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.

The 'Robin worries herself into life threatening illness because Joey stays overnight up a mountain' thing is also at odds with her learning not to fret as part of that Continental instant obedience training. When her dear Papa dies as a result of being bumped off by the double agent Dr Bersetti in a cliff top international espionage incident a climbing accident she gets over it remarkably quickly.

Biddy is allowed to mourn her mum and step-dad wasn't she? Or was her misery meant to be because she was being sent to an orphanage?

I bet if I fell off a cliff or into a pool it would he my luck to be rescued by a fat middle aged bloke with bad breath.

I'm not sure about Biddy being allowed to mourn her mum and step-dad. I think her distress is more about being alone in the world - and once she's been adopted by the CS she has no reason to mourn any more. At least, I don't think we ever see it, but I could be wrong.

I never really got the thing about Robin fretting herself into TB because Joey was stuck on the mountain. As a kid reading the Armada versions out of order, I read Jo Of long before Eustacia and it was all a bit bemusing. I thought it would all come clear when I read Eustacia but to be honest, it didn't make a whole lot more sense!

One of my pet hates, and I think it happens more in the Swiss books, is girls referring to staff members as 'poppets'. As in, 'Oooh, buns, Karen is a complete poppet' and (of Kathy) 'We've got a poppet of a form mistress'. It seems not just odd but also rather patronising. When my DDs were that age, the best thing they had to say about any teacher was 'she's OK I suppose'.

Fruit totally agree about that child and Nells comment. Not sure any child could be 'quite happy' 3 months after loosing her parents.

I think it's the stuff upper lip thing and the horror of collapsing or breaking down. To be fair that's not surprising as anxiety/depression was considered a weakness in the 30s. I used to work in a psychiatric unit and some of the old ladies there had been out in there with post natal depression and never left. Dreadfully sad.

It's the idea of CS girls being string helpful women and not spineless jellyfish

It's a generational thing. My dd has councelling as she has PTSD and my parents are very anti as they could 'get inside her head'

It's of it's time I suppose.

Reading Carola and bloody Biddys will ye and at all at all is driving me nuts!!

She's been at a posh school for years. She's been to oxford uni.

She hasn't set foot in Ireland for years do why the flying fuck would she still talk like that.

It's the inconsistency about strong helpful women and not spineless jellyfish that troubles me. There's an exemption for Jo (frequently) and Robin (occasionally) on the grounds that they're sensitive and highly-strung, therefore the usual stiff upper lip rules don't apply. We've rehearsed on this thread many instances where Jo either collapses or has to be sedated or at least worried about and cossetted to prevent collapse. But that's allowed because she's supposedly not being a spineless jellyfish, it's her artistic temperament. Similarly, Robin gets to fret herself into TB over the worry about her beloved Jo. Plus other occasional exemptions - thinking of all the prefects having to be ferried home by private bus because they're far too upset about Len's shoplifting episode to be able to travel home by public transport.

I can't remember whether I've said this before or just thought about it, but I think EBD has very clearly delineated between 'sensitive people' who are allowed to be complete jellyfish and even ought to be cherished in their spinelessness, and robust people who just have to get on with it. I think the only people who don't fall completely clearly into one camp or the other are Madge and Hilda. Temperament is everything.

I think EBD is quite inconsistent on the permissible effects of grief. She definitely believes strongly in things being done 'properly' to allow grieving to be dealt with efficiently (thinking about Hilda's comment to Prince Balbini that he ought to tell the twins their mother is dying, and how awful it had been for her that nobody had told her, and all the various bits of annoying Jo-wisdom dispensed to the newly bereaved over the years). There is a bit in Lintons about how much harder it would be for Gillian and Joyce if their mother died, as compared to Jo, who had never known her mother - but then there's scarcely any sympathy at all shown to Eustacia over her parents' death. In the same bloody book as Eustacia, the Mensch Grossmutter's death is dealt with very sensitively. There are a few comments about death being almost 'for the best' (is it in Genius ? And, in a way, Jacynth's aunty who is 'glad to go') which rather jar for me, but I suppose if you fully believe in the "falling asleep with god" thing perhaps that can feel true and reassuring. Again the notion that some people are sensitive and some are pragmatic and never the twain shall meet comes in here - case in point, Jo's licence to be all jellyfish-like when Jack is missing, believed dead. Is all this confusion/hypocrisy entirely of her time, too?

