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.

I think it's the 'cups and spoons' that throws me off, rather than the cups alone, Emily - that it's clearly not just milk substituted for milk, I suppose.

But why don't Jo's babies ever seem to cry to be fed, apart from when it is the evil Miss Bubb's fault their feed has been delayed?

I didn't know that Truby King was an 'elimination communication' advocate though! That's made me smile. (For the uninitiated, holding a young baby over a potty is now very much an 'attachment parenting' ish thing to do - promoted as good for bonding etc, because the principle there is watching for their cues, rather than trying to teach them to schedule their innards. Not what I've done, but I've known parents who have.)

Oh how interesting; have to hope the rest of it doesn't come back into fashion! I think the cup and spoon would be Farex or Paplum or similar.
What is interesting is that my mother saw it as all to do with health and hygiene against my grandmother's rather Victorian regime with not many baths and staying indoors in stuffy rooms all the time. My mum was in the Women's League of Health and Beauty and used to prance around in shorts and a silk blouse with lots of other modern mothers (can't see Joey doing that). At the extreme of the movement was Strength through Joy and the Nazi view of hygiene and eugenics.

Love the idea of Joey prancing around in lime green shorts and silk blouse .

I went to a Dublin convent school and when we were very small (4-5) we wore gym slips with a blue sash around the middle. Then it was updated to a smock type thing for the youngest children and a dark blue tunic for everyone else.
In secondary we wore A-line type skirts with V-necked jumpers - and gaberdines in Winter. It was actually nicer than the clunky pleated tartan skirts that most Dublin secondary schools seem to go in for nowadays.

Oh that is interesting - and I can see it also very much in line with EBD's stuff on the virtues of open windows as a 'hygiene' thing (eg the two women on the train with Grizel, Jo and Mollie Maynard; the prefects objection to the curtains in Bill's room when they're spying on the Middles on the roof). I think the stuff about Jo as a 'chummy' kind of mother is also in stark contrast to the preceding Victorian ideas, isn't it?

Which indirectly reminds me, actually: Davida Armitage teaches "botany and hygiene". What is 'hygiene'? (Also, how do you pronounce Davida? My instinct is Da-VEE-da, but then it's abbreviated to Vida, which I would always say was VIE-da.)

I do quite like the Holiday ones I've read, eg. Jo and Co in the Tirol. It gives more of a feeling of the family, and seems less claustrophobic than the Platz. The Platz becomes a place that is a bit of an Enclave, and they don't seem to relate to the locals (unless they are other ex-pats) really.
Joey seems more real, and likeable.

Yes, I think the school really closes in on itself when it moves to the Platz. It loses the sense of place and social context that make the earlier books so interesting to read as an adult and the books just become typical school stories really.

Yes the open windows, cold baths, humping the mattress (as it were) all part of the ideas of the thirties I think. I guess hygiene was what passed for sex education without the sex? I think the strict Victorian mother was a bit further back. My grandmother and her sisters were born in the 1880s but were very jolly and relaxed always drinking gin and singing music hall songs (but they were very common by EBD standards).
I would say Daveeda and Veeda I think.

I would say DAVida, emphasis on the first syllable. (That's with a short 'a' as in 'maths' not a long 'a' as in 'day'.)

As a child I absolutely adored the Swiss books. I grew up in the 70s when Armada were publishing random books at random intervals, and I can still remember devouring and re-reading until I almost had by memory whichever book had just come out. Some of the Swiss books were definitely among them - Fete for one, and I think Problem and either Adrienne or Althea (I always muddle those two). One of the things I remember really liking was the ease with which problems could apparently be taken to Auntie Jo/Mrs Maynard for instant solution. I wanted an Auntie Jo, and I was completely captivated by those bedtime chats which we now find so contrived.

I've always wondered why Jo never aspired to university. I know it was a much less common path for young women then, but EBD sends plenty of others there. Some YA fiction about Jo's university days (did they have dual honours in languages and history back then?), followed by a riotous young adulthood as a career woman would have been brilliant. But I suppose that was too far outside of EBD's experience and comfort zone to consider.

I have started reading Jo Returns - wtf? A few weeks after her emotional farewell to school, she wanders back in to do apparently fuck all, but have lunch and do Hobbies with the pupils and write books. Until a series of not-at-all-contrived coincidences mean she has to stay, and has to teach. She seems to end up teaching a wide range of subjects and abilities, without any training at all.

