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.

wipes cream off gumboots (it's raining very heavily here today). @Jemima232 It makes perfect sense now! Madame's elusive beauty gave no indication of her evil genius...

FuzzyBeag

Were you eating a cake, outside, in the rain, wearing gumboots?

Oh my giddy aunt, how have I been on MN for years and never realised that this thread was here?

( D’you know how often I’ve read that exact phrase on the long running Archers thread? At least once on each of the 100 odd threads.)

Don’t fret, unfortunateevents - the previous CS thread was only started a few weeks ago. (Though there have been others that I wasn’t much involved with.) This one, along with the books, is actually providing very necessary comfort during an unprecedently stressful Archers storyline.

Meanwhile, in the Oberland, they have just been taken to a concert at Interlaken to hear a ‘great international conductor’. I’m moved to wonder if EBD might have had Furtwängler in mind, (though her description of the fictional man is nothing like). The dates would just about fit, the book was published in 1952 and he was active until he died in 1954. If she did mean him, I’m full of raging envy for their experience.

Please, please, PLEASE can somebody explain how I access the dropbox link??

Ihatesandwiches, you cannot at the moment as the poster who is dealing with this is on holiday. Sit tight!

Thanks @QuaterMiss will keep my eyes peeled

Jemima, you are doing sterling work. I can only liken your efforts to Margot spitting ahead.

Stupid phone. That was meant to say spurting and now my filth is ruined.

Hi - I’m back from Canada and now catching up with the Dropbox requests. Thank you to @Lilamani for an additional four books. I’ve hit the Dropbox limit of how many I can share every 24 hours due to the number I’m sharing so apologies it’s going to take a couple of days to get them out to everyone. If I haven’t responded to your initial request for the Dropbox account or you haven’t received the new books by the end of this week, please pm me.

Can I have the dropbox when you have time please if there are new books on it?

@QuaterMiss

Madam

Am I to infer from this "thread" that you are intending to institute legal proceedings against me?

For what, pray? You had a most enjoyable appointment with me two days ago (or have you so easily forgotten our dinner afterwards at the Ivy) and Lady Talbot shall never know

@Jemima232

I am similarly shocked that you have seen fit to quote from my unpublished works of literature.

Lady Russell has been informed that you have her diaries.

I would advise you to seek legal advice before proceeding (and not from QuaterMiss who seems only to have one legal textbook within her voluminous bookcase - one wonders why)

IsFuzzyBeagMise

I advise you not to lick cream from your gumboots. You may be interested in my pamphlet (not published by that frightful female Jemima) Intestinal infection and parasitosis in Bonnie Scotland - A Physician Guides You

Hey Sir James

I've got your diaries as well, mate.

Ooh, can I have the Dropbox link too please when you have a chance? Loved these books when I was young. Thanks!

Dear Sir James,

I do not remember a dinner at the Ivy. In fact I remember nothing, from the moment I accepted a cup of very milky coffee proffered by your assistant in your waiting room, until I woke up this morning lying on a platform at Waterloo station.

You say we met two days ago? My niece (you have not met her) informs me that I have been uncontactable for three weeks. And I notice that my passport, which you had suggested I bring to hasten the referral process, appears to have gained a number of unrecogniseable stamps.

I seem, also, to be wearing someone else’s clothes.

I must say, I am bewildered. For these reasons, Sir James, I must ask you to desist from all further contact.

Just to set the record straight, I'm in the land of Biddy O'Ryan, but in Cork rather than Kerry

Yes, @Jemima232, I may have been scoffing the last slice of cake in the rain in my gumboots and risking a bilious attack and a dose of castor oil.

Thank you for your concern, Sir James. I have been an avid fan of yours for many years. If you ever find yourself in hot water, you can seek refuge with me in Tig FuzzyBeag, Old Mizen Road, Mizen Head, Co. Cork.
,

FuzzyBeag

So you have gone over to the other side?

I hope that Sir James does not track you down.

Mind you, from his seminal work Sir James Visits Ireland I think it is safe to say that he thinks it's part of Scotland.

I didn't publish that either.

De lurking to ask if I can have access to the Dropbox account please? I will send you a PM

I'd be careful if I were you, QuaterMiss as Sir James has clearly infiltrated this site and may be able to find you.

He has indoctrinated FuzzyBeag to the point of rendering her foolish enough to write her address on this thread so that she can give him refuge.

Unless that is a double bluff of course.

I take it that you have taken legal advice? If you require my own services as a midwife (following on from your lively activities in Sir James' private rooms in Harley Street) I should be glad to oblige.

