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.

"It happened in a book that didn't see the light of day" is a lot like "you don't know him, he goes to another school".

More than seven pages on Jo being Insufferable and not a word on Mary Lou Trelawney? I do love the books, honest, but Kathie Ferrars was right first time.

I am just wondering how my lactose intolerance would go down there. They seem to drink thick creamy milk twenty times a day. I feel nauseous just thinking about it. Matey would be standing over me insisting I drink it every day

Kathy Ferrars would have come to a sticky end without our one and only Mary Lou and erm her guide belt / sash surely which she was never without.

Oh I can’t bear our one and only Mary Lou! When were were kids my sister used to call her Mary Poo 😂

I’m sure I remember one of the Austrian books where Joey is in the San and can’t leave until she eats the tripe Matey’s provided as a suitable meal for invalids 🤢🤮

I’d have been stuck in that San until everyone was sent home for the school holidays 🤣

I would still be there now if I had to eat boiled tripe before I left

Does Miss Dene ever get an assistant to help out with the office work?
I’m thinking it’d be a lot for one person once the school starts getting big…

I’m thinking that you’d get sent home for the holidays - the summer ones at least - and then you’d get to start the next term with a clean slate.

Whilst trying your hardest to conceal any illnesses from the staff in the future!

My pet peeves:

Mary Lou in every single book 'Try bending your knees a little with every step. Now does that make it easier?' (were they climbing the Jungfrau and got lost?) So lofty. So patronising. So condescending.

'Her voice was ever sweet, gentle and low. An excellent thing in a woman'. Yarrgghhhhhh. How many times did EBD inflict that on us?

However: I love the idea of trilingualism. Brilliant idea. Why don't all schools do it...

I've never quite worked out how they walked without bending their knees? That's what knees are for surely?

Trilingualism - I wonder if EBD attempted it in her school?

I’ve always imagined it as the difference between walking on a flat path (so sort of swinging the leg forward) or climbing stairs. So in order to climb a steep path it’s more of a climbing stairs motion than flat path motion

Yes me too. So you have more of a springy shock absorber thing going on around the knee joint instead of a flat-footed gait. (I have also thought about this too much over the past four decades). Prob useful advice. Still, M-L's somewhat offhand tone did her no favours at the time, I seem to remember.

I mentioned OOAOML upthread. She is dull as fuck.

You’ve just reminded me that I got an official caution aeons ago on some CS forum for pointing out that Joey, Madge or whoever don’t do things ‘offstage’ that EBD happens not to mention — that they’re just words on a page, so unless the words on the page say they do or say x, they don’t.

Some people got extremely cross at the notion that Joey wasn’t a real person on whose activities EBD sometimes dropped in, but who was leading a rich and interesting life regardless of whether it was being immortalised in fiction at any one point.

My name was mud…

I really like the character Phil Craven simply cos she doesn’t get on with M-L but then I like the under dogs Sybil Russell and even Margot.
Sybil…. I find a fascinating character. Treated like shit cos she wasn’t supervised and accidentally scalded her younger sister which was blamed on her being vain (victim blaming was another of EBDs traits) to the extent she resented her looks. Not naturally clever but willing to work really hard to get into the royal college of needlework. Admits her own faults that she doesn’t have the patience to teach and then despite fulfilling her side of the bargain doesn’t get to go to college but instead gets whisked off to Australia…..

You’ve just reminded me that I got an official caution aeons ago on some CS forum for pointing out that Joey, Madge or whoever don’t do things ‘offstage’ that EBD happens not to mention — that they’re just words on a page, so unless the words on the page say they do or say x, they don’t.

I'm so glad you've said that! There's so much in the FB groups of eg "I wonder why x character did that?" and I always think "Well, because EBD wrote it like that to suit the plot. No other reason"

But there will have been stuff that went through EBD's head that never made it to the page. It still 'happened'. And some stuff just clearly logically happened even if it's never written about. Clearly there are toilets; they aren't all an alien race that didn't need them. And some of that filling in makes for richer characters. Although there is also a lot of nonsensical over analysis!

Toilets? (hushed tones) erm you mean splasheries? You should probably take an order mark for slang and whilst you're at it another for loitering on the stairs and another for being on the front stairs.

Before our one and only Mary Lou has to explain things to you....

Not as dull as the worthy Len Maynard.

God love poor, dull, dutiful Len. The only interesting she ever did was to get engaged to someone frankly unsuitable when she was still at school and she only did that because her mother pressured her into it. And let’s face it, Joey, in the most generous of interpretations, was as clueless about romantic love as she was about family planning.

And God knows what Reg saw in her, well apart from the opportunity to try and further his career perhaps.

If he wanted a dutiful, submissive wife who had been programmed from childhood to put her family above everything else in her life, I think she’s ideal.

Add in the fact she’s described as pretty and yes, marrying her would help his career, she’s an ideal wife for the sort of man who would start eyeing up the 14 year olds at the local school for a wife (this is canon - they got engaged when Len was 17 and he is described as being interested for ‘a few years’!)

Also, wasn’t she supposed to have some sort of inheritance from her paternal grandmother?

More to the point, what on earth did she get out of marrying him?!