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.)

Yep - climate bad for all English children but especially those like Joey. Much more sensible for Madge to go to a strange country she's visited once and start a school. Taking with her neighbour's unwanted child, the French teacher from the local school and said mlle's niece (so only one lot of school fees but 2 teachers and 3 children).

Well, ladies. I've done it.

Been and gone and ordered the cheapest CS book from Amazon.

It isn't the first one but hey-ho.

I hope it arrives before we go on holiday on Wednesday.

I am curiously excited about this. Have not told DH, though.

Obviously Madge had loadsamoney to be able to start a school with three teachers (mistresses) and only two pupils.

And now we have the answer. This is why Madge and Jo had so many children.

They had to fill up the vacant school places somehow.

There is a chalet school sales and wants group on Facebook that regularly has CS and similar up for sale. PB are often quite cheap.

I hope it arrives before we go on holiday on Wednesday

“... or we won’t be going.”

Enjoy your book(ssssssss ....) Jemima.

The first books were written in the late 1920s/early 30s, when TB and quite a few other illnesses that are NBD now were absolute killers. A few other mid-20th-century books tended to have people being carted off to sanitoria for months at a time, as well (anyone else read the Sue Barton series?)

Oh, and anyone who really wants to fall down the Chaletian rabbit hole and lose hours and hours... knock yourselves out

Much more sensible for Madge to go to a strange country she's visited once and start a school. Taking with her neighbour's unwanted child, the French teacher from the local school and said mlle's niece (so only one lot of school fees but 2 teachers and 3 children).

Can you imagine Madge explaining to a sceptical local bank manager her business plan to start a school somewhere remote to which she once went on holiday years earlier, with no savings, no experience, only one paying pupil, and offering tuition in English only to a German-speaking local population?

Because it is quite a mad idea, isn't it? Once it opens, the San puts the Tiernsee on a map to an extent and supplies the school with pupils who are relatives of patients, but before that it's just a remote lake which requires a fairly challenging trek up a mountain path from the nearest town with a railway station.

Admit it, you're all jealous....

(and nobody tell DH quite how much of cost me - that required a lot of stealth purchasing!)

SO jealous!!!!

@HeroicAlien

Did you take out a bank loan to buy those?

I am seething with jealousy. Most of the books are thirty quid a pop.

I think Madge's Business Plan was extremely sound, myself.

The CS was a roaring success.

Some I had from charity shops when I was younger, others I bought more recently. But buying them over a long period of time it didn't seem so bad, especially as some were off ebay etc. I dread to think how much I spent overall though.

AND I bought all the Kingscote books too. They're all great comfort reads!

At thirty I had almost the complete set. Sometimes when my OH was out I’d lay them all out in order on the floor and just gaze in abject love. Somehow managed to lose/abandon them all in various ill advised house/country removals.

Thought I was over it - I realise now I have been putting on a brave face for twenty years.

Emerencealwayshopeful is the OneDrive the actual books? I've always (well for a couple of years) wanted to read that!

I have some of the books and have read others but can't justify the cost of others. Also I particularly like ones with near death experiences and am less interested in some of the more normal ones!

Is the OneDrive still our there? hopeful

They're worth HOW much? I think I've got about 20...

Madge's business plan would have got her laughed out of any bank, but fortunately in fiction completely mad ideas turn out well because the author arranges some coincidences, invents a neighbouring Sanatorium to provide a supply of UK pupils (and hot doctors), and another school that fails and gives them some pupils and a surprising amount of interest in the local area for an English-language education for their girls etc.

In reality, it would probably have been more like the Brontes' school -- one pupil, who then withdrew. Just Grizel, Simone and Joey all driving one another mad when snowed-up.

I have a full set although many are the abridged Armada paperbacks . I filled the gaps with the GGBP as they came out (DH was perplexed but is accustomed to my book habit). Time for a reread I feel.

I was fascinated in the 1980s by how different their world was and had several conversations with DGM who assured me they were accurate (she hadn’t been to much school herself but knew the types (army wife)).

I was fascinated in the 1980s by how different their world was and had several conversations with DGM who assured me they were accurate (she hadn’t been to much school herself but knew the types (army wife)).

I'm not sure you could ever see the Chalet School as 'realistic', though I was just reading the plot summary of Reunion on the CBB, which is hilarious. There's an impromptu reunion of old girls at Freudesheim, but the plot consists entirely of a series of accidents and narrowly-avoided accidents Bruno falls down a cliff, a ledge on which the old girls are standing for a photo crashes down onto a glacier a minute after they move away, the electricity fails on a lift up a waterfall, Cornelia falls into a stream and Stacie is so traumatised by her memories of a flood while looking at the stream that she faints, then Len falls down the mountain and Grizel injures her spine while rescuing her (and ends up with a hot doctor). That is literally all that happens, besides some charades and a lot of reminiscing, and Mary-Lou's saintly mother Doris dies. Oh, and Grizel's evil stepmother dies too.

I enjoy the numerous near fatal accidents and the rescuing by hot doctors so I’ll look out for Reunion.
I hate the fetes and pantomimes and silly sheets and pillowcase parties so i skim over those!

There’s often an improbable amount of accidents/ near misses, but personally I’d take those over a lengthy blow by blow account of yet another school play any day.

Looking at it now, Joey managing to somehow always end up living next door to the school no matter how often it moves is almost as improbable as all the near fatal accidents.

What strikes me as most improbable of all is that the actual schoolgirls by the end of the series still apparently thought Joey was the coolest person on the planet.

It seems more likely that teenagers would find vaguely embarrassing a gabby woman in her late 30s or 40s with a weird 1920s 'earphones' hairdo and eleven children, who keeps banging on about how she'll be a Chalet girl till she dies, who keeps moving house so as to live next door to the school, whose daughters are in your class, who is continually popping through the hedge to interrupt prefects' meetings or visit the staffroom and who's best friends with all your teachers and knows far too much about your home problems.

OK, I know she is also a best-selling children's author, but still...

I'll be looking to read Reunion too then!