I adjure all members of MN who have - or who plan to have - any dealings with Sir James Talbot to be very circumspect.

Any man who can say that they hate the Chalet School must be found and punished to the letter of the law.

Perhaps your textbook could give us an idea of the length of time he is likely to serve if we apprehend him?

In the meantime I have a plan. I shall tell him (via email) that I intend to publish Sir James and Matron which is of course a very sordid book, and one highly unsuitable for the reading list of the girls of the Chalet school.

I hope that he will be in touch with Lady Russell regarding the diaries which I have in my possession. In this way we may be able to draw her in and capture her.

I am exhausted. I never expected to be chasing criminals at my age.

A la bonne heure.

Thank you so much for drop box link
Anyone who could help with getting the books onto my kindle paper white please PM me an idiots guide
I’ve spent hours tonight trying and getting nowhere

New girl here raising hand to ask to be put on the dropbox list when possible please.

I could really do with someone with Good CS Girl embroidery skills to liven up my backpack for carrying pump for my feeding tube about in. Failing that, & with my ability to do embroidery having failed some years hence (I can’t even manage to put badges onto my camp blanket... and I have a LOT to do) I might see if you can still get iron-on patches of the sort I used to put on my jeans as a teenager. Pity can’t try it on my wonky genes: might function better with a Paddington Bear patch, for example. My Paddington jeans were EXCEPTIONALLY fine. And a wee darn + patch over top was heaps cheaper than getting new pair. Plus they were all comfy & broken in... Right, I know what I’m off to try to find on Amazon (I raise money for my Brownies when I shop there) - surely dietitian & nurse won’t mind if I accidentally fall asleep in their visit tomorrow due to some late-night online shopping? (Just had a 10-15 minute nap with dream [I can hit REM sleep v quickly] about being back at school. In a play. Dreams where I’m dancing normally are terribly conflicting - so nice at the time, but a bit mis waking up from. This was tap though, so was sheer joyous “ooh, functional ankles & MOVING” because I’ve only done one tap class & confused poor Alexander Campbell horribly because I so clearly got it, but there was no way to get my ridic body to catch itself on.)

Speaking of dance, I really hope Felicity Maynard (clearly an Actual Real Person) managed to get herself into proper training somewhere. They could at least have let her try to be a little rat if they didn’t want her going all the way home. Presumably there’s an alumna or two of the school in Paris (not least given all the Sorbonne love) who could mind her. White Lodge housed the Wells’ Junior School (now Royal Ballet School Y7-11) from 1955 onwards so if she’d auditioned successfully Felicity could surely have travelled to/from England with her twin. And maybe even seen him when exeats coincided. (Am now feeling v cross with Jack & Joey for Being Selfish when it came to Felicity & her training & ambitions. Margot can go round committing ABH, but Felicity can’t even audition for a decent ballet school. CALL YOURSELVES PARENTS?!)
Ahem. Possibly it is Past My Bedtime. Bonne nuite. Or possibly Gute Nacht. Or it might just be goodnight. It’s now Monday, after all & I can’t remember which language I should have switched to from Sunday’s free-for-all...

Jemima232
The Red Sarafan really is... quite something, isn’t it? I’d love to know how EBD came across it/if she ever actually heard it or just heard OF it. (First recording I heard was more along these lines which... took quite the imaginative leap...)

@Parker231 could I possibly have the DropBox details please? Am embarrassingly currently so feeble holding a book (especially a hardback...) is surprisingly tiring. And my ability to concentrate is... well let’s just say kidlit is very much my speed. (Well, I can manage, say, Shakespeare I know well, but anything I don’t I’ve not the ability to focus on... suspect that if I liked Dickens I’d not cope with that because I’d never keep his seventy squillion characters straight...)

Marie

1. I googled gene patching - because it seemed to me it either should be or probably was a thing. Found this istudy.pk/gene-patching-oligonucleotide-crossover/!

2. Paddington patched jeans? (Yes, envy.)

3. I haven’t yet come across Felicity being denied her rightful training. Presumably this is in Prefects, which I have no memory of ever having seen?

1. Oo-oh, that’s so cool. They’ve yet to find the gene that causes my particular brand of Broken & clearly would much rather people (er, geneticists & medical researchers generally) were focused on Truly Awful Things (what I have can get Pretty Awful, am lucky my ridic body hasn’t gone all out) but you know, if someone happened to stumble across it all that would be lovely...

