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 went back to the start, so have just finished the third book about Elisaveta, the Princess at the Chalet School. I'm marvelling at Joey's command at foreign languages. She is already fluent in French and German, can manage in Italian and thanks to her summertime correspondence course in Russian with Robin's father, she knew enough Russian to identify the bad guy. Fair dues!

So, Adrienne finished! Great opening - one of the best. Loved having both Robin and Mary-Lou in the same story.

Hated the Len / Reg interlude. Utter nonsense. And Josette preparing to be married at eighteen. But I guess, being all so ‘gently’ brought up they were just desperate for a shag, without having to creep around and dodge parental interference.

It does seem weird though. I look at the older teens in my own family - they’re just children. Superbly knowledgeable in their own tiny areas of enthusiasm - but no one for a second would be expecting them to make serious decisions about their personal lives. Hard enough trying to get them to take academic decisions seriously.

Anyway ... Summer, Challenge and Two Sams are all absent from the Dropbox list - so I will proceed to Coming of Age which has permitted itself to download to Kindle. Most of those above I’ve had to read as iBooks. And I really must go back to Bride which I don’t remember at all. In fact I might start that next, while I see if I can fill in the gaps at the latter end.

Good thing there’s a temporary lull in real life deadlines for me right now!

@QuaterMiss

If you download calibre (free) you can convert them to kindle format and transfer them easily. It’s a great tool for ereaders

And the volume of things produced for the sale too!

They must be so fast at sewing / woodwork / other crafts. It takes me about half an hour to untidily sew on one name tag when I’m labelling school uniform. I dread to think how long it would take me to produce one item good enough to be worth selling at a school fair. Yet the Chalet School girls routinely produce enough to respectably fill several stalls....

Thanks Jins.

Have started Bride and am quite sick with envy over Loveday’s Argentinian ranch. (She also has my all-time favourite CS name.) Also painfully nostalgic for January gales, boiling radiators and open fires. This week looks like being punishing, weather-wise.

Ah but continental girls can all sew beautifully by the time they’re about eight, according to EBD!

If anyone else wants the Dropbox link can you let me know by Wednesday as DH and I are off on holiday to visit his parents and I won’t be set up for sharing the link.

We’re going to Canada so I think EBD would approve as the Russell’s and Maynards had their visit over there. We’ll be speaking French 100% of the time so the Chalet School teachers should be pleased!

Parker are you planning on giving birth to twins while there or leaving behind a child so they can become strong in the wonderful climate?

@Aroundtheworldin80moves - we actually do have twins and DH is a doctor (A GP in central London rather than a Swiss sanatorium!). DT’s are fit and healthy but I’m sure they would like to avoid Uni for an extended stay in Canada.

@Aroundtheworldin80moves 😅

Enjoy your holiday @Parker231 🌞

I am thoroughly enjoying re-reading these stories and filling in the gaps with some of them.
I’m struck by the amount of description of people as plain or pretty, yet poor Sybil has a really hard time of it, as previous posters have said.
Also, so many comments about people’s weight or size

I re- read Carola today and was amused that they decided she could continue with botany but as her Maths was so bad she didn’t need to do that as well! Imagine that these days!

Parker you’re obviously a born CS girl!

Thank you for being so generous with your time. Have a wonderful holiday - and don’t forget to send us endless vast boxes of candies for our staff meetings.

Two Sams is a very weak book, tbh. The Sams themselves are lovely characters, but there's a bullshit twist at the end involving them, and the whole thing is just Chalet School by numbers. Accidents, guided tour of school, nice food, Joey, accidents, annoying Middles, lather, rinse, repeat. The girls are such cows to the Sams as well, Samaris' form because Samaris wants to work hard, and Samantha's form because they're mad about not getting to see Nina Rutherford instead of her, even though the whole thing was Joey's idea. And yes, EBD is obsessed with people's weight. Joey makes a nasty dig about Sophie Hamel and how fat she is (and no, no-one called her 'Fatty' at school, wtf EBD). For someone who thinks vanity is evil, she doesn't half obsess over characters' looks. As if anyone would comment on how hot the teachers are.

Bride is great though. She's one of my favourite CS characters, along with Daisy and Tom. Bride's friendship group were one of the best as well.

Bride is described as large and rather plain, I think, in Bride Leads. Nancy Wilmot is described as being tall and plump to put it mildly, or words to that effect, in one of the books I’ve just read. It’s the scene where she ends up accidentally riding a pig backwards and the poor thing nearly collapsed, in Jane, I think. And the cook is referred to as Big Karen in Redheads, which I just finished.
If I ever go on Mastermind, my specialist subject would be the Chalet School!

Also, I am Welsh but I have never in my life heard anyone say “look you” or have the speech patterns EBD gives her Welsh characters!

I'm not Irish, but I have a friend from Belfast and she does NOT talk like Biddy O'Ryan. Irish people on the CBB really can't stand the weird way Biddy talks. "Oh wirra wirra," said no Irish person ever. I am half Scottish, though, and as much as I love Highland Twins, I wish EBD hadn't rendered their accents phonetically.

@cerys, I'm surprised they don't call anyone 'boyo'.

@Papergirl1968 Bride is basically the ugly one of the family. There's a mean comment about her in Changes, something about Molly and Dick having three pretty daughters instead of two one day.

Well Biddy is from Kerry, isn’t she? That’s very different to Belfast. Not that I’m endorsing EBDs irishisms

The thing about Biddy is that she leaves Ireland aged about six, never steps foot in the place again, yet speaks like that til the end. Weird.

She’s an interesting character because EBD clearly forgives her her ‘common’ origins. She didn’t do that often.

i've never heard any people from the Republic of Ireland talk like that either! And yes, she's the Chalet School's big success story. She does learn her nice manners from her mum's mistress, but I like the fact she goes the CS and ends up being a much-loved teacher there.

i've never heard any people from the Republic of Ireland talk like that either

Well sure, but a Kerry dialect would be closest to the stage Irishman that EBD is clearly influenced by. It’s very far from a Dublin accent too.

I also love Biddy’s story. It’s very romantic and unlikely, without being totally off the wall like Elisaveta.

My favourite sale of work:

"The Fifth form of St Scholastica's were to help with the Magic Cave, Miss Elliot and Mademoiselle Berné having reserved to themselves the places of "unseen musicians". They all wore Eastern draperies, with the exception of Ida Reavely and Nancy Wilmot, the two biggest among them, who were got up in full Turkish male costume, and Hilary, who was to be the Peri, and whose floating garments were hung with strings of beads to such an extent that she vowed she felt like a walking jeweler's shop!"

Nancy was made out to be larger than average even as a teenage schoolgirl in Lintons.

Biddys story not completely off the wall?

It was barking! Middles find wandering Irish child in Alpine Austria, believe her sob story and decide on a whim to keep her in a shed and feed her scraps?

Well yes but not quite as barking as Princess of imaginary kingdom gets sent to random school then gets kidnapped by mad uncle.

Though the most barking of all is Ruey Richardson. Did her Dad actually hare off to space?!?! Or did I dream that?

Biddy’s adoption by the Middles reminds me so much of Katy Carr ‘adopting’ a little Irish girl, Mary ORiley? Something like that), randomly renaming her Susquehanna and saving up crusts to feed her.

He did! And never came back.