The issues with Beth and Barbara are explained in more detail in Janie Steps in,

Currently reading CS in the Oberland- the finishing branch in Switzerland book, whoooooo, smoking, lipstick, boyfriends!!!! is it really an EDB or is it fan fic? It reads like EBD, unlike visitors to the CS which reads like fan fic.( And I recently read)

But I think it was a lot more common then for teachers not to have formal qualifications, I don't think the school did formal exams until they came to Britain (not even in Guernsey). Plus don't forget that Jo was the best head girl ever so obviously totally able to teach, I'm just reading Gay and she comes back to teach again.

I've realised how much of the additional stories of past teachers and pupils is cut from the Armarda books In the last few we've had news of Elisveta (in Highland twins), Polly Herriot (in Lavender) and now Miss Carthew and the sad story about her daughter. I know they don't add much to the overall story but I like reading about them, it adds to the inclusiveness of the school and doesn't make Joey seem quite so much as the only only ex pupil still hanging around.

Yes, I find some of the Armada cuts hard to understand in that way, because I don't really see why these details are seen to be so disposable - they create atmosphere and foster a genuine sense of continuity. I understand slightly better when there are huge chunks at a time missing (like the chapter taken out of Exile) than when odd snips are made here and there. Still, having first read them first, I am grateful at least that they were kept in print, if imperfectly.

I always found the rapturous excitement when Jo returns to hang around randomly rather confusing - having gone to 'the local school' which had a healthy contempt for authority, I couldn't (still can't) believe the whole school would feel so fondly towards the most recent Head Girl. It's an interesting point in terms of random unqualified (in the broadest possible sense) staff - it's not very clear how experienced or qualified most of the staff are at this point: Miss Annersley and Miss Wilson are both graduates, but I think they're the only ones for whom this is so clearly the case, and of course Mlle has been a governess so had prior teaching experience, but I can't think of any other staff with a back-story at all - apart from Juliet (BSc) and Grizel (some kind of post-school music training) at the Annexe. And yet only a few years later the workforce becomes quite significantly professionalised - partly by all the returning Old Girl graduates. It seems as though EBD is ahead of the times on this, although perhaps I'm under-estimating 'the times'. And I think it's interesting that she clearly champions unqualified-but-excellent Madge over the accomplished scholar Miss Bubb, alongside this.

I really like Oberland and feel quite sorry there were no more set at the finishing branch, but I can easily believe that there was no more that EBD/Chambers felt she could write about it that would be interesting and also suitable for readers much younger than the girls there. I think the stuff with Elma is cleverly done - Bill is suitably vague about the 'if the worst should happen, I would expel you' stuff that you can just fill it in for yourself, without it being either too explicit at one end or too tame at the other. (I suppose this is the same effect she was going for by never showing Miss Annersley reduce a problem girl to the tears which would wash her soul clean, but I find it's done to better effect here.)

Is Visitors the funny fill-in with all the homeopathy, or was that Joey and Patricia?

'Veta - a friend of mine from school got her degree from a decent uni, went off to be an actress, and when that failed (well, she was in Casualty a couple of times...) turned up teaching drama in a private school in Kent, with nary a teaching qualification to her name.

She's now a Head of Department at another private school, still with no actual qualifications other than a drama degree. So I'm not sure things have changed all that much, really!

But she does have a degree. Lots of private school teachers don't have a teaching qualification. And our local very high achieving/very selective girls school is now an official training school - I have heard Mothers complain that they pay high fees and then their DDs are taught by trainees who leave (aren't offered a job) once they are qualified to be replaced by another trainee. They still get outstanding results, but...

Joey and Patricia has all the homeopathy, and Joey's conversion to Catholicism. Visitors is the first one with Patricia, where all the English school girls come to the Tiernsee (which is reported in Head Girl when whoever is the second prefect reads the report of last term).

It's my birthday, and my lovely DM has given me (as well as three other CS books which haven't arrived yet, so she won't tell me which ones they are) Leader , which is interesting to read having just finished Gay, since Jack is Gay's niece. I'm a bit confused though - is Anne supposed to be Nan, Ruth and Tommy's daughter, who's about three in Gay ? What's with the whole Nan/Anne thing? I know they sound similar, but Nan can't really be short for Anne, can it?

I suppose Armada cut all the bits about old girls for the newer readers, who hadn't read the Tirol books, because it wouldn't interest them. When I was younger, I didn't read the books in anything like order (I'm still trying to remember exactly which books were my first - there were five or six of them in a class library when I was in Primary School, including Jo of, Princess, Eustacia, New House, and then I'm fairly sure there was one set when Madge lived at the Round House, because I have some funny early pictures of the Round House in my head), and they were already confusing enough without random Old Girls popping up every few pages. But as an adult reader, I wish Armada hadn't cut them.

