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.

This was meant as a reply to TinselAngel re Grandma. I’m still working out how to reply, but I love that people know who I’m talking about anyway 🙂

I can't get on with Elsie Oxenham. I love Doritos Fairlie Bruce though.

I kind of agree but I read and reread them to tease out and remember the absurdities, over and over again.

All the ridiculous near-disasters. All the rescues of girls who have got lost in the woods ten yards from the school gates. All the peasants who conveniently provide shelter and onion-infused milk (rich with cream - bleurgh) for forty-odd girls and the unfortunate mistresses who accompany them when they get lost/stuck/encounter avalanches/insert ludicrous event here.

I'm just perusing Challenge for the CS and Miss Ferrars has done her famous collapse with appendicitis, causing Miss Wilmot to utter those immortal words: "Kathy - Kathy, darling!"

Dorita! Autocorrect!

Click on the three dots which you'll see at the bottom right of every post and select "Quote".

I love reading EBD including the errors! I also love Antonia Forest (Nicola thinks like me) and Angela Brazil. I know, I read like someone 20 years older than me. I also like Jennings books. I just watched Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes today and enjoyed it.

I thought you'd written "Doritos" on purpose.
In honour of your post, here is Sebastian the cat enjoying some Doritos.

........................................and here is Sebastian, showing his appreciation afterwards:

Thank you! (testing)

One of the problems with Jo is, I think, that she modelled her in great part on Jo March, and just had no real idea what to do with her as an adult. Alcott is far more successful in Jo’s Boys but of course EBD ended up with a lot more material to find.

Re EJO and the Abbey series, I uncritically adored all the May Queen and folk dancing fol de rol, but I remember Jen firmly telling sneaky Della (both aged 13 or so) that Della had to decide whether she wanted to be someone that people could trust and rely on, or just a flake. Having it spelt out like that was quite an epiphany.

Ah-ha - another blanket-camouflaging cat. My two are great at that! Sebastian is beautiful.

Thank you! He is actually DD's cat. DH and I have two cats ourselves but none that eat Doritos

I was musing about Miss Ferrars and her appendicitis. She has her operation and then spends forever in the San, then comes back to school for a day, then her auntie comes and takes her back to England to recover for an extended period of time.

FFS. When I had my appendix out I was back at work five days later, looking after an Old Lady with dementia. I would really have enjoyed several months off (paid, presumably).

Whose hair turned white in an instant?

And wasn't the Robin always vying with Jo to be more delicate? I felt it was a contest who could go down first with raging pleurisy simply for having heilige wasser instead of heisse wasser ( or whatever)

I did enjoy Princess at the chalet school. Am sure elisaveta of belsornia inspired all those shonky minor royal plotlines in eg Dynasty.

I would really have enjoyed several months off
I have a very well thought out fantasy about being sent to an Alpine sanatorium for absolute rest.

Whose hair turned white in an instant?
Miss Wilson. Not in an instant, in the time it took to go through a secret passage (a few hours?)

I’ve just read ‘shocks’ and it’s 6 weeks quarantine for scarlet fever. Which then made me think what did quarantine actually mean back then….I wonder how many weeks they’d have given Covid if it had been around?
Matey also goes around sedating pretty much everyone in shocks and gives miss annersley a hot toddy doctored with 4 aspirin to ward off a potential cold as well

Is it too late to get the Dropbox link? My dad threw all my chalet school out and it’s just what I need now when work is a nightmare.

He threw them out?!! Why...???

We like the series because it’s often so demented, and because she’s so invested in every nutty detail from the (frankly unworkable) trilingualism, the ‘dainty’ cubicles, ritual curtsying, obsession with Old Girl fertility, cream cakes and ‘delicacy’ (no character EBD considered interesting was ever a robust, bouncing healthy type — she even gave previously ‘sturdy’ Mary-Lou a makeover via sledging accident that nearly killed her AND made her tall, slim and curly-haired).

They were in my parents house and he “decluttered” without checking with me or mam 😕 also a mini suitcase full of old buntys

I find the books so soothing. I re-read them when I’m sick or sad. Like others, I did embrace some values from them also. Sometimes there’d be a sad/angry new girl and one of the main characters would spend time thinking about how to help them - not just doing the right thing in reaction to someone/something, but actively setting out to show kindness to someone off their own bat.

Joey as a child was quite unpleasant. Always getting weirdly jealous/possessive of the robin then being very dismissive towards Simone for the same thing. Bad tempered. But that all made her seem more real than the ‘spirit of the school’ adult who must surely have annoyed many many people.

One of my best friends was in ICU in Switzerland with Covid in 2021. Thankfully she made a good recovery, and she was actually sent to a sanatorium in the Alps for rehab afterwards! She was also a CS fan and we joked later on that she was just fulfilling a childhood ambition.

Regarding Miss Ferrars' appendix, while I don't dispute EBD's utter lack of medical knowledge, it's worth remembering anaesthesia was much harsher back then, and it was a considerably bigger op than nowadays. Plus no/minimal antibiotics if there was superimposed infection, which could otherwise take months to cure (if it didn't kill you). Miss F's is in the latter books, so you'd hope they'd at least have some penicillin, but for Julie Lucy earlier on, it's quite realistic that she might die and would be out of action for a long time.

I think Cornelia (?) was quite a healthy sort wasn't she? Haven't read these for years but I loved them so much.