Autumn Term at the Chalet School

[Vintagejazz]

Just starting a new thread here as I can't spot a new one.

So my lambs feel free to keep spreading the hanes, but watch the slang!

And Gottfried would wear Lederhosen - I'll leave it to you to decide if that's a good thing or a bad!

To be honest I got halfway through Tom and just stopped reading it, and I've never done that with a Chalet book before. It just feels a bit off, and the letter writing was very clumsily done.

It kind of feels like neither one thing nor the other - it's not a proper Armishire book despite the presence of Daisy, Beth and Gwensi, neither is it part of the next phase where Mary Lou and her Gang moved centre stage.

Oooh yes Nell, marry Jem, become Lady Nell, go to Canada and get all brisk and snappy, copious amounts of Penny Rest. Twould be topping!

Yes agree there. Nell my lamb you are in great danger of turning into a sweet woman. Please go to Canada, learn new slang, put on 10 pounds and be crisp and snappy.

Lederhosen and playing his violin!

Hold me back ladies.

Enjoying shocks at the moment and enjoying the younger mistresses being very jolly hockey sticks and addressing each other as Dene, Burnett and Everett.

Doesn't Gottfried suggest to Jack in Exile that Joey is "a poor subject for drugs"? I may be confusing this with another occasion/patient but I'm sure he advises Jack against sedating someone, at some point, and I took this as an implicit stance against ad hoc sedation of wives. Lederhosen or not!

On the one hand, brisk and snappy Lady Nell sounds an excellent plan. On the other, if I gain ten pounds I'll only make my sister's ceiling fall down. Plus thebody has just reminded me that I have a small crush on Evvy - I'll marry her instead, please. As long as she'll send me to Penny Rest on occasion.

If your sister ever puts on 10 pounds make sure you point it out so her holiday is ruined. Also point out her scarecrow lines.

Evvy aye!

Poor Madge. :(

Yeah, Evvy is kind of self-assured and enthusiastic and gruff and tall and strong and also practical (she boards up a broken window at some point) - there is a nice description of her in either Exile or Goes To It, sat on a wheelbarrow chatting to the girls about their plans for their bit of garden, that caught my interest a bit. Plus she's wearing corduroy breeches and leather leggings, which sounds nearly as exciting as lederhosen.

Yes I agree she's young and keen and I imagine would be a great teacher now days.

It's a Shame actually that gardening isn't a taught subject in state schools now. Grow your own veg etc

The plans for the garden are in exile I think as they need to dig for victory.

She's like a young Bill I think

This week, I have acquired either HB or GGB of Rivals, Exploits, Jo Returns, Tom and A Chalet School Headmistress. I must be stopped, for the good of my bank balance, but how very exciting! (Esp Headmistress, which I got at least a tenner cheaper than I've seen it anywhere else, and which obv I haven't read before. Tom I mostly also only got because it was very substantially cheaper than I've seen it for before.)

The gardening scenes were one of my favourite parts of Goes To It. They really caught the atmosphere of the time and you could so easily picture the girls lolling against the rollers and piling onto the garden benches chatting away in the peaceful countryside while the war was going on elsewhere.
I also loved the scene where Biddy and her friends chanced wearing lipstick and headscarves for their gardening lesson. It was so believable and teenagerish.

Yes, I think she is in some ways - and of course Bill remains my one true love of the CS! She also reminds me of Con Stewart at times - when Betty and Elizabeth (?) bury the tools and she immediately goes off and blames the Fifth before she knows what's happened - though she immediately apologises when she realises she was wrong, unlike Con iirc.

I mean to do some fun/educational/culinary gardening with my toddler next year, if I can get my act together in time. We don't actually have a garden but we have two windowsills and a stairwell. Should be able to manage some strawberries and herbs, and maybe some potatoes too? I've read something about growing potatoes in a sack before, I'm sure. Naturally once he is old enough he must go to a proper school to mix with boys and grow into a man and become either a doctor or a priest. And I'll send him to the Emburys every holiday.

I would love to do some research on female masculinity in girls' school stories - perhaps in girls' own more generally. It is so completely distinct from my own discipline though, so I suppose I'd have to start at the bottom (lit? Could I do it from a gender studies/sociology angle, which moves it a very little closer to my actual educational background?) which is rather off-putting... Also it feels like cheating to 'study' something that feels so self-indulgent!

