it as an 'upgrade' or a 'bettering'. Do the Guides fund her through university, or the Russells, or is it covered by some sort of scholarship money?
After graduating she seems to be in some other kind of employment (and so meets Carola), so I assume her return to the Chalet School is supposed to be very much voluntary, and I'm sure the implication is that she does so because she loves the school, but I wonder if she also felt indebted. (I imagine that, for EBD, if she did feel indebted then there is nothing wrong with that, so it amounts to the same thing. But she's a stark contrast to Jo, who could be similarly said to be 'indebted'.)
And of course, her social mobility is confirmed and her approval certified by her marriage to a doctor.

Isn't there some historic precedent for families sending their daughters to the nunnery rather than letting them go to the madhouse or prison? Have I completely made that up? It's what I think is the case with Margot, really, although in Margot's case it's her own idea, in the CS tradition of honourably owning up to misdemeanours the staff had no way of otherwise finding out about. at Margot as popstar though!
I think a number of girls, especially in the later books, aren't at all helped by the school making allowances for them: Margot being able to blame things on her 'devil', "it's just Mary-Lou" etc. I don't think the same is true in the earlier books so much - thinking about Grizel, and even Jo, neither of whom leaves the school somehow perfect and able to blend seamlessly into any social situation, but both at least have some awareness of where their own difficulties lie, and their personal responsibility to negotiate them.

Heh. I feel quite forgiving of "half past twenty" etc - perhaps it's only useless tokenism, but to me that seems like a well-meant gesture of recognising and promoting a cultural difference, only she doesn't know it well enough to get it quite right. I'm glad I can't speak German as it means I only notice half the foreign language issues - I can happily overlook most of the French ones, apart from when it's one of the French teachers speaking.

I find internal inconsistencies the most difficult to ignore - in one of the very earliest, Grizel doesn't go out for the walk because she's unwell, then two minutes later, there she is, out on the walk! And there is a throwaway remark in Camp where they travel in three coaches: twelve in the first, twelve in the second, and only eleven in the third, so they put allllll the stuff in the third too. As if all the stuff for two weeks of camping is equivalent in size to one girl.

The shoddy editing is noticeable in a lot of Enid Blyton books too. I think they were just churning out so many books and editors just didn't bother.

Joey pisses me off most when she's seem
As the only person who really understands grief. Why is that? She hasn't lost anyone she remembers.

Totally agree with her reaction to the coach crash too. I mean wouldn't the sisters have left the kids in the care of their maids and immediately gone to visit them. I suppose there may have been travel difficulties during the war but still!

Also hate the way she dismisses Melanie when she says her mother doesn't want to talk about the past as oh that's all over and done with now she won't mind bloody cheeky mare.

I think Margot and Grizel are the most believable characters in the book as they are properly floored. Not just crap like tactlessness and butting in.

I've just finished the Triplets and skimmed through the second half as I was so gobsmacked by the Margot-Betty incident. I can't believe Margot gets no punishment - even from strict Dr Jack who must realise she nearly killed someone. And Betty gets given half the blame just because she tells the triplets to "Pipe Down". I kept thinking Joey would get involved later on and we would see some repentance from Margot, but no, life just moves on to the frankly dull play and ridiculous Cecil kidnapping episode.

I'm sure I haven't read this before.

Do you know what, though, and I hate to say this, but I think that sort of victim-blaming can be traced right back to Eustacia...

I have an idea that Biddy wins a scholarship to Oxford. Possibly the Therese Lepattre.

I don't speak German either so no idea how bad that is, and my French is now v rusty and I tend not to pick up on the mistakes. Half the time it's just the girls speaking anyway so if I do notice anything I assume it's just because said character was crap at French.

The body, so she hasn't! Grr, Joey the expert on grief who has never been bereaved ever, except for her parents, but she doesn't seem to count them. In fact, the only reference I ever remember her making to them is in the very first book, when she remarks that her parents would never have behaved like Juliet's.

Nell, what, the bit where Miss Stewart tells Eustacia that if only she had learnt to control herself then they wouldn't all be stuck in the hut in a snowstorm while Miss Wilson is in a pain-induced stupor? Speaking of which, I broke my arm aged 7 at a birthday party. The mother in charge didn't realise what I'd done and I spent 2 hours pretending it didn't hurt while attempting to join in with the party. Dad took me to A&E when he arrived to collect me and it turned out to be fractured. Similarly, a friend broke her arm at the beach once and carried on bravely until she finally admitted at the end of the day that she didn't think she'd manage to drive home. Neither of us fainted/fell into a stupor/ran a temperature. AIBU to think that Miss Wilson might have been doing a bit of self-medicating with a hip flask?

