To wonder which fictional boarding school you'd like to have attended?

[Clothrabbit]

For me, Malory Towers. I still love those books and always enjoy reading about the outdoor pool, Gwendoline's misdemeanours, and Mamzelle's eccentricities.

That was meant to be about the boat train. Aargh......

We used to do the boat train a lot as a child. I have vivid memories of the excitement of waking up in another country-in the days when countries felt incredibly different to each other. And having breakfast on the train going through Switzerland was utterly magical.

I remember doing the boat train all on my own on the way to to a study course in Paris as a rather nervous 17 year old. My parents didn't even come to the station, but gave me strict instructions to be careful of "white slavers". I don't know how I was supposed to recognise them. And I had read the Chalet School.

Where ever the Worst Witch went

So how does the boat train work as I often wondered? Presumably the train takes you right to the boat and then you get on another across the Chanel as soon as you dock?
And not, as I thought as a kid, the train actually goes on to the ferry on special rails!

Trebizon.

The boat train I used to catch just took you to the terminal at Dover (I think - it was over 50 years ago!) and you walked to the ferry and did the opposite the other side . We do have some old British Transport films (DH likes that sort of thing) where the carriages actually went on special rails to the ferry. I think it was from Folkestone.

The Chalet School

St Trinian's.

@TheCountessofFitzdotterel
I used to live in the building where that was filmed! It used to be a school but had been turned into first year halls of residence.

There was also a boat train that went to Weymouth - it had a special rail to take it down the middle of the road to the quay - used to love watching it when I was a child.

Either the Chalet School or Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy from the Gail Carriger books

I basically did go to Kingscote, and I concur with the people saying it wouldn't be as much fun as you'd think.

We had the weird carol concerts and the slightly strange spiritualism attached, and the already-rather-dated sports stuff (which Forest ends up with because she took so bloody long to write the books), and we definitely had the 'realistic' grimnness.

The one thing I do like a lot about Kingscote (to go to school with, I mean - I love the books just as they are) is that Lawrie and Tim are quite plainly lesbians and it is neither a big deal nor a question of 'pashes'. And that, likewise, was completely like my school.

I definitely think Hogwarts for me. But I'd go to university at Diane Wynne Jones's Wizards University in Year of the Griffin. I want the library.

There was also a boat train that went to Weymouth - it had a special rail to take it down the middle of the road to the quay - used to love watching it when I was a child.

And all the tomatoes from the Channel Islands.

Durmstrang Institute

1.Hogwarts
2.The Chalet School

.....but really really agree with PP who suggested Star Fleet Academy. And hey, there's a book or two - they just aren't ..great.

@LRDtheFeministDragon does your old school still exist, and if so, do you know if it's still like Kingscote? (Where I have spent a great deal of imaginary time, but wouldn't have lasted a week IRL).

Malory Towers. :) I loved all the characters, and reading Mam'zelle's antics (especially her sneezing fit) was the first time a book ever made me cry-laugh.

They were one of the first series of books I read entirely on my own... My dad, of all people, recommended them to me. I remember reading one of them on a plane to Florida... I must have been about 8 and a half.

bridget, it does still exist, but it's completely normal now! We had a very eccentric headmistress (she retired towards the end of my time there), and it was all to do with her that it was like that.

My ds is lucky enough to have a couple of old school eccentric teachers at his school- one has an anarchist flag and symbol tattooed on his ankles.....

LRDthefeministdragon that has honestly never occurred to me about Lawrie and Tim. Patrick and Peter on the other hand......

I once ended up.on a blog page 're the Marlows and someone commented that she had always wanted to be Lawrie and hadnt realised until she grew up that Nicola is supposed to be the twin everyone wants to be. That was my thought exactly!

Tim was the first ambivalent character I read. Until then they were clearly good (Swallows/Amazons/Fossils/Famous Five/Paddington) or bad (Great Aunt/Foreignlooking kidnappers/wicked stepmothers)
It was a real gear change in my reading.

Hogwarts
I'm also tempted to say the assassins' school that Vetinari went to in Pratchett's The Night Watch, but only so I could hang out with Vetinari. I'd be a rubbish assassin!

Well, emma, I read the books as an adult, so maybe a bit less innocent!

I like Nicola, but I do think Lawrie is the one I'd feel as if I was. I like how she doesn't realise she's shocking and offending people - like getting taken to task for saying Christianity is all a metaphor and not real. I'd have done that. Nicola is much more guarded and socially aware.

But yep, sorry. Lawrie and Tim. Honestly, that one is not subtext.

How strange. The books with Nicola and Lawrie popped briefly into my thoughts this morning, when there was some sort of hawk after a rabbit and it was mewing. I had an idle train of thought about ‘Mews’ being so-called because they were places where hawks were kept, and how i’d learnt that from some dimly remembered school stories featuring twins one who could sing and one who could act.

I don’t remember any lesbian subtext. Or Tim. Time for a revisit, maybe.