Oh I loved Biddy and co in lipstick and headscarves too. So easy to picture.

I wonder if EBD's school was doing a big thing of gardening at the time? Those bits are so evocative, in a way v similar to her descriptions of the Tirolean scenery which obviously was v clearly her describing what she'd seen and been really moved by.

Oh, and I really like that Evvy is an actual proper gardener, too, and not just yet another recent Oxford grad, probable Old Girl (obviously I really like some of these characters too, but I think her different professional experience is interesting). Also I like that she seems to be the school's resident farmer too, helping out with their own herd of cows etc. But I don't entirely understand how she comes to follow the school to St Briavel's...

I am actually going to wait until some cold November afternoon, and pull the curtains and turn on the lights and re-read Goes To It.

I am also going to treat myself to a couple of new (second hand) books. I just need to decide which ones.

Enough lolling around in the garden chattering, girls. Please get back into your form rooms where you were meant to be fifteen minutes ago.

And do try and remember that it's now almost mid October. Not one of you is wearing a muffler. I really don't want any 'almost fatal' colds and coughs this term.

And Gottfried would wear Lederhosen - I'll leave it to you to decide if that's a good thing or a bad! Surely that depends on his legs.

What I really hate in letter writing in books is when you get half a page of type, saying not an awful lot, and then the reader/writer "gives a big sigh and turns the fourth page over". It clearly is nothing like four pages. Don't know why that irritates me so much though.

Well I have stopped pirouetting and spent the day processing the last crops from the garden. There is a good warming autumn soup for your souper (can't remember the German word, sorry). There are some cattle in the field next door, but they are a bit overgrown for nice slices of veal I think.
Then you can have stewed quinces, which we have in abundance (and of which I am heartily sick).
Have just re-read In Exile and wanting to re-read my lost on the boat copy of At War, but the nice monsieur from Brittany Ferries rang to say they haven't found it (nous n'avons pas trouvé votre livre Le Chalet School at War).

Emily Goes To It is in the transcripts. Not as nice as a proper book I read but maybe better than nothing?

I don't like in the letters when bits of a letter deemed irrelevant are skipped over. I think it's just lazy - I want to read the whole of Hilda's letter to Nell, please, not just the bit that says "get Matey to deal with Tom".

Gottfried must have excellent legs: he runs around on ice skates and carries teenage girls and grown women for days on end out of Austria into Switzerland, how can he not have excellent legs?

MissHA it's ok if someone catches a cold because Joey and the Robin will burst into song...

Chalet School At War is the same as Goes To It, isn't it? Because if so, it's available quite cheaply second hand.

MissHA should we dig out our thermal undies yet? There was a slight breeze when I went outside just now to give the games mistress a message from Miss Dene.

I had the list from the Library Pree, but I didn't think Goes To It was there? I have never quite known where the other transcripts were. Are they hidden in a cave in the Oberland? Could someone pm me the secret code?

Vintage I bought a second-hand copy from Abe, collected it when I was in England and then left it on the boat.....

In the meantime I am reading Joey Goes to the Oberland. She really is pathetic isn't she? Dick and Jem drive them to Folkestone, she manages to look after a few of the children for an hour or so on the boat, is rescued by Evvy and Mr Lannis at Boulogne, sleeps for the whole of the train journey to Paris, is rescued by kind Simone and André and falls asleep again, only rousing herself long enough to insult Simone about her home and her family. Then they have to put her on the next train. And she forgets the macs.

She is a spineless jellyfish. Is Joey Goes the one where two of the boys get covered in black shoe polish, or something? I know I should try to be understanding of its time and stuff, but I found that bit v uncomfortable reading...

Emily I have PMed you my lamb.

Thank you. Yes it is that one and it starts where she needs bed rest after falling in a box. She also makes a catty remark to Simone about how much they spent on Daisy's wedding present. Very vulgar and the height of ill-manners.
Why wouldn't all their stuff have gone in advance with carriers anyway?
My MiL took OH aged 1 and his sister, from London to Iraq by train, boat and coach across the desert just after the war. She didn't have a faithful Anna in tow either.

Ah, yes. The "you fell in a box! Quick, get the tranquillisers!" is comedy gold but on the whole I didn't enjoy much of that one. Is it also the one where Madge misses Daisy's wedding, presumably so as not to upstage Joey?

I bet your MIL didn't get a fortnight at Penny Rest afterwards either.