Not to have realised until now that Joey Maynard’s ‘displaced organ’ was a prolapse?

[QuaterMiss]

I know there is or was an enormous Chalet School thread but I can’t spend six weeks trawling through that.

Fascinated to note (because I’ve been reading the complete synopses how all the CS women taken seriously ill either went straight to the San or journeyed - over days - for a consultation with Sir James Talbot. It was he who diagnosed said ‘displaced organ’. At which point Joey had iirc nine children. May be wrong, lost count.

(I read and reread the entire series over my first three decades.)

stellarparallax - there used to be convalescent homes in the UK too but they are long gone.

In every book there is an almost fatal accident or illness - head injuries (from which a full recovery is made) bronchitis or pneumonia. I’ve had the last two and my GP has simply given me antibiotics and sent me on my way. No sanatorium, hospital or near death experience!

Yes but they didn’t have antibiotics! Or many common vaccinations, hence massive quarantines and slow/steady recoveries.

I know because my mother was one (not posh though) and had tons of illnesses and was ‘delicate’, then had tb, for which thankfully they’d just made effective treatments mainstream. But she was still in a clinic for months, at a time when it was really common. Absolutely hordes of people died from tb.

Where can I find a good list of the chronological order of chalet school, and do you think they’ll ever be out in ebooks again?

stellarparallax - there used to be convalescent homes in the UK too but they are long gone

Still there. NHS and charitable.

I know that, but the question was why people aren’t sent to recuperate in Switzerland or Austria any more.

@stellarparallax because the NHS won't fund it. Anyone willing to pay would presumably be able to go there instead though.

Interesting article from @LosingLola on standing up vs lying down and organ placement.

I realise that the article is not referring to a prolapse but I wanted to mention the irony that nowadays many (most) have their prolapse assessed when lying down and often have their reasonable concerns and difficulties dismissed.

Getting cross just thinking about how much worse my prolapse was/is after a day walking miles, exercising, working all day stood up vs an hour's drive to a special clinic, sitting in a waiting room for 90 minutes and then lying flat down legs up in stirrups!

Anyway, as you all were!

I always assumed that there was far less need for convalescent homes, whether in the Alps or anywhere else, once there were more vaccines, and once antibiotics started to be widely used to treat TB and other infections.

If diseases are prevented, or treated and cured at an earlier stage, then presumably the recuperation period would be shorter, so less people needing convalescent homes leads to less delicate people being sent to Switzerland and Austria etc.

Bah.

How many of us have spent the last couple of days reading the synopses and spoilers (see link) ?

My first CS book was the one where Carola appeared. I had no idea who was whom and had to go back to the beginning.

I have looked on Amazon and the books are very expensive now. This is bad news for me as I have decided to read them all again, in order.

And to think that my sister had the full set years ago, and threw them all away on the grounds that the stories were not believable

Why were there so many medical emergencies? It's lucky that so many of the men were doctors, really. They seemed to have nothing better to do than perform life-saving surgery on luckless girls or mistresses who developed appendicitis (with peritonitis.)

mind you they must have done a good deal of shagging as the birth rate among their wives was extraorsinary

And why were there so many multiple births?

Not many women managed to have singletons.

EBD was clearly bonkers.

must read a biography of her to find out if she was a lesbian

DM used to say that you lost a tooth for every baby you had

Joey’s ‘displaced organ’ was a metaphor for the fact that she was a total pain in the hole as an adult.

Or, given that TB specialists kept dealing with obstetrics and general medicine in the CS world, maybe she’d coughed up a lung from being so smug all the time?

Blitheringheights I posted a link near the beginning of the thread to a PDF of CS synopses. They’re set out chronologically. (I’ve downloaded the PDF to Kindle on my phone. It’s very happy there.)

I know the old CS thread had links to an obscure source of ebooks.

It is rather jolly to see the books all set out on Amazon. But I really can’t disappear down that rabbit hole again ...

@DisputedChair

God, yes. Joey was insufferably smug.

Always popping round for Kaffee und Kuchen with Miss Annersley and Co and boasting about being up the stick again.

You'd think she'd feel guilty about being a one-woman population explosion in the Tirol, but no. Always preggers. And never seeming to have any childcare duties despite having triplets plus singletons plus twins plus being mother-in-residence to half the fucking Chalet School.

I wonder she had time to write her crappy books. She certainly never spent it changing nappies or worrying about breastfeeding or sleep-training.

And why were so many of the girls given boys' names?

Duh.

Why do I even want to read the fucking books again?

I think the "organ" which was displaced was Jack's cock.

Stop it - I’ve had a long day and need to stop giggling and go to sleep!

Yeah - me too.

DH has despaired of me and gone to bed.

Little does he know that we'll need a new bookcase fairly shortly.

How many years of your life did you waste on these terrible books that you remember in such minute detail??

@Jemima232, you want to read them because it’s hilarious when EBD gets eaten by her own world-building — has there ever been a school series with such lavish descriptions of prettily floral-curtained cubicles? — and the fact that she appears to genuinely believe that adult women with enough intelligence to found a successful school and/or write novels sit about for years getting into rivalries about how many children they have.

And that schoolgirls think the weirdo with the earphones hairdo next door, who keeps chirping about being a ‘Chalet Girl till I die’ and thinks getting pregnant is a hobby, is really cool.

"Jemima and the Chalet School"

"The Chalet School and Jemima"

"Pregnancy Rates at the Chalet School - Jemima Investigates"

"The Mischance - Are People More Likely to have Acute Abdominal Emergencies at the Chalet School"

"What Cakes did Joey Maynard eat with Miss Annersley"

"Carola Murders Miss Dene - A Construct"

titles considered and rejected by Miss Elinor M. Brent-Dyer

Pah QuaterMass

I am well capable of remembering the books.

I can remember all the "Secret Seven" books, too.

Jemima has a LONG memory for outstanding literature.

Give Jemima a prize, someone.

Anyway, QuaterMiss I'm having a torrid affair with Sir James Talbot ATM.

Be jealous. Be very jealous.

He knows how to please a woman.

I remember reading a few of these books from the library in the late 60/early 70s as a pre-teen. In the end I moved on quickly, as the girl's lives bore little similarity to "modern life" with pop stars like Queen and Bowie, 10cc and T-rex appearing on the scene. And of course the wonderful Bay City Rollers.

As a primary school child I read Enid Blyton and Mallory Towers, with a bit of Dickens thrown in for good measure. I loved Jimmy Clitheroe on the radio as well, just recently found out he was often played by Bobby Ball.

I did have an Aunt who had TB in the 1940s, just after WW2. She spent a couple of years in a fairly local sanitorium getting treatment and lived to a ripe old age. She married a naval serviceman during WW2 and the early years of her marriage were blighted by this illness. Her daughter was brought up by the extended family whilst she was having treatment. Before vaccination it was a terrible illness.

I had posted this on a Chalet School thread some years ago, after finding a "Manual of Family Medicine" from 1920 in my parents' house.

In the chapter titled "Diseases of Women", there's a section on womb displacement. Symptoms include dyspepsia and "if the displacement is considerable, it may require replacement at the hands of a gynaecologist".

Wait, my DH had TB - should we have just moved to Switzerland??