AIBU To Think That The Plots Of The Chalet School Books Were Really Improbable

[TheShellBeach]

.................................such as Prince Cosimo, the endless kidnappings, all the train crashes/bus crashes/car crashes/plane crashes/boat sinkings hang on a minute, were there any boat sinkings

Okay, I've just remembered that there were a couple of near misses with boats when the CS was on the island. Joey was nearly flung overboard once (a missed opportunity for EBD to get rid of her IMO) and there were probably others.

Anyway - all aboard and ahoy there.

Bearing in mind the number of times new girls have the ‘what, in lessons too’ conversation,, I’m not entirely convinced the prospectus made it clear.

That or a large number of parents were picking a boarding school based on it being too far away to come home for most holidays and not bothering to tell their daughter anything at all about the school they were packing her off to.

My copy of Chalet Girl from Kenya is the same. Just at the point Jo Schott's parents go missing.

Have you mistaken this for one of the old (maybe still extant) CS fora — Chalet Bulletin Board or the like? There seemed to be a lot of regulars with deeply programmatic ideas about how the books should be read, who got deeply antsy at more than the mildest criticism of the insufferably breezy adult Joey, and struggled with the notion that there was any possible interpretation of any text or episode other than the one EBD clearly intended?

Have a look for the relevant pages in the dropbox.

They used a weird sounding children's book called The Crown of Success in which "the cottages (in the village) were their heads and were filled with knowledge". I've got to the initial plan, can't wait to see how they actually do it!

@RobinHumphries Wonderful - totally agree. Also, she doesn't wear ponytails, so she's safe from Matey!

The Crown of Success was the book Jennifer Penrose (she of illicit Gone With The Wind/Forever Amber reading) grabbed in haste to read in the garden and didn't read but would almost certainly have flung down in disgust if she had.

"hang on a minute, were there any boat sinkings"

Goodness me, yes! PPs have mentioned the torpedo escapes and thrilling motorboat rescues, but Joey was also shipwrecked during 'Peggy' and the Barras parents were drowned somewhere before 'A New Mistress'.
There were almost as many boat casualties as mountainside tumbles.

Tricky things, boats!

I've got 'The Crown Of Success' somewhere. I think at least one child is badly injured in that, too.

In Goes To It, the boat Gurtrud Beck is on is torpedoed.

"AIBU to think DD's school should send their prospectus in English.
DH and I cannot read Russian.
CFuckers also sent a CD of someone called Josephine Maynard singing The Red Sarafan. WWYD.
DD says this school has a spectacularly good academic reputation for RG university entrance but DH not convinced - would Roedean be a better bet"

Oh, so it is. I'd forgotten that.
Serve her right for running away without enough money to bribe someone posh and rich.

You could tell she was a baddie - otherwise someone’s cousin would have given her a free lift on his palatial yacht (which would have been inexplicably cruising the seas around the UK in the middle of a war).

Or if not a baddie, at least *not a real Chalet School girl’.

"Oh Grizel - whatever is it?" faltered Biddy.

"I set Len Maynard on fire," Grizel replied dully.

AIBU to think that the mistresses at DD's school should be more careful when they throw their cigarette ends away. Should school have a no-smoking policy. WWYD.

I’ve said it here before, but in the midst of all the madness there are some wonderful moments. Auntie’s letter to Jacynth is still so touching. But don’t get me started on Jacynth’s ghastly namesake Jack Lambert. No one other than Jack could make me prefer Margot and her devil

Jack Lambert is the nastiest girl in the history of the CS.

Jack has not one redeeming feature. If only Margot had thrown the bookend at her.

I can’t believe the junior teachers were persuaded to let her loose on their shared car. Leaving to one side her (appalling) character, she has no qualifications whatsoever to allow her to fiddle with probably the only actual asset they have!

Not to mention roughing up poor Jane Carew across the bonnet, so to speak. And then Jane was totally victim blamed by the staff and prefects while they tiptoed around beastly bullying Jack. Jack is simply crying out for a bookend to the head.

What was poor old Jane to do when Jack had her by her plait? Turn the other plait? Seriously, Jack should have been on the first train to a reform school.

In the Danish book series "Puk" from the fifties ( I think) the plot in one of the books evolves around archeologists finding a Roman road in Denmark. That would be huge as the Romans didn't come up this far north. The poor girl, Puk, must have looked very basic as through the 50+ books she encountered three dubbelgängers. Same age as her and everything.

Along with Margot Maynard.
That would have wiped the smirk off Joey's face.

I'm actually a bit more convinced by Margot Maynard now (though not yet up to the bit where she brains someone with a bookend). EBD is clearly preparing for her becoming a nun well in advance (aged 15ish, won't tell her classmates what her career aspirations are) and her struggles with her conscience are at least a bit different from the identikit Chalet Girl that most characters eventually become.

Margot's plot line gets repetitive, particularly because EBD slows down to a book or more per term in Switzerland, and the triplets start young. Imagine if Joey had been in school for 30 or so books instead of a dozen or so. Grizel had a great story arc in four.

I suspect EBD didn't want to lose the triplets, but it's a pity she didn't have the momentum to push them on and bring on a new generation of anyone but Jack L.

I suppose her doubles were relatives on her father's side who looked inexplicably like her mother (Adrienne)