My mum broke her foot recently (in 3 places so much worse than Miss Wilsons)she didn't realise and still managed to hobble around on it for a week before she realised it wasn't getting better so ended up going to the doctors. Yes she was in a lot of pain but didn't faint (no spineless jellyfish my mum)

Even when the supposedly native French speakers are speaking, it is wrong! It is very rarely correct in fact. Super irritating! It wouldn't have been that hard to have it checked!

TooExtra Isn't it the bit where Jo blames Eustacia for Robin being ill as she was worried about them? If she dies, Jo will never forgive her.

I too broke my arm aged 6 at Great Ormond St hopsital where my brother was having a check up. The nurse sent me home with bruising and it was only later thta night when I was complaining that I got taken to A&E and it was broken... also no stupor!

It is true, characters are always running temperatures and collapsing from what seem like small things, eg in an early book, Jo standing at an open door for five seconds in the cold and getting bronchitis.

Well exactly Too lot of child blaming here.

What about the nanny who falls asleep in the job and the kids wander off and nearly get killed on a speedboat. I mean really that nanny would be sacked at least!

Oh and would Betty and deira really be nearly killed from
Someone throwing something at their heads?

I must have a very thick skull as I have recently bumped it sick cleaning up cat sick from under the table( tmi)

Funnily enough I have no temp/not fainted or comstosed d don't expect to be head shaved or drugged.

Those chalet girls were woozes.

Glad I don't speak French or German as that would drive me nuts! I don't do fluent Italian either. Little swots!

I was reading the School at the Chalet to DD last night - I had to say that people aren't usually in a coma for 3 days just because they "climbed a mountain".

If Joey was delicate/asthmatic she might have had an asthma attack trying to get there - and then needed the bronchitus treatment Grizel gets. To be honest I was a delicate child - have got soaked to the bone - but have never had bronchitus.

DH fell off his bike and fractured his hip - he didn't faint. (Okay he's a man, so that explains it.)
I dislocated my toe - incredibly painfull - but no faint.
I think its a bad accident when I can't stop myself crying.

Does this prove I'm really working class?

I think it's a quite general theme in Eustacia - it is indeed supposed to be Eustacia's fault that Nell (who probably is just drunk, yes ) is injured and they spend ages in a hut making the Robin ill - although in fact the foot-breaking only adds a few hours to their stay and they would have spent the night in the hut anyway because of the blizzard.
But it's also supposed to be Eustacia's fault that she doesn't fit in, and very little effort seems to be made to accommodate her and help her adjust. She's sometimes completely out of order (like when she hits Kitty) but sometimes she doesn't really understand that she is (like when she 'sneaks', or borrows keys) and I think a lot of the other girls' treatment of her, including Jo's, is nothing short of bullying. Con Stewart is also really quite unpleasant to her, unnecessarily so.

Eustacia ends up bed-ridden in order to reform her character, and she gets to that point through a series of unfortunate events which are exacerbated by her behaviour but also by that of other people in the school, who should know better. The only person who seems to feel at all sympathetically towards her is Matey - and not even because she's recently orphaned, but because she's been so poorly brought up. The implication (imo) is that the onus is all on Eustacia to make herself loveable, and her desperate sadness is thus her own doing, and her accident is a necessary (divine?) 'punishment' to fix her.

The speedboat nanny is probably v similar to Rosa who 'just pops out to the poultry yard' and therefore doesn't hear or see anything when Josette is scalded. (Why isn't she at least as culpable as Sybil?)

My 2yo has the world's hardest head. He headbutts me fairly frequently (accidentally!) and I'll be nearly in tears with pain and preparing for his own sobs, but he just looks at me like 'what? did something happen?' I need three days in a coma and he needs a lecture about how if I died, it would be his fault to live with forevermore.

Nell

And Rosli let's Cecil be kidnapped? Mind you if we are looking at the accident book and health and safety the school would have been closed down on the spot by Ofsted.

My bloody head is aching now. I need some warm
Milk, wrapping in blankets and hot bottles and taking to the San. Oh Joey could sing to me too.

I get irritated by the whole Joey getting to know all the new girls. Why are the new girls not like at going for tea with a random old girl/mother of other pupils. Everyone just loves her for no reason! Also the competitive child bearing is just weird ...

There is a horrible bit in the beginning of Eustacia, where the boy cousins are bullying her - pulling her hair etc.
The newly orphaned girl is told she needs to make herself loveable ie not complain about the bullying.

Occasionally a new girl does question it, and is always told that Joey is 'the spirit of the school' and she'll soon understand. Makes me vom.

The same way so many people say 'she's not being cheeky, it's just Mary-Lou', when really she's being a little annoying cow!

"It's just Mary-Lou" must rank up there with the most annoying phrases in the books, "Joey always was wholesale" is another!

I've just read this drabble about Margot Maynard where she goes into how she felt about being sent to Canada, very well written I thought.