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! :-(

Not fair.

Fancy a house swap?
We were wondering whether a Martello Tower would do for a residence. After all Tamzin and friends manage to live in one for a whole summer holiday. Ds was particualrly taken with the canon on top. Dh didn't like that idea

Vague memory that James Joyce lived in a Martello tower near Dunlaoghaire?

I have finished the transcripts . Althea appears to be the dullest new girl of all, EBD had stopped bothering giving out even one distinguishing characteristic by then.

Think I will start again from School at the Chalet

It is in Sandyford I think, now a museum iirc. Near the forty foot.

Sandycove I mean. Being v bad with typos today!

Yep Althea is boring, earlier books are the best.

Coming extremely late to the party, but can someone possibly send me the link to the transcripts? I have a few already but would love love love to read the books again. Stupidly sold my copies on eBay about 10 years ago when I was trying to save money to go travelling....idiot.

I was excited to discover lots of performances of 'The Red Sarafan' on Youtube. Very useful if you ever know someone who fell in a lake and is reluctant to regain consciousness.

I reakon they woke up to stop the bloody noise.

Joey opening her mouth and those golden notes would piss anyone off.

yep like waking yourself up when you're having a bad dream - then realising it wasn't a dream but Joey warbling in your ear!

Just finishing Exile with dd, she's loved it, as expected especially the birth of the triplets, her questions are - how does Joey carry all the babies at once and why does everyone get better when sung to? She's feeling tired and coldy at the moment and I think she feels that she would be better if she was sung to (but definately not by me with my rubbish singing voice)

Her over arching question of the series so far is - when do they go to the loo? especially on long trips, she was especially worried about this when they were in the coach overnight in New (or United in Armarda series), I think she has a point as they must have been on the coach for nearly 24 hours by the end but no one needs a wee at any point, even after the huge quantites of coffee they all drank.

You have a very sensible and practical minded DD Why. Head Girl material I feel.

Sensible DD indeed! I often wonder about the toilet question too. Not that I usually expect toilet visits to feature in books, but EBD does contrive an awful lot of situations involving long periods with no obvious toilet access. It's only as an adult that I've noticed the attention paid to laxatives, which proves that it's not simply that naice Chalet girls don't need toilets!

Isn't there a bit, perhaps in Goes To It if it's not in Exile, where Corney giggles a bit at how Joey has all three babies gathered up together in her arms, and Jo gets all (pfb!) huffy and says "well how else would you expect me to carry them?"
Less realistically, I'm sure she swings them over her arm in one Moses basket at some point. I don't mean some especially newborn point, either. Maybe that's in Goes To It when they're fleeing Guernsey...

I am not looking up the Red Sarafan on YouTube. I am not, I am not. If I start I will be there all day.

"long periods" - tee hee.

I think Joey carries them all in a basket. I'm sure it's referred to several times, as in tucking them up or putting them back into it. I took "gathered up in arms" as picking the basket up and holding it underneath. presumably for safety, but maybe it didn't have any handles.

Dd2 (10yo) has just expressed her wish to have 12 children to beat Joey. She plans on including quads to really rub it in. However she'll have to get over her dislike of boys won't she? She hasn't really worked that one out.

I wanted to have more children than Joey. Then I a)decided to have a career with which that would not be compatible and b)learned about prolapses.

Characters don't go to the loo in a lot of older books. Nor do Chalet Girls have periods.

I would rather like to give a mother of triplets the war CS books to read, so she could comment on their verisimilitude.

She would probably fall off her chair laughing and have to be resuscitated with the emergency brandy.

One of my closest friends is a mother of triplets. I often want to discuss Joey's triplets with her, then I remember that I don't so much want to out myself as currently reading the Chalet School.

My cousin had triplets. She has carried the 3 in their carseats together. Then promptly gave them out "have a baby" She can't do that now they're nearly a year old. Far too heavy!

Nell you could say someone on Mumsnet was saying... "xyz" and pass it off that way?

I know in one of Antonia Forest's books; Ginty is to take part in a swimming gala and she counts the days to be sure she can swim that day. Maybe she (AF) was aiming her books at a slightly older or more aware audience? Or were written later; I haven't got the book to hand to look.

My memory of that scene in Cricket term was she was checking she didn't have exams that day.
Her and Monica wonder why they've made the team when various regulars haven't, then one of them realises it's exam term and that they must have exams that day, and Ginty counts the days to check that she's free then.

In Three Go... EBD mentions a couple of times that Julie Lucy isn't clever like her sisters Betsy and Vi. But I'm pretty sure in some of the later books she talks about Julie going to University to read Law and be a barrister like her father.
I wonder what the clever girls do when they finish school? [laugh]

Also, what did Beth Chester do when she left? In the Armishire books they frequently refer to the fact that she loves gardening and is going to study it (or horticulture presumably) when she leaves. But in The Chalet School and Barbara, when she was presumably in her twenties, she travels to Switzerland to be a mother's help to Joey, which wouldn't indicate that she'd had much of a career up until then.

Ooh, I'm so curious as to which of you remembers correctly. I haven't (yet) read any AF - I intend to, I have the impression that she might be a bit better.

My books arrived, my books arrived! HB Gay and Camp (lols). GGB Oberland. Now I must confiscate my own bank cards, lock myself out of paypal etc to make sure I don't accidentally buy any more.

I think I said earlier in this thread, or at some point in a previous one, that Bill was probably my very first crush. Really odd to finally see a picture of her, so many many many years later.

Well, thanks for a double dose of career/aspiration disappointments, Vintage. Re: Julie Lucy, maybe she came into her own later in her school career? (I remember some classmates like this.) Otoh, maybe EBD had an uncharacteristic memory lapse. Why why why does she have Jo 'making lists' for her first book, when she clearly didn't bother herself?

When/where does Miss Everett leave btw? Does she stay at the UK branch when the school proper relocates to Switzerland?

You may be right DeWee I've always read it like that because my mother told me that was what the intention (she read the book before me) so she may have told me wrongly.

I'm going to have to try and get hold of a copy and re-read it now :)

I think Miss Slater was the only teacher who didn't travel to Switzerland with the school Nell. She got a more senior and better paid post in England, where she wanted to stay anyhow, and the other teachers and Joey thought she was mad and couldn't understand why she didn't want to stick with her lower paid job in the Chalet School and uproot herself to Switzerland