AIBU To Think Joey Maynard (Of Chalet School Fame) Was Insufferable

[TheShellBeach]

.............with her eleven children, infuriating husband and bizarre tendency to move house (and country) to live next door to the school her sister inexplicably started when Joey was a child.

She also managed to write (at least) two books a year, have a series of multiple pregnancies and poke her nose into the Chalet School's business on a daily basis.

Happy New Year!

Does anyone else remember Cornelia turning up with a pet chameleon in the Tyrol books?

Yes! And expecting the Pets prefect to be able to tell her how to look after it.

It's mentioned as having happened in Exploits but I don't think it is mentioned when it happens.
Exploits is full of memories of things that weren't mentioned before.

That’s precisely the sort of behaviour that would lead towards the staff banning all pets.

And Happy New Year everyone!

And it goes all the way back to Stephen’s christening, when Len says she has to look after the others because she’s the oldest.

Yes, I’ve just finished that one. But what did make me wince a bit was Jo telling Jacynth that God had done the right thing for Auntie by letting her die, because she’d only have had to keep working hard if she’d lived.

No-one is allowed to be sad that someone they loved died. They have to immediately remember that they are with God now and feel happy for them. One part that I genuinely don't like.

Yes, it’s a classic instance of birth order, or rather the qualities Joey and Jack associate with birth order, creating personality. Len: dutiful, conscientious, parent-pleasing eldest, natural prefect of the family. Margot: youngest and rebel, allowed to get away with stuff that would have landed Len in a reform school. Con: ‘dreamy’, overlooked middle child.

Yes. But it’s ok for Jo to repeatedly hark back to when she thought Jack was dead.

I’m on to Jo to the Rescue now, which I haven’t read before, and keep wanting to boo Reg.

Jo to the Rescue cracks me up. Joey is all breezy and slangy and informal to the point where Zephyr Burthill doesn’t believe she’s ‘a doctor’s wife — a lady!’ when she first encounters her sitting randomly on a gate to show how schoolgirlish she is, but the amount of extremely formal title-dropping Joey does when she’s introducing Marie to Debby and Phoebe is hilarious. In fact, I think even the narrator randomly refers to ‘the Countess’ at one point, in case we count her in with Debby because she does housework.

The Alpenhof Hotel, considered by many to be the site of the Chalet, is being renovated ATM after many years dereliction. I'd love to go back to Pertisau and stay there when it's finished.

I always think that Reg seems to be moronic in that book, yet Jack somehow arranges for him to go to his exclusive Public School so that Reg can pass the necessary exams to be considered for medical school.
We then hear nothing of Reg until he's qualified and working at the San.
All doctors in the CS series end up working there - even Dr. Graves, who is random GP in England.

The danger of reading books in order.

In exploits at the staff evening, they drop lead into water to tell fortunes.

In new house they are horrified at the idea of fortune telling.

Umm

Some of those staff evenings sound like health and safety disasters waiting to happen — melting lead (do they do it on a stove? Is that even possible?) and dropping into water, jumping over lit candles, having people do cartwheels or handsprings, glueing halos onto hair???

I'm sure I remember extracting/melting lead in a chemistry lab at a secondary school open day, so it's certainly possible over a Bunsen burner, it seems.

And the time my physics teacher let us play with mercury on the classroom desks.

And the time the school was about to have its Ofsted-equivalent inspection, and my 6th form chemistry teacher said "right, we're not allowed to have these chemicals any more, so let's spend today's lesson taking them outside and burning them."

This was late 90s/early 00s!

Happy new year Chalet School fans. There was an article in the Times yesterday about a new train journey in Switzerland to Interlaken. I'd love to go, but I'd need to remortgage my house to afford a holiday in Switzerland!

"AIBU DD's hamster found at the Auberge, drunk, and trying to yodel to hear the echo"

We mentioned earlier in the thread about the Cock Patrol when the girls were at Guides.

I also recall a quote from one of the Just William books by Richmal Crompton, where William and his Great-Aunt Jane go to the funfair together and decide to try the roundabout:

"Aunt Jane mounted a giant cock"

Wow. I've just been reading that You Tube video "The Chalet School Revisited" and all I can say is - they paid no attention to EBD's obsession with tidy hair.

Most of the women on the video had really, really scruffy hair and no idea how to dress attractively.

Yes, I know that's bitchy but we've mentioned EBD's hair obsession frequently and I would have thought that the members of FOCS who went on all those pilgrimages would have read the books, too.

The halo was a mistake-it had been painted, and wasn't quite dry when put on the head.

At my secondary school, we spent several lessons outside the building with lit cigarettes stuck into sponges that were jammed into water bottles. The water bottles were lungs and we pumped them to "smoke" the cigarettes. The idea was to see how clogged up your lungs would get from the smoke!

This was ca 2003. Pretty sure it wouldn't be approved today!

1980's secondary school open evening. I was a first year student who volunteered to help (year 7 now)

I was in the science classroom. Teacher had set up a skeleton with tubing going from the mouth to 2 test tubes with some sort of pump in there two. My job was to keep lighting cigarettes to fit in the mouth part and then supervise the lit fags presumably to stop the other kids nicking them 🤣🤣

The experiment was to show the build up of tar in the lungs.

Honestly could you imagine the outcry now? I'd go batshit if I saw that anywhere 🤣🤣

I also remember a science lesson where the poor teacher was drawing male genitalia on the board and a lad stood up and shouted, "you've got it wrong!" while unzipping his flies and exposing said organ. The teacher just gazed upon him cool as a cucumber and said, "ah, I see" before rubbing it out and redrawing it about a quarter of the size 🤣

Now I think she'd be struck off!

I've been amazed by seeing the word "pussystruck" in several CS books.
I think EBD just meant "surprised".

no character EBD considered interesting was ever a robust, bouncing healthy type

Well, there’s Tom. And also Cornelia - EBD was very clear that neither of them was ‘pretty’ or ‘delicate’ but they’re two of my favourite characters. Although there’s a confusing bit somewhere after Mlle Lepattre’s death where it mentions that Corney was to have ‘such mothering’ as she’d never had before, & then that seems to get dropped. All I could think of was that either EBD forgot about it or it was a religious reference.