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.

Joey’s deathbed scene in Rivals would have been much improved if the Robin had appeared with a child-sized zither and started strumming away. Joey might well have roused from her stupor to whisper ‘Kill me now’ before her golden voice fell silent forever.

And talking of kidnappings, I think that Miss Annersley was NASTY to Val Gardiner when Val was kidnapped. She almost expelled her.

Talk about victim-blaming.

(AIBU to think my DD's headmistress is a CF for wanting to expel DD for being kidnapped)

Yes, it's disappointing when we realise that the Robin failed to accompany her sweet voice with a zither (or any other musical instrument, come to that).

You'd think the CS could've provided a zither when Joey was on her deathbed.

They had a philosophy of being very brisk and not letting girls mope and feel sorry for themselves but usually gone over the top. In this case so far over the top that you would need binoculars to even see the top

Yes. I said this on the previous thread and I think it bears repetition.

Miss Annersley herself was sedated and sent to bed for a fortnight when Val was returned to the CS after being kidnapped.

Val herself was berated.

I’m re-reading them from the start. Joey doesn’t start off with a ‘golden voice’, does she? There’s mention of her having no aptitude for music, she doesn’t stand out in Mr Denny’s early classes and when she keeps singing folk songs her friends are irritated, not rapt with admiration.

She’s clearly setting up Joey as a future literary genius, so it always interests me that she downgrades this into Joey being a much more ordinary, very popular school story writer. Presumably she thought that being the foremost novelist of her age was incompatible with 11 children and being an eternal Chalet School girl.

That reminds me of Anne Shirley. At university, she was top of her year & winning an important literary prize. Once married, she described herself as only capable of writing light stuff for kids. (Obviously not in those words but that was the gist).

"....................and when she keeps singing folk songs her friends are irritated"

I would also be irritated if a girl kept singing folk songs to me when I'd asked her not to.

Chalet Girls Grow Up very much NOT published by Girls Gone By though!

Many other fills in are but they are pretty tight on the nature of them.

Oh, me too.

What book is Val kidnapped in?

Redheads

DH and I once went on an horrific walk where there was an unexpected torrential rainstorm, we got lost, and by the time we found our way back to the car park we couldn’t have been any wetter if we’d been swimming fully dressed.

There was a gift shop near to the car park which sold overpriced souvenir T-shirts and jumpers, so we were saved from an hour long drive home in soaking clothes (although sadly the shop didn’t sell trousers or shorts, so we drove home with just wet knickers and boxers on our bottom halves and hoped that the neighbours would all be out when we got home).

Anyway, not even a tiny sniffle between the two of us. Clearly I’m the Wrong Sort and would never fit in as a Chalet Girl 🤷‍♀️

@PlaitBilledDuckyPuss

Redheads

I've got a long way to go then.

Ha ha, yes, if you are reading in order.

They get weirder as they go with Redheads being an extreme example.

Also, how many red headed English girls called Flavia are there that changing her last name (to her actual legal name so easily uncoverable) is sufficient security?

Yes, Readheads is bonkers - @marcopront is in for a treat when she gets there.

Completely agree about the name - all the nonsense about should they let her be called Copper by the staff - her stepdad should just have entered her as 'Jane Smith' although of course that isn't really a proper Chalet School sort of name, except perhaps for Joan Baker types.

Yeah, it’s difficult to imagine Flavia as being as anonymous a name as Joan or Mary or Susan 🤣

@PlaitBilledDuckyPuss

Ha ha, yes, if you are reading in order.

I have read redheads before and remember it as odd.
I've just finished camp which I don't remember ready before but it is the oddest one yet.

Hi, first time poster here. I've just finished 'Jo to the Rescue' and I really like the adult Jo here, and can see the younger Joey in her which I rarely can in the later books.

I love Jo to the Rescue. It alternates between High Drama (cello-stealing, dog-poisoning), and endless rabbiting on about who bathes which one of the bazillion children Joey, Frieda, Simone and Marie have already produced.

I’m reading Princess, and childishly amused that their Guide Company had a Cock Patrol.

Ah yes. That amused me, too.

Yet they let other girls call themselves Len, Con, Tom, Ted, Jack, etc. etc.

Thank you so much