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.

Maybe a real problem for her innards, though!

I’m reading one of Val McDermid’s early books. The detective drives through Switzerland & the Tirol, & it reminds her of the Chalet School

My already high opinion of Val McDermid rises

I like her Kate Brannigan and Lindsay Gordon books but don’t think I’d enjoy her later stuff.

I think there were about 3 years between the triplets and Stephen, due to Jack being (lost) in the forces during the war.

Just reading book 4 and a ‘cooks guide’ ushers in the old ladies who like the carriage stuffy. Would that be the travel agent Thomas cook? Couldn’t find anything online

I did some Googling and looks like Thomas Cook did do European Train tours in those times:
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/families/holidays-through-history/grand-tour/copy-1-221-247-cooks-conducted-tours/

Yes, absolutely — early package tours. I think we’re supposed to grasp that the Stuffer and Maria are inexperienced travellers who need guides and help with reservations and languages and making their connections, unlike Miss Maynard, Joey and co, whom we keep being told are ‘experienced travellers’ who are not only fluently trilingual (somewhat unconvincingly we’re told they’re all happening to speak French because they’ve just spent a day in Paris) but know all the dodges about extending the seats, taking off their shoes, wrapping themselves in travel rugs etc.

(What does always interest me is the girls taking off their hats and putting on ‘soft tams’ to sleep in — this was because burning coal made the trains filthy, and wearing some kind of head covering meant your hair didn’t get full of coal dust overnight.)

Interesting- thank you! I was born after trains were electric- or, at least, I don't remember coal trains- how did the dust get inside? Through the windows? Surely the stuffer and Maria had a point in that case? I'd rather be stuffy than breathe in coal dust all night!

To clarify- I obviously mean when electric trains came in, not coal- I am aware they went out with he ark!

I imagine it would have been difficult to keep the sooty steam and smoke entirely outside the carriages, even if you didn’t open the windows much or at all. There are definitely descriptions in novels of passengers getting faces full of cinders and soot from partially-burnt coal when they did look out, but even if the steam/smoke only got in when doors were opened at a station, that would still mean a lot of sooty dust on inside surfaces. Lots of the CS books mention needing a good wash after getting off the train to school.

OT: why did 'The Robin' speak such appallingly badly French-inflected English after about 8 years with an English family, when her father was in fact English, and none of her family were in fact French? After about 2 months in England, I could already manage better than, "But why, then, Zoë?"

Same reason Biddy spoke offensively terrible Stage Oirish brogue, despite the fact that she’d left Ireland as a young child, never seems to have returned and to have had no contact at all with Irish people?

Steam trains were withdrawn in the UK in 1968 so they're not actually that ancient (or perhaps I'm just old!).

I was born in 1954, and I remember travelling in steam trains-we had to shut the window when going through tunnels, or all the smoke blew back into the carriage!

And that teachers from France always spoke English with French accents, despite the emphasis on the girls getting their accents perfect?

I'd you're old, I am also old.

To be fair, I've taught English in France and French in UK and I think it is more important to get the accent and intonation right in French if you want to be understood. It's not (just) French people being shitty if they say they can't understand you.

I'm just up to Three go to the Chalet School, which I hadn't read before, the one where they introduce the trilingual alternating days, and am thoroughly enjoying the girls' attempts to speak French. But there are also an awful lot of mistakes in the bits that are meant to be correct (and it def isn't just typos in the kindle versions). So possibly EBD would also have benefited from attending a trilingual school herself.

There’s a bit where Joey speaks Italian and it always looked odd to me, though I thought it might be because I’m just learning. Now I’m not so sure!

Does anyone know why EBD chose to move the school to the island? I've been re-reading the series and it feels like that's where the books start to drop in quality.

I assume because there was more scope for adventures there than at Plas Howell.

My favourite bit of Island is where dishy Kester Bellever has a grandfather clock in his hut on his birdwatching island.

I don’t know but I found it really annoying, the books were much better in Herefordshire.

Yes, her French is pretty poor, when she’s writing dialogue for supposedly fluent or native speakers! Which sets me off on enjoyable fantasies about everyone at the CS speaking their own weird idiolect which bears little resemblance to standard French or German, and then getting cross when people in Paris or Munich look askance at them.

Certainly in Three Go, there must be very few non-British girls at the school, and even many of the staff from the Tiernsee days who aren’t native French or German speakers must be pretty rusty. Isn’t it quite possible the girls were primarily picking up bad linguistic habits and usages from one another?

The triplets learn Quebec French, which I believe is fairly different to the French spoken in France. I understand Swiss German is quite different to standard German as well...
I can imagine it would be like a school of all the English speaking dialects and accents. A bit of a hash at times!