2a.They were Truly Splendid. I would have liked to wear them for my university interview, but my father refused to believe the instructions from the university that we were to wear whatever we were comfortable in. I wore black cords & a black top with George the Hippo on. And some lucky socks, obviously. I think they were Eeyore ones. Plus some black “smart” trainers. I still, even now, feel desperately sorry for the girl whose parents had driven her down that morning & insisted on her wearing a suit. She’d not had time to wash her hair & keeping touching it made things worse; & the suit didn’t really fit her & she looked so terribly TERRIBLY uncomfortable & then some other girl (with swishy hair & what even I could tell were expensive clothes) started demanding to know what everyone had got in their AS-Levels & Where We Were At School (surprised she wasn’t after knowing what our fathers did as well) & talking about how if she didn’t get in she was going to take a gap yah & reapply... if ever a girl had needed some Paddington Bear jeans it was that poor thing - I couldn’t muster much of a Paddington Stare because I was pretty much as convinced they hadn’t meant to offer me an interview either. (I spent ALMOST my whole time there thinking they’d let me in by mistake. Turned out that definitely wasn’t the case, but Very Awkward making the discovery).

2b. Am now reflecting that for someone who had feck-all self-esteem & All The Self-Loathing (etc blah) in the way teenage girls can be so horribly good at, I was weirdly happy to embrace my own style. To be fair, probably as I’ve basically never had any interest in fashion &/or my appearance generally. But Paddington Bear jeans & my impressive t-shirt collection (that got a mention in my manifesto in Head Girl elections) & layering up tops (which I still do, because I am still owner of Many Splendid T-Shirts & don’t want to limit them to the summer) & wearing platform trainers & skater jeans/flares & Hoodies Before They Were Cool/Usual... I’d quite like some baggy jeans now really (but not the odd cropped things that I’ve seen people in) as tbh skinny jeans have always made me feel self-conscious & just at the moment... or if I wouldn’t look like I’d TOTALLY lost it I would happily embrace CS-style & wear a dirndl. Though I might need to take out a loan to purchase one... (they have VERY satisfyingly swishy skirts...)

1. I don’t think she’s explicitly denied it, just the old “The CS is the very best school in the whole wide world & no female Bettany/Maynard/Russell/child-loosely-connected-to-said-families will escape attending” thing. Which in some ways is maybe almost worse, being so obsessed with The School that the actual needs of the supposedly-so-important children aren’t actually considered. CS + ballet lessons from some randomer are just as good as ballet school (nay, better...) Because It’s The Chalet School. In fairness, if Felicity’s teacher was REALLY good & they let her devote a decent amount of time to it & she had access to the studio during the holidays she MIGHT have been able to get into the Senior School at the appropriate age... I think she’s only just the right age for White Lodge by the end of the series, but if you have an 8yo who’s managed to make her voice heard about wanting to be a dancer several books earlier, they should have been Making Plans. Felicity [maybe] going to study somewhere else at 11 should have been being discussed; ditto auditioning at Paris Opera etc & everywhere else when she was 10 in case she didn’t get into the Wells - & possibly schools were taking students younger In Those Days, in fact. Companies certainly still took younger dancers - not getting the chance at PDD training would be an issue. Unless there was going to turn out to be a handy Dancing Doctor & let’s face it, I’d not put it past EBD... or a ballet dancer somehow at the San but TOTALLY able to still dance... obviously not an issue for 11yo Miss F, but with no sign of her parents thinking ahead... TBQH I rather hope she managed to do a bit of a Posy Fossil & run off to audition for Manoff. Or better still, go full Carola & run away to ballet school. (She could probably have paid her fees by sewing everyone’s shoes for them. With her CS needlework skills. Invisibly darning silk ballet tights would be another nice little earner. And knitting warm-ups. Maybe even getting a bit of work making costumes...)

And now, when I should really REALLY be asleep, my brain would like me to write FanFic about Felicity escaping to ballet school. Quiet brain. Just go to sleep. (Not least because the more tired I am, the more interpretive-dancey my walking goes. And there’s only so far [not very] Pulling Up & Holding My Core & Other Transferable Ballet Skills can mitigate against that...)

Oh, before I can forget, if anyone has a yen to read a feminist analysis of the CS... well ok it’s a DPhil thesis that focuses on the work of EBD, but close enough(?): Liberating images: A feminist analysis of the girls’ school-story.

@QuaterMiss

Is Oberland on the dropbox? It used to be on the onedrive but disappeared along with a few other titles.

There’s something in one of the books about how Felicity doesn’t really like school. She doesn’t even like the bloody Chalet School. Stop forcing her to go there and let her go to ballet school (except they’d have had to pay for that...)