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!

Don't Welsh names abound in not-actually-in-Wales real-life-Herefordshire? I seem to recall this, but I have never actually been there, to the best of my knowledge. While we're on geography, can anyone explain to me whereabouts Belsornia is actually supposed to be?

Delighted by the real life awakening from a coma by the power of song. I'm sure the bell-like tones (or otherwise angelic baby voice) simply go without saying.

Aren't you supposed to wee on chilblains? Or is that only (spineless) jellyfish stings? I don't even know why I might know this...

Oh and I love the bit when Miss Annersley takes Nell off to bed. I really quite like the shared headship and wish EBD hadn't shipped Nell off to St Mildred's quite so quickly, if at all. (I wonder if she would have done so, if she'd known she was less than halfway through the final series, and if she'd known she wouldn't write another book based at the finishing branch? Same as I bet she'd have regretted marrying Madge off so quickly if she'd dreamed of the eventual length of the series.)

thebody I'm sure if there'd been another couple of books we would have found out that Rosli was in fact related to the Pfeiffens after all. I mean, her name is so similar to Rosa's and they all get on so well, so how can they not be related?

Most probably nell

These peasants are so inbred.

I think it was pants sending Nell off to St Mildreds.

Couldn't Jeannie have done it.

Or Madge... I mean, I suppose she couldn't really, but it was totally her bag - sitting around chatting about Shakespeare in a way that manages to be both sedately ladylike and also crisp and brisk and snappy; she'd be able to talk (in an acceptably sideways fashion) about both careers and marriage/motherhood, how to retain one's elusive prettiness whilst clambering up alpine trees, how to be a strong helpful woman and rescue others from burning trains before swooning delicately before your doctor-man... She could help with the tedious annual pantomime.

I do also think recruiting Grace Nalder was a clever move - I think she's reasonably convincing here, apart from the mysterious disappearance of her husband, and it's nice to see her back. Naturally one or other of the French clones would have to be there, and who could mind or care which, identical as they are? Though mind you, who would make the coffee if Jeanne was over at St M's?

The thing that is nice, though, is seeing Nell back in the staff room. I do think that's one of the losses as Armishire fades into St Briavel's - she's one of the most interesting voices in the staff room scenes in Goes To It, Lavender etc and I do miss that when she retreats quietly into co-headship. I think it's more pronounced because a lot of the younger mistresses get very samey from this point forth, though. I don't dislike any of them, but they lack the variety of earlier staff IMO.

You wee on jellyfish stings.
Chilblains were horrible, painful and itchy. You used to get told off for sitting too close to the fire as well. Liberty bodices were incredibly uncomfortable, cod liver oil was vile, lying backwards on the draining board to have your hair washed was painful, gentian violet for worms was just....
We had such fun in the fifties.

at Emily.

I think I had chilblains last winter due to walking about in the cold with no gloves on and then coming into boiling hot office. Plus I was "busy" which always seems to mess up my immune system and I suddenly get things I would normally shrug off.

Remember, Mlle Lachenais is unsuitable to be Head. Can't remember why, but it says so in Challenge. Anyone recall just why not?

By the way, in Jo to the Rescue Mlle Lepattre is renamed 'Therese Elise', so EBD must have realised she'd goofed and was trying to cover it up.

Golly. I am reading Janie of La Rochelle.
EBD's bodice ripper.
"They had known each other intimately for a long time now"...
And the landlady is called Fidelity. Seriously?
And there is a character called Marjolaine which is the name of our local organic supermarket.
WTF?

I've known a couple of Fidelitys...

I was at school with a Marjolaine...(I wonder if her mum was an EBD fan??)

Cheddar I think it just says that Jeanne would hate any responsibility of the kind, iirc. I'm sure the subtext is that she would end up getting all uppity and deciding she wasn't going to be everyone's coffee skivvy any more. (Related, does anyone else wince a bit in Gay when Madge or possibly Joey says that to ask Miss Denny to act as head would be "cruelty to animals"?)

I imagine Belsornia to be sort of around where Slovenia is. It's supposed to have a border with Austria and Italy, isn't it?

Yes - but then in Highland Twins Elisaveta says she escaped by crossing the border into Turkey. Is that Belsornia moving around conveniently, or would she have actually been escaping from Mirania at that point?

I'm sure its mentioned as a baltic state at some point. Unfortunately my geography skills are somewhere around lower II so I have no idea where that might actually be

Balkan rather than Baltic, surely?

Romania and Bulgaria were neutral to begin with in WW2, so if Belsornia was somewhere near Czechoslovakia/Yugoslavia/Hungary Elisaveta could have potentially escaped through Romania or Bulgaria into Turkey and taken a boat to England.

Could be. They start with the same letters. Are they very far away from each other?

I just want to say I luff you all very, very much, with your dissections of the spread of Welsh, forensic grasp of staffing moves and obsession with the borders and location of a tiny fictional country. This thread rules.

Now I'm off to bed. Coming, Nell?

I always thought Belsornia was one of those little Balkan states, maybe fairly close to Russia/Italy/Turkey... Don't they speak French at court like Russia did?

Have just finished Girls of the Hamlet Club and I loved it. Much better than the later Abbey books. I've just downloaded the next two - thank you, Rosalie! EJO wasn't great at titles, though, was she? We have The Abbey Girls followed by The Girls of the Abbey School. Mind you, our beloved EBD has both Jo of the CS and The CS and Jo, so I must not snark. Not to mention Jo Returns, Jo to the Rescue, Joey Goes to the Oberland and Joey and Co. in Tirol.

I luff you all too. And I heart "off to bed. Coming, Nell?"

PS. I am doing Jo to the Rescue as fast as I can despite breaks to read EJO I need to finish it so I can discuss EBD's continual use of the word 'small' to describe the children, which I have just typed about 18 times in one page; Joey and Frieda breastfeeding their children; the war careers of Bruno, Eugen, Andre and Jack; the attitude of Debby to the Quartette and vice-versa...and I'm only on Chapter 2!

Ah, this thread gives me the happies. Lols at the very precise 'somewhere fairly close to Italy/Turkey/Russia' - sounds about right to me!

Cheddar my lamb can't you just stop sleeping or something, til it's done? It sounds like it has many many talking points, rather than just being the boring book about poor sweet Phoebe and creepy Reg.

nell love your idea of Madge taking over at St Mildreds.

Madge's elusive prettiness comes to mean more to people than her sils Irish beauty.

There's am awful lot of washing childrens corners in rescue

I thought it was Monaco. Mainly because it sounded far more romantic and I was never taught to argue from cause to effect at my government school like poor common Joan Baker.

Perm and shop brought cake anyone?

Perm and shop cake party!

Partaaaay in the summer house! I'll bring the perm rollers.

I thought Luxembourg. Elisaveta will know..