New Home for the Chalet School

[Vintagejazz]

Welome everyone. Dormy lists on the board as usual and I know you are all hoping like mad that you are all not in the same dormitory as Mary Lou. But only some of you can be the un lucky ones and the rest of us will have to make do with each other.

Oh, and the good news is that Joey has sabotaged discovered something wrong with the roof on her house and believe it or not, the only property available to rent is right next door to the school.

Shit Hurrah, lucky us.

Got to go. Matey wants me for unpacking.

Stephen and Mike come back from public school having discovered the possibilities inherent in living next door to an all-girls school. They set about shagging their way through the Sixth Form. Stephen falls passionately in love with Jane Carew, whose indiscriminate 'darlings' strike him as being bohemian and outre. He serenades her under the dormitory window (all the Maynards sing, remember?) and she returns the favour. They head off to London together, where she becomes a star of the West End and he becomes a respectable stockbroker. They live happily ever after until she dumps him for being too stodgy and responsible.

Mike, on the other hand, being the wild and irresponsible one, shags most of the Lower Sixth and ends by knocking up Jose Helston, daughter of Elisaveta. Forced by Jack, Jo and Elisaveta into a shotgun marriage (no abortions at the Chalet School), he styles himself Prince Consort of Belsornia what do you mean Jose had two older brothers and wouldn't be the heir to the throne and sets out to the USSR to start an underground movement centering around putting Elisaveta back on the throne. He is eventually caught and shot by the KGB.

All the Chalet girls fall madly in love with Charles, not realising he bats for the other team. Going to English tea at Freudesheim becomes a highly sought-after activity in the hope of catching a glimpse of the sensitive-yet-tortured soul that is Charles, but he is oblivious. He becomes very friendly with Jack Lambert but heads to uni with a sigh of relief. He ends up living in Brighton with Keith the plumber as mentioned up-thread.

Margot gets to Edinburgh and decides that nunning isn't for her. She has a great time at uni despite a tricky incident where she loses her temper, chucks a bottle at someone in a bar and is arrested. Repenting, she buckles down, gets her MD and becomes one of those consultants who are technically brilliant but have zero empathy with their patients.

Loving these

Con bumps into Roger Richardson while at Oxford who wows her with his hunky swimmer's physique.

She gets pregnant with quads which Joey endeavours to pass off as her own despite nearing 60. There is a red-head, a mousey brown, a blonde and of course one with black hair but they all have soft pansy-coloured eyes, and all look fetching in their lime green baby grows.

I can't get into the onedrive anymore, its asking for a security code. Have I missed something?

I just tried and had the same thing Juniper. Think we need the library Pree to sort it out.

See that's the only part of triplets grow up I enjoyed.

Len is a sad case but Con is a writer of lush novels but pretends to write serious news articles. Margot leaves her convent to be just a doctor.

Steve I think is a vet, Charles is a recluse and mike is a sharp practise estate agent.

Felix is a gay actor, felicity married at 18, gets divorced and then has lots of lovers who support her,

Cecil married a teacher Nd they campaign against private education,

Phil works in London and is ashamed of being a part of a huge family while Geoff works in a car factory on the track and had no ambition.

Felicity couldn't be a ballet dancer, she would grow too tall as both her parents are.

She does pole dancing instead.

But TooImmature, I do end up queen, right?

(I think Steve actually wants to be an engineer??)

Yes he does Helslike roger.

It's another male job deemed acceptable by EBD with of course doctor, bank manager and school master.
I like Roddy going into sheep farming. That was imaginative of her.

I think Chaz was in course for a naturalist/paedophile.

I read that as naturist, Thebody! I think I've been hanging around with Joan Baker too long. Any ideas as to what she does? I think she gets a job as a private secretary and has an affair/marries her boss.

Oh I love these so much. Special lols for

He is eventually caught and shot by the KGB.

and

She gets pregnant with quads which Joey endeavours to pass off as her own despite nearing 60. There is a red-head, a mousey brown, a blonde and of course one with black hair but they all have soft pansy-coloured eyes, and all look fetching in their lime green baby grows.

and

I think Chaz was in course for a naturalist/paedophile.

Btw, I'm not entirely sure that EBD did think schoolmaster was really an acceptable job for a man. I presume Julie Lucy's husband is suitably masterful, or else why would she be gleefully jacking in her job for his, but the actual male teachers at the school (who I do love as characters) are decidedly beta...

I think Joan would be too canny for that Tinuviel - accidentally sleeping with the boss is much more a mistake that the less-worldly true Chaletian might make, due to being raised to become a spineless jellyfish and defer to the nearest doctor. She'd be more likely to stealthily depose her boss. She would celebrate her promotion with a whole box of Mr Kipling's fondant fancies.