I have had a very Chaletian day. I have no hot water. Cold bath for me, oh how my skin is glowing. Much carrying of hot kettles and pans to heat a bath for the bubchen, skilfully avoiding tipping it all over him. And I sat up and watched the thunderstorms in the night, though managed to avoid sleepwalking, administering brandy, having hysterics, or having to dig a trench because a firebolt landed next door.

I'd forgotten about the firebolt!

I hate the overuse of poppet as well. Len says it all the bloody time, and so does Margot. I think Miss Annersley should have banned that along with marvellous and they could have resorted to the thesaurus to find new adjectives.

As a teacher, I really wouldn't mind be called a poppet - I think I like the escapism of pupils who actually want to work/can do the work/like teachers because it bears no resemblance to teaching in a state school in a deprived area!

So what are the plans for Saturday night this week? Who's organising it? Are the staff doing Mrs Jarley's Waxworks? Perhaps lower Vth are doing tableaux? Are we having to dress up in crepe paper or sheets and pillowcases? Or is it once more progressive games round the hall? Or do Vintage or DeWee have something more exciting planned?

Oh gosh well as I know you are all jolly sports I have rifled your drawers and now possess a pair of freshly laundered underthings for you to sort through and find your own.

There's also lighted candies for us all to jump over so don't wear frilly petticoats.

Karen the poppet is doing a special supper of chicken salad, sausage rolls, creams and jellies.

vintage my lamb there was something very 'un chalet school girl like' your bottom drawer. DeWee had similar. Are they some type of touch for our next expedition?

And I have prepared a large tub for apple-bobbing, in case some uppity Prussian ignores the rule about petticoats.

Oh gawd, not again. Remind me, where is it we sneak off to in this house for gin and shop-bought cakes?

Nell, I hope your hot water is working again. Or alternatively that you and the Bubchen have caught a cold and a handsome doctor has had to come and administer special milk to keep you from fretting.

I managed to rifle some brandy when Matey left the medicine cupboard open (I bribed one of the Juniors to fall over while she was tidying it). Anyone wanting to share, please bring some cake from the corner shop - preferably French Fancies, so long as I can have the pink ones!

mornington thanks but sadly still no hot water or doctors to the rescue here. I am actually still enjoying the novelty of cold baths but not so much the pots and pans routine - I keep looking round for Rosa to do it but she seems to have popped out to the poultry yard again. If only I had a helpful 9yo...

Tinuviel jolly good show. I'm afraid I don't have any shop bought cake but I do have a copy of Forever Amber?

That sounds good, Nell. Maybe someone else can bring some French Fancies.

It's ok, Mrs Maynard has been to Interlarken and sent us some gorgeous honey and nuts affair.

Topping.

Oh, Mrs Maynard is such a poppet.

Gruss Gott! You just popped up in active my lambs. Sending you a quick wave from Australia, where the inter web is extortionate. Considering a name change to Margot or Emerence in honour of the trip!

Sounds smashing tophole, Lonny! But remember, the far-flung reaches of Empire can be dangerous. Watch out for young firebugs, and don't take your DC to North Queensland - they might not survive. Better still, nip back to Europe and leave them with an obliging auntie for a year or 10.

I'm reading Chudleigh Hold because someone said it was the place to go for the back story about the Culvers and the Lamberts. No sign of them so far. GGBP only seem to have reprinted the first in the series, so perhaps they come later. It's a thrilling yarn on its own, though, even if the plotlines are a tad obvious.

And be careful your DCs don't marry and stay in Australia for good, Lonny!

mornington I think Gill Culver's character in Chudleigh Hold has a different name, though don't recall what it is. Apols if you knew this and she still hasn't turned up - I haven't read it and have only the vaguest idea of it. Will be interested to know whether you'd recommend.

we are in Queensland (though not the far north, love that descriptor) and so far we have all survived.

And I don't want to come back. DS can do what he likes, I'm marrying a surfer.... (If you are out and about in look out points etc at certain times of the day you will get very Joan Baker over surf boys changing in the boots of their cars. Wibble.)

Six foot of manhood like Roger Richardson, Lonny?

Six foot of manhood like Roger Richardson, Lonny?