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.)

I am assuming she meant socio-economic class ...?

I wonder if the Maynards had to pay for the girls to go to the school?
When they live next door, it seems a waste of money to pay for them to board. There are various references to them not having a huge amount of money due to being such a big family. And the house must be huge as Jo talks about giving the triplets their own rooms when they turn 14, plus the bedrooms of the other kids, various waifs and strays, ever present guests, and the helpers. And in one of the books I’ve just read, I think it was Jane, Len told Jack Lambert they have six bathrooms, and used to have more but turned some into cupboards as it used to be a hotel.
You can tell I spend far too long musing on these things!

Ohh, I can answer my own question!
I’m reading Redheads and Jo has just admitted to Hilda that Jack thinks 11 kids is enough even though she’s keen for more, and she says the girls don’t cost them much if anything for education.
So presumably all the Russell and Bettany girls get free places too!

Does she also say the boys all have scholarships at their public schools in England? If so I must have read Redheads - though I don’t remember doing so! (Unless Joey said the same thing in another story.)

I agree it might be an extravagance if they had to pay for them to board next door. But being a day pupil at an otherwise completely boarding school would be a bit rubbish. (Then as much as now.) Half of the ‘education’ boarding offers is in the out of school life.

Isn't Joey a part owner of the school? It was in one book that they were all partial shareholders in the parent company covering the three schools (the finishing school, the main school and the UK school).

Then there was the scholarship Joey gave.... Did she have to pay for that?

Thanks, both. Yes, jo mentions one of the boys has won a scholarship.
Having some financial interest in the school is ringing a bell too.

I'm pretty sure that mention is made at some point of the school being made into a public company and many of the staff and old girls including Joey having shares. I can't remember at what point that happened though.

Just been catching up on the thread. I'm a member of the CBB and it's fun, but some of the users there are hypersensitive to criticism about the books. There's one very defensive Mary-Lou fan there, and another one who constantly complains about Kids These Days. Also, I liked CGGU. Margot being a badass political activist? Yes please. Jack shooting himself was OOC though. I mean, he was Catholic and suicide is a mortal sin. And I personally don't think Mary-Lou would have shagged Len's husband. Mary-Lou should have shagged Len instead and rescued her from Dastardly Reg.

Just finished reading Exploits. Thekla is such a knob.

Did anyone else half think for years that Thekla was expelled for eating smoked bacon at the midnight feast?

Or was that just me

Margot should have been expelled. She was a psycho. Braining a girl with a bookend AND blackmailing a new girl for daring to be friends with her sister, which was a bit weird because she had Emerence and they were always hanging out.

Possibly just you, Laurie!

I’d say Margot, in those years, was perhaps not quite well ... (That was Theodora wasn’t it? I’m quite annoyed. I had specific reading to get done this week. Instead I’ve been crushed into my sofa by the tremendous weight of Dropbox. Gay, Theodora, Triplets, Jane ... Am halfway through Redheads atm.)

I thought of @Jemima232 when, in Triplets, Sir James Talbot accompanied a sickly someone (spoilers ) by ‘plane from England to the San. I have struggled to recall the last time any consultant did that for me.

Come to think of it - I thought he was a consultant of ladies’s insides. Wtf was he doing messing around with lungs?

Maybe Margot was actually possessed. It would explain her sudden fits of rage.

I wanted to smack Jack Lambert in Jane.
I’ve just finished Redheads and wow, it’s very melodramatic and quite different to the other books. Never fear though, Dr Jack is on hand to dispense his special milk.
It struck me that not only does the Chalet School have more than its fair share of illness and accidents, it has an unfortunate number of kidnappings too - Elisaveta, Cornelia and Robin, Sybil, and Val and I’m bound to have missed a couple out.
Not sure why any parent would risk their child going there quite honestly!

Wasn’t Sybil a toddler when she was kidnapped?
So not a Chalet School pupil at that point.....

Yes, a baby or toddler. And kidnapped by older children.
But still!

Not sure why any parent would risk their child going there quite honestly!

Thing is - there was no Internet. And the school had enough influential contacts to keep things out of the newspapers. So if Ms Annersley (or whoever) issued the usual gagging order to staff and pupils how would prospective parents ever hear the worst?

(And the people with girls already there generally seemed to be in a bind - tied to the San or flying off for a year in Canada or lumbered with awkward daughters they’d rather not spend too much time with. They wouldn’t let a little thing like regular near death experiences or kidnappings deter them ...)

True.
Even in Redheads they manage to keep it all quiet due to the criminal conveniently dying before it went to court.
That whole story about the criminal family and their connection to Copper’s stepfather was so convoluted I lost the will to live.
I skimmed over the Christmas play too so it didn’t take me long to read Redheads.
I don’t enjoy the plays, the fairs, and the Saturday night entertainments!

I don’t enjoy the plays, the fairs, and the Saturday night entertainments!

But those are the best bits

I hate the pantos, they're really cringey and not as funny as EBD thinks they are, but the Christmas plays are sweet. And I quite like the sales of work, though the one in Carola where some of the girls colour their skin with tea to look like Indian women is a bit dodge, and the one in Bride, which is based on The Crown Of Success, is just weird. I mean, it's a super obscure book - most of the time when you google it, it's in reference to the CS - and would teen girls in the '50s really want to do an entire sale based on the damn thing?

I've been reading one of the Skelton Hall books. An unfortunate Junior hides in a Priest's Hole for two days because she's being bullied.

Once she's found the mistresses do allow her to go to bed for a day or two (although in the CS she would undoubtedly develop a hideous and life-threatening lung complaint) but she is told very sternly by Miss Skelton to grow a backbone and that hiding in Priests' Holes is absolutely "not done" at Skelton Hall.

So she does grow a backbone and is eternally grateful to Miss Skelton as a result.

We have to presume that she had no need to use the lavatory whilst hidden.

There are plots lifted straight out of the CS books within this awful book. Did EBD think that nobody would notice?

She did have a habit of recycling plots. Gerry Goes to School had a girl falling through ice and nearly drowning, and Feud was basically a rubbish redo of Rivals.

Also Wins the Trick is a rehash of the Balbini twins.

The sales of work gave me a lasting feeling of inadequacy. They never seemed to include amateurish but enthusiastic with wonky perspective, wood carvings with one leg glued back on, or skew-wiff needlework - it all had to be astonishingly beautiful despite being done in about one hour a week.

Yeah who the fuck could just knock up a dolls house at a moments notice.

And the triplets kept winning them? Talk about rigged.

I just felt guilty that I thought pretty much everything they produced sounded dull. I lack appreciation for crafts I assume.