AIBU To Think That The Chalet School Matron Would Be In Prison Nowadays

[TheShellBeach]

..........................for giving unprescribed sedatives to the girls so frequently.

(lighthearted) (in case a million people tell me that IABU)

The Chalet School Matron was forever doling out sedatives to the girls, without even asking Jack Maynard to prescribe them first.
Shocking stuff. Nowadays, she would be jailed and struck off the NMC Register.

www.dropbox.com/sh/sdcbk2zhq7o17iv/AAB_bGA_lbHT_rT6WRTACUCda?dl=0

Does that work?

It does work. I've just tried it again.

Yay! Technology shall not beat me.

😀Yes it works! Thanks!

No solid lumps of comfort from my DH’s direction today either.

He’s off work today. The bathroom sink needed resealing, DH insisted that I wasn’t to try as “you’ll make a mess of it”, so he’s set out to do it today. Fine. Whatever. Except now he’s dismantled the entire sink, completely unnecessarily, 😩 says he doesn’t know how to put it together again 😩 so I’ve gone downstairs for a few minutes to count to 100 several times before going back up there 😩

Do husbands in the Chalet School ever do that sort of thing? Or do they just have competent handymen constantly on call?

CS husbands leave some things to their wives and daughters (and random guests too, sometimes).
I remember Joey making the triplets and Ruey Richardson (or was it Richenda - I always get them mixed up) paint and decorate four rooms because guests were coming. Joey helped them. I expect Anna and Rosli (the Coadjutor) were looking after the Kinder, making jam, cooking large meals etc. etc. etc.

Jack was lazing about downstairs, pretending to be so busy at the San that he couldn't find time to put some paint on a few walls.

DH does our decorating, but then he is a painter and decorator, so it always looks amazing.

He just can't pull curtains properly.😩

FFS Another comment about hair.

"..................Peggy glanced at her and saw a tall, lanky girl, with a wavy shock of very dark red hair that would have been the better for a good brushing and combing............."

That quote is from Peggy of the CS, and Peggy has just met Lala and Polly Winterton and is sizing them up bitchily.
She tells them that they "..........must come to the Chalet School because it's awfully decent" but fails to say that people will stare at their hair unless it's brushed the way Matey and Miss Annersley think is right.

There are several references to Matey cutting hair, "tidying up" hair and generally being officious about hair. It seems to have been an obsession with EBD.

Mind you, when you look at a photo of EBD her hair is nothing to write home about.

It doesn't look any better when she's grown up, either.

Or do they just have competent handymen constantly on call?

I think they always have competent handymen for REALLY difficult jobs (like drawing curtains).

Maybe Gaudenz has a side-line in plumbing, plastering, roofing etc.
You know - for when he isn't rescuing girls who have got lost in woods thirty yards from the CS gates.

Going back to the earlier speculation about lgbt staff. I remember it was mentioned once that there was always a chaperone in Mr Denny’s singing classes. Pretty sure they didn’t need to worry about him around the girls.

And Sally Denny was an obvious lesbian IMO.
Her first appearance in the series is when there's a flood and she cannot cope with it.

Fast forward a few years and she's teaching German, Italian and piano. She is also portrayed as big, jolly and no-nonsense. So not the sort of person to be afraid of a storm, then.............

The fact that ‘big’ or fat women are always jolly and no-nonsense is such a lazy cliché, though. There’s no particular reason why, say, Sophie Hamel or Hilda Jukes shouldn’t be of the highly-sensitive temperament that swoons at Passion Plays, or collapses when someone they love is endangered, but I bet they’d get short shrift from other characters if they did.

And anyone who is good at maths is sullen and bad tempered, even the teacher. That was the main thing I didn’t like as a kid who was good at maths.

Yes, was it sulky Phil Craven who wasn’t that keen on Mary-Lou? And the maths teacher who chose a senior job at another UK school over the ‘fun’ of going to live up a mountain in Switzerland where your choice of fun was paper games and ‘English tea’ at Joey’s, or shouting at an echo —or trying to seduce Gaudenz—?

Anyone that didn’t like Mary bloody Lou was always painted as a wrong un!

Yes - EBD deserves credit for trying to make learning interesting, unlike many school story writers who seem to regard study as a distraction from games, but this definitely breaks down with regard to maths.

Yes, she clearly had a problem with maths. Carola arrives at the CS aged 15 having done a bit of botany but almost no maths in the last 4years. The Abbess says she can just carry on with the botany. After all, 'no need to do both' !

She also had no idea for maths. If she wants "hard" maths it's always either "a revolting equation" or "simultaneous equations".

And the ML one where she gets in trouble for saying "half a crown" (because the question is "what's 2 and 6") is actually quite hard for, what were they 9/10yos?
She says something like: "Really easy mental maths. I give the sides of a square in feet and expect the answer back in square yards by return of post." (ie quickly).
But to get the answer you have to multiple the sides together (2 x 6 =12) which is quite easy. But to change it into square yards, you need to divide by 9 (3 feet x 3 feet). Come on you lot, 12 divided by 9 is... quickly...? (1.33333 or 1 and a third)
Not an easy sum to do under pressure in your head.

It’d make sense if Gaudenz did all that. I suppose EBD thought her readers would be bored by explanations of who sorted all that out.

The only routine maintenance work I can recall offhand is the episode where Gaudenz (?) is varnishing some doors, and some of the middles decide to help him, but accidentally paint the door with something like golden syrup / honey.

(obviously there’s all that stuff with the drains later on in England, but that sounded a bit out of the ordinary)

Aren't there stoves in all the classrooms? I think I assumed Gaudenz spent all winter wandering from one to another topping up the wood and all summer chopping wood for the log pile (with various admiring sixth formers and teachers giving him glances)

It doesn't help that I imagine him looking rather like Poldark in the scything scene when EBD probably did not mean him like that at all!

I’m clearly lacking in imagination 🤣

Gorgeous Gaudenz hadn’t occurred to me at all 🤣

But yes, now that you mention it I agree he must have spent a lot of time organising wood for all those stoves.

My Gaudenz

EBDs Gaudenz

Ha! Old bloke is definitely the image I always had in mind but I will rethink him now to be sexy scything Gaudenz.
Did he leave Austria with the school and go to England with them or did they abandon him?

I thought he was in the Swiss books? In the Austrian ones didn't they just have a long line of servants all coming from one daily who just couldn't wait to work at the chalet school?

A good Chalet Girl would only fancy a doctor though, so music teachers and Gaudenz would not be an issue.

Maybe Gaudenz was actually identical quads, so could get four times as much work done/stoves dealt with? It would never have been mentioned though, or Joey would have immediately had to have quintuplets…