Sir James Talbot tackles Mrs. Jack Maynard's Displaced Organ

[QuaterMiss]

Would I be unreasonable to initiate legal proceedings against this man?

Previous thread here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3624032-Not-to-have-realised-until-now-that-Joey-Maynard-s-displaced-organ-was-a-prolapse?

With thanks to Jemima232 for rifling through Sir James’ archives to supply the title of this one.

Melanie is such a cow to Ruey. Poor girl's parents are dead and the Maynards are her foster parents and Melanie throws a hissy fit because she's jealous that Ruey is close to the triplets. And this is after Ruey had to deal with Francie getting mad at her because she has a crush on Margot.

Joan Baker would totally eat tinned ravioli.

She'd have to be careful not to smudge her lipstick, though.

(Btw, that perm! The horror!)

I always imagined Joan to have dark hair, but she’s blonde (and scary) on this cover

Papergirl1968

That looks really scary! And quite 1970s.
I'm sure the dread Joan had dark hair on my copy from the dark ages

images.app.goo.gl/kbYheQDfUeMzqvpC9

This one was mine!
I think Joan's the one in front and Rosamund is the cheerily waving one.

Much more early 1960s than late 1970s to my mind.

I always loved that snooty contrast between Joan Baker with her shop bought cake for tea and Rosamund’s genteel poor household with homemade special leafy cake - which is obviously how the working class ought to behave, according to EBD.
It always reminds me of dd’s primary school where there were no shop bought cakes allowed on the cake stall.

Joan looks like a man there. I like the old school cover better where she's got lippy on and Ros is really cute and has plaits.

I always loved that snooty contrast

Gosh, yes.

Rosamund didn't seek greatness (as it were), it was thrust upon her by a scholarship.
Joan most definitely sought it; luckily her father had that win on the Pools (I always felt that gambling on the Pools was implied in the book to be vulgar).

Anyway, Joan was no better than she should be, knocking about with Vic Coles

Winning on the pools is a cheap and nasty way to pay school fees. Getting offered a scholarship because you are the ‘right’ sort of poor person is so much better....
I actually really like Rosamund as a character, I just found EBD’s take on deserving/undeserving poor amusing.

Winning on the pools is a cheap and nasty way to pay school fees.
Quite.

[As an aside, I remember reading an article about Prince Philip disapproving of the rectangular folded white handkerchief in another man's breast pocket: "Fellow looked like he'd forgotten to post his Pools coupon!"]

I had the edition with Joan and Ros in the pink dresses too.
It must have been Ris’s worst nightmare when Joan turned up eager to tell everyone that Ros’s dad had a lowly job while her own father (or maybe mother) worked in a shop.
IIRC, Joey tells Ros it doesn’t matter as Jesus or maybe it was Joseph was a carpenter!

Oh dear. ‘New money’. (Shakes head sadly.)

I wonder how many of the ‘impoverished landed gentry’ families were late with the school fees?!

Ok, I'm reading "Three Go To" and one of the Prefects can't stop yawning. One of the other prefects whose father is a doctor mentions liver trouble and the next thing half the Sixth are down with jaundice.
Now, that girl is an uncanny diagnostician because I've never heard of yawning immediately indicating jaundice!
And also the whole jaundice epidemic is barely mentioned after that. Can you imagine the fuss if that happened in the Tirol and one of them had breathed near Robin!!

@Geraniumpink - reminds me of when I was little - the best treat was a shop bought cake because we always had home made!

Oh, that bit about the jaundice in “Three Go...” always immensely irritates me.

For starters, her father is a doctor, not her, you don’t magically inherit medical knowledge. If she’s spent her childhood holidays reading all his medical textbooks it’s not mentioned anywhere.

And then - yawning?????? Insomnia or sleep apnea would be a much more plausible first guess if that’s the only symptom they’re looking at!
Seriously, I’m no doctor, but there must be hundreds of medical conditions which make people feel tired alongside the other symptoms.

If the yawning girl had suddenly also developed a yellow tinge to her skin and the whites of her eyes were yellow, then sure, someone might make an accurate guess about jaundice, but there’s no mention of any actual jaundice specific symptoms!

Yes, you think at the very least there would be a loud shriek of "Jacynth, you've turned a stonking shade of yellow" and then the whole school would be agog!
Rather like when Joey dropped green dye all over her head and then went into labour the next morning. Odd sort of nesting

Loving this thread. Really enjoyed the chalet school as a child though read several of them without realising they were the same series - started with Carols Storms and remember being baffled by this Jo Maynard character darning her husband’s socks and thinking - “just get on with the school bits!!” I’d only read Enid Blyton school stories before. Love Tyrol and the war stories/armishire - there’s a freshness and interest in the characters that isn’t really sustained for me after that though I thought New Mistress was a great new perspective. As a child I used to write a lot of my own stories which embraced lots of boring domestic detail about being a mother/running a family. It seems to me like EBD did the same - allowed her private, unrealistic fantasies about married life and parenthood to spill out into her fiction through Jo which makes them much weaker but also quite fascinating! I also remember being excited about the Chalet School Reunion and then hugely disappointed by the actual book as with the exception of Grizel we hardly encounter any of the old girls at all. And where is Madge? Why did EBD lose her interest in Madge?

For starters, her father is a doctor, not her

Totally going off the point of the thread but it's amazing how often this seems to be people's claim to knowledge:

"Well, I'm a concert pianist but my father's a brain surgeon, so just lie down, expose your scalp and I'll get my Black and Decker..."

I like Ros as well, she's really sweet, but I hate the snobbery in the book, even if Joan is a bit of a bitch in the beginning.

Does anyone know what leafy cake is? It's a question that has puzzled the CBB for ages.

Could leafy cake be made with tea? I’m no baker but I understand some fruit cakes have tea in the ingredients. So leafy as in tea leaves maybe?

I think leafy cake is what other people call lardy cake, a rich tea cake with spices and dried fruit -- leaf lard is a specific type of lard, I think from around the kidneys of the pig?

No idea about Leafy cake ...

On weird medical knowledge, is it Joey and Co in Tirol where Roger apparently severs an artery, is stitched up in the field, has some sort of infection that magically goes away pre antibiotics, and is then climbing Alps a week later? I mean I know he's a manly rugger playing type but even so. My father is a doctor (as is my mother, even after producing four children don't tell EBD), and that leads me to suspect that severed arteries don't fix themselves quite as quickly as all that. In comparison to weeks in bed for wrenched muscles anyway.

It doesn’t sound that nice, Brittlejoys... I think I would prefer shop bought Battenburg...

Does anyone else get annoyed by the fact that it's only OK to be working class if you are extremely good at aping middle-class manners, especially 'dainty' table manners, which you absorb as though by osmosis because your mother was a lady's maid and picked up How to Act Like a Lady from her employer (see Mrs Lilley and Biddy O'Ryan's mother) and so would naturally never allow eating fish and chips in the street, let alone with a boy with an 'unsavoury reputation'?

I think I would prefer shop bought Battenburg...

Me, too, @Geraniumpink. I suspect that makes us the Wrong Type, likely to hang out with Vic Coles, show up at the CS with perms and elaborate wardrobes of adult evening-wear and have a vocal disdain for paper games.