I like to think that Joan out-Chalets the lot of them. Marries a duke and has a dozen children looked after by a team of faithful Tyrolean maids and their coadjutors, all of whom adore their pretty young mistress and would gladly lay down and die for her. This means Joan has plenty of time to churn out a fantastically successful stream of teen fiction, produce to great acclaim a PhD thesis on great literary speeches about the virtues of softly-spoken women, hold down a series of lecturing posts at top universities (Europe-wide, of course, as she is fluent in every European language), and develop the best recipe for lemon drizzle cake known to woman. And oh how she understands girls!

Loving these.

And Robin returns to admit that she never actually joined a nunnery. She got married and has been happily living with 3 children in New Zealand. She didn't tell the Chalet School because Jem had always told her she shouldn't marry, and she wanted to make sure that Joey didn't visit her. She was sick of being treated alternately like an unpaid nursemaid and baby who couldn't do anything.
It also had the advantage that all four letters they wrote her over that time didn't find her either.

Cooo-eeee. Library Pree here. Someone tried to reset the security details on our transcripts, good job I'd set it up to notify an obsolete email account I have knocking around...

New password: IAmOOAOMaryLou

That should work...

Good work, Library Pree!

Sybil - sets up an enormously successful family therapy clinic. Often to be found telling the story of her difficult childhood in interviews in Saturday supplements.

Josette - causes enormous family consternation by keeping her high-powered job even after having children. Her charming but slightly feckless husband looks after them while working part time as a gardener. Josette is, oddly, impervious to her Aunt Joey's sympathy for her difficult life and claims they're all perfectly happy.

Thank you library pree!

Peggy - Becomes nice but dull member of WI. People speculate she must have been very pretty when younger, but now quite faded and worn looking.

Bride- Marries successful lawyer and becomes lecturer at Oxford. Raises 5 children in chaotic but happy household. Joey makes occasionally snippy remarks, and Bride sometimes hints that Gosh, she thinks she might be expecting quads.

Maeve - Marries a guy called Colin and settles in 3 bedroom semi in Pinner. Her eldest daughter, June, becomes a Brown Owl, while younger daughter Brenda runs away with a punk called Vile Vince.

ps thanks Library Pree.

Rue you are a perfect poppet (though tartar when roused).

I bet it was that Eustacia. I vote we ban her from the library for a term.

Thanks Rue my lamb. I need some Swiss transcripts for my holidays.

Thanks Rue.

I like my reinvented life history. Thank you to whoever thought that up.

Someone was asking about the fill-ins. New beginnings is bland but very much in her style. The best bits is that Joey nearly dies and has a head injury so gets her hair chopped off. Two CS girls in India is hard going. Starts off strong (gives character to the nameless doctor chasing Joey) but Robin is out of character for most of what I have read, they have too many exiting adventures (avalanches, confronted by locals wanting independence etc) oh and Robin finds out about her mothers family which doesn't tie-in with the rest of the series. I haven't finished it though. The CS and Robin is pretty good but it is when rob is head girl and I always thought she was head girl when she was in special sixth and the author manages to negotiate EBDs timelines and slot her in as head girl but not when she is in special 6th which is a minor point but does spoil it for me. Peace is very good as people have said before.

I think the fillings I've read have been very varied.
The first one I read, and I think it was the first one written, was Visitors to the Chalet School. It's one of the early missing terms in Tyrol.
It's well written, fairly substantial in stuff without having any significant events. You see a bit of Juliet after school, which is nice.
I was slightly irritated by the "girl wants to be a doctor but is perfectly happy to be a nurse" line. Because to my mind it isn't the same at all, I would have thought if you wanted to be a doctor, and knew that you were capeable of being on, I would think it would get very frustrating to be a nurse. And I know that, at the time, female doctors were unusual-but I know they weren't unheard of because my great-aunt was one, and she wasn't a pioneer of them.
I had a bit of mixed feelings about a little bit which looked forward to something that happened during WWII. As a happening in a book, I liked it; as a Chalet School book,no, because EBD didn't have the luxury of a crystal ball, it didn't sit right with me.
The main new characters brought it were good and well drawn, but some of the extra characters who were side characters felt a little forced, the author was so determined to give them a separate character that everything they said/did had to relate to that characteristic, so they flowed less well.
But generally a good book, and it was fun to read.

I agree with those comments Rob said about the others, except I haven't read CS and Robin. New Beginnings felt a little "lets tie up all the loose endings" which rather strangely felt very unsatisfactory-I suppose it had a very much full stop feel and obviously the CS must go on forever! It's a good antidote to CSGrow up though.