Ah, but isn't the whole point of private school about (a) class sizes and (b) ensuring your daughters don't have to mix with the likes of Joan Baker, until some feckless shop-cake-eating wastrel wins on the pools? ;)

Happy birthday Obligatory! And what a lovely DM you have.

I think Nan is a recognised nickname for Ann - isn't Nancy originally a nickname for Ann? Also, I presume the reason Miss Annersley is briefly called 'Nan' at some point in the Tyrol books is along these lines, though that seems not to stick...

If my mums tales of being at a small private school in 1950s London are anything to go by, unqualified teachers were quite normal. Mum was taught for a year by Ian Wybrow ( Harry and Dinosaurs author) before he went to teacher training college.

Mr W describes the school as " a mad little private school in West London where one of the teachers would cut your toenails in the staffroom on a Friday night if you were prepared to let him" on his webpage at www.ianwhybrow.com/about/ .

Mum describes the school as somewhere you went if you failed the 11 plus but your parents would rather you didn't go to a secondary modern. It ran in a large house with a small garden. Sports provision was patchy and involved a walk to the park. She managed to scrape enough O levels at second try to get a job as a bank clerk aged 16.
An old boy described life at the school thus
“When I joined XXX we were in the annex with no heating and had to keep our coats on. One poor girl had chilblains and cried every day. We had to go to Gxxx Park for any sporting activities.
The canteen was in the basement as were the cloakrooms. The morning highlight was coming down to the canteen tuck-shop for our Penguin bar or Wagon wheel which were a lot bigger in those days.
The school song was “Vivat Academia” and the school motto was “Vestigia Nulla Retrorsum”

So the CS with its open windows, chilblains, dodgy uniform ( mums school had a light blue, dark blue and gold stripey blazer), annexes and young unqualified teachers may have been pretty much normal for the time.

I Think Joey is the wife and mother EDB fantasised about while Hilda/Bill was the head teacher she would have aspired to be.

She obviously knew fuck all about small children/pregnancy/childbirth or sex, amd why should she!

She wasn't a successful head either.

However she was a bloody good story teller and we are still enjoying her books.

So she got something right.

My dm had TB in the early 50s and was carted off to a San aged 16 for 2 years. Visitors only allowed at alternate weekends she was out away just like that.

She remembers the cold winter days outside on the balcony in her bed.

When I look at my own teen dds it makes you realise how tough people were then and what an utterly different world it is now, at least in the west.

some feckless shop brought cake eating wastrel wins the pools

Classic Nell

My Mum had her tonsils out in WWII, she was under 10, and taken in to the Hospital and left for two weeks while they did the operation and she recovered. No visitors until she was collected by her Mum. Oh and the place was bombed by the German's who mistook the Hospital for a Chemical factory.

Glad to have found this thread again. for some reason it has disappeared from my view and I've had to word search for it.

I think it was mentioned on a thread before, but there's a book called Susan at School by Jane Shaw which is a slighty tongue in cheek story written in the fifties about two cousins at an English boarding school. I suspect it is much closer to the real thing than the Chalet School, Malory Towers etc but manages to be very funny at the same time.

The Susan books are very funny-although I prefer a couple that Jane Shaw wrote about a different pair, cousins I think, Breton/Bermese adventure. Susan is a bit of a take off of ML really.

When I was 3yo in the 70s I was in hospital for 10 days and no visitors except in the afternoon. Nowadays they tend to raise eyebrows if parents don't stay even with teens, for the entire time. I'm always not totally sure if that's for the comfort of the children, or sparing staff from looking after the children.
Mind you, I can't remember the nurses doing any playing, or even looking after us anyway. They either left us to it in the playroom, or if we were too ill they left us in the cots. Although there was one boy who was causing chaos, so they put him in his cot with a lid on.
However we did have a night nurse-who got a jug of water tipped over her by an irate 2yo who wanted mummy, not a nurse who seemed to only say "sshhh", and said it once too often next to her cot. . My and the boy next to me couldn't stop laughing.
Lack of supervision caused his tonsil operation to be postponed by a day as, not being able to read the "Nil by mouth sign" on his cot, and he told me he was hungry, so after the friendship we had struck up laughing the previous night, I shared my breakfast with him. Oops.

I think Nan/Ann are a bit like Will/Bill etc. They rhyme and I think theat's the entire reason.