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.)

what is this?...never heard of any of this or these people lol

“What happened to "the" Robin? Did she kick the bucket?”

Didn’t she end up a nun? She went off to do “settlement work”- a sort of social work- but was too frail to keep it up.

Oddly enough I lost a tooth in my first pregnancy - fifty years later I still have all the rest. Everyone at the time trotted out the "lose a tooth with every child" line.
Convalescent homes still a big thing here in France.
Waves to CS girls from the Château.....

A lot of “frail”children would presumably have been suffering from undiagnosed asthma or allergies or even hay fever. Or various deficiencies- thyroid, for example. Poor children just died. Rich ones could be nursed and taken to clean air and so on, so had a much better chance of survival. And I presume mental health issues in children were treated as physical illnesses too.

Robin did indeed head off to be a Nun. And then she returns as an absolute bitch and has an affair with Jack (seriously, do not read that particular Fan Fiction book - it's awful).

I really want to reread the series now but all mine (and yes I have every one) are at Mums. I see a visit coming up 😂

He knows how to please a woman.

Yeah. There was a court case. Fifteen years, no parole.

Lemonlady22 - Your life is about to change. Start here:

www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0006925170/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_iKzgDb3KMSTQ6?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Only another 50 odd to go. You’ll be busy for at least a couple of years. ...

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

Looking on Amazon just now you would need deep pockets, I could kick myself for throwing all of mine away many years ago.

On the multiple children front, for Joey and Jack the Catholic thing explains why they had so many children (no contraception allowed). Although it doesn't explain the multiples.
Madge has no such excuse, she's a Protestant. Maybe that's why she has hers with more sensible spacing.

If anyone is tempted by Amazon, it’s important to know that the paperback reprints (apart from the Girls Gone By ones) are all abridged. So some of the most entertaining weirdnesses are not there.

For those wanting to get the full versions of the books.
(I love a good CS binge.)

Making me want to reread them now! Am embrace the weirdness

I’m having Chalet flashbacks.

EBD is so funny and coy about relationships. The men are nearly always masterful doctors who’ve had an eye on the object of their affections since her schooldays, and the women (girls) never feel anything other than jolly friendship for them, because that’s Not Nice.

Ideally then, some catastrophe throws them together, and there’s some heartfelt declaration like Joey crying sexily ‘Oh Jack, what a solid lump of comfort you are!’ Then chapter break and we resume weeks later with Joey wearing an engagement ring and looking self-conscious, having skipped all the awkward stuff and implied kissing. Then they have to escape the Nazis dressed as Tyrolean peasants, carefully chaperoned by multiple CS girls and a mistress, and then we skip ahead to Joey being heavily pregnant in the Channel Islands, though the pregnancy is never mentioned, despite the fact that she’s a skinny woman carrying triplets and must have been the size of a house...

I found Catherine Cookson quite young, so the Chalet School Series didn't interest me.

Both writers were born in the same place, only twelve years apart.

The difference between the writing style of books sums up the difference in life of the WC and those privately educated. Although EBD did lose a Brother to menegitis, perhaps that shaped her writing.it was thought that thete was a diference in the strength if WC and other classes. It was used as an excuse to use the WC as work horses.

I'm 52, from Liverpool. The 'Nan' generations around me had convalesed in Wales. My Mum (born 1928) had also been sent to Scotland one time. My Great Uncle had died, as a child, of pulmonary TB. Most WC Families had lost at least one child at the time. One in ten WC Women still died in childbirth.

I winder did EBD write about multiple births to show the superiority of MC Women?

The, lose-a-tooth-for-each-baby, was why dentist services stayed free during pregnancy.

One in ten WC Women still died in childbirth.

One in ten?

One of the many things that endear me to Antonia Forest is the passing reference to periods....

That 1 in 10 wouldn't mean every 10 pregnancies 1 woman died. Each woman would probably have 10 or more pregnancies before finally dying

My great great grandmother died in childbirth - with her 11th child - she was 30 (and a few days), 8 of the children didn't make their 5th birthday - her story wasn't unusual

Innercity women had higher maternal mortality rates than those who lived in the country

One of the many things that endear me to Antonia Forest is the passing reference to periods

And drugs, agnosticism plus Lawrie being genuinely amazed anyone is a believing Christian because she thought everyone put Jesus in the same mental category as Zeus and Athena and gay sex. EBD would die of shock.

@Ponoka7, I think EBD's early life was spent just about clinging to the lower edge of the 'respectable' lower-middle class, and there was all that drama about her father leaving when she was tiny to live quite nearby with another woman and have another family. She wasn't sent down a mine and she did do teacher training, but I think her 'private education' probably consisted of a few girls in someone's front room, and no more. Her background was closer to the one she gives Rosamund Lilley than to that of most of the central CS characters.

Oh, I wish I'd gone to the Chalet School.

I could have got Josephine M. Bettany's autograph. I could have learned not to use slang in my daily conversations. I could have been forced to speak German or French every third day.

And met the man of my dreams, who would have been a doctor, probably with vast experience in India.

Why did they all go "out" to India? Was it to be temporary missionaries?

Why oh why didn't my parents send me to the CS?

One way the CS benefitted my children is that one of the books made me realise that learning your tables sequentially was a bit crap and I tested them “jumping about”. Which meant that they were both significantly faster than their classmates at mental arithmatic!

Bertrand so there is an actual benefit to the CS books.

This is their raison d'etre, after all we've said.

Your children's mental arithmetic improved. EBD would be so proud.

Jemima Jo had time to keep writing her books (published with gay covers lol) because the “faithful Anna” did most of the childcare, cooking and cleaning. Or was it Rosa? I think she had several helpers anyway. And the triplets helped look after the little ones.
Looking at that synopsis, I’ve git it recently read most of the early and middle books, but there are gaps where I’ve missed some of the later books.
If anyone lives in or near Staffordshire, the library service had quite a few that you can order.
Others I’ve found in charity shops.

Why did they all go "out" to India? Was it to be temporary missionaries?

Wasn't Dick Bettany working for the Raj equivalent of the Forestry Commission? The only reason Madge and Joey didn't go out with him at the start of the series (in order for Madge to bag a nice chap and settle down, like a lot of other impecunious young women who went over to housekeep for male relatives) was because the climate would have finished off sickly Joey.

A couple of years ago some lovely person from the very long old thread in which the school randomly moved from a yurt to (I think) somewhere in Portugal sent me a link to a onedrive account with many Ebooks. About 40 all up. Unabridged.

I appreciated that EBD did not think all women should be quite so fertile. It's only her very favourite Joey who had 11. Compare that to the 'Rosegarden' in the abbey books - a character gives birth to two sets of identical twin girls in one year and all of them are named Rosa-something.

I think the prolapse theory sound and will (on next read) remember that.

Got or recently read, I mean...