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!

There was a Passion Play in 1934 as well as 1930, although I don't think that helps with dating at all!!! It was 300 years after the first one or something like that and Hitler visited it.
I have a scrapbook/picture album from that play that I found in a second-hand shop once. It is pictures of the actors and the setting and every time I reach those scenes in the CS I look to help me imagine what they would have seen.

Obligatory I don't mean at all to denigrate what you're doing (sounds a phenomenal and fascinating task), but do you know that exactly such a thing exists online? Can't link now as am on phone but will do it tonight. Be interesting to see whether your version completely agrees with the existing one, given the remarkably problematic source material!

I can't imagine EBD gave much thought to the exact 'setting' of her series in that way. I see it as being 27 years (9 years pre-trips, 18 years with trips) of internal chronology which don't wholly correspond to the actual years they're set in. So, whilst Eustacia up to New House covers each term without skipping any and the characters age according to that, I don't think that means these books are not roughly 'set' in their year of publication. Until/except WW2, I'd imagine v few social changes force such precise dating.

Wrt the Passion Play - on the one hand obviously the 1934 Play fits the 'date back and forth from 1939' system well. But equally the book was published in 1931, so quite conceivably written in 1930...

More to wonder about class, but later. I think I have read that EBD's attempts to portray upper middle class life of her time often fall short, which makes a lot of sense, but I don't personally have the knowledge to critique this...

Going back to the sisters by marriage thing, I just noticed Gwensi Howell and Ernest Howell described as step brother/sister and they were definitely half brother/sister so I thing EBD must think be confused as to meaning.

Nell, I meant my consumption of juniper tisane...

Emily, what's the back story of Dorothy Sayers that is so sad?

Have we done a CS AIBU bit before? For example, "AIBU to get my children to call me Mamma and DH Papa? I don't like Mummy and Daddy and I want to be different." Just imagine the flaming - bet Jo would be accused of being an attention-seeking chav, plus the offence taken by those who are called Mummy and Daddy...and that's before she brings up naming all three of her triplet daughters Mary.

Dorothy L Sayers had an illegitimate son (long time since I read the biography so can't remember the details but seem to remember the father wasn't much good). He was brought up by relatives and passed off as her nephew; the fact that he was her son was only revealed after her death. She then married someone else who suffered a lot of ill-health. All very sad.

I never knew that about DLS. I have only just discovered Lord Peter..thanks to Nicola Marlow!

I think the Peter Wimsey books, Nancy Mitford's novels, Elizabeth Jane Howard's Cazalet saga and The Shell Seekers are my adult comfort books that I can read over and over again.
In children's books they are the Chalet School, the Swallows and Amazons series (I think We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea is a particularly brilliant book), Anne of Green Gables and Ballet Shoes.

I only discovered Lord Peter Wimsey 18 months ago and I have already re-read them all at least 3 times. I like Nancy Mitford too, so I shall look into the others you mention, Emily! That's v sad about DLS.

I love the Cazelet books....really must find them and re read them.

That is v sad about DLS. :(

CS AIBU contributions -

"I told DD's headmistress that she wouldn't be having a year at the finishing school after all due to a sudden change of plans, and she passed this information on to my DD in front of all her friends and then refused to discuss it with her. AIBU to complain about this lack of discretion?"
Cue uproar of other parents saying 'you think that's bad? Try having your private correspondence with the head shared randomly with the next door neighbour'.

"AIBU to throw a bookend at someone reminding me of dormy rules?"

"AIBU to bill my sister for putting on 10lbs and breaking my ceiling?" - upon further drip-feeding, it transpires the OP has a magical expandy house, approx 71 assorted children and wards, and a leaping great St Bernard.

I love the Shell Seekers in times of need or stress. The back cover of my copy has literally fallen apart, must keep my eyes out for a replacement.

I am amusing myself at the moment by imagining Joey on the Apprentice...

Much as I love CS, my go to children's comfort book is definitely Ballet Shoes. With adult books it's either a Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy or the Mountjoy series by Elizabeth Pewsey/Aston.

Am I the only person on this thread who has yet to discover DLS? Since you luvvly ladies clearly have wonderful taste in literature, I'm obv missing out. Could someone give me a steer on which of hers to read first, and I'll give it a try.

Dating the CS is interesting. When I first read the Swiss books it never occurred to me that they were written/set in the 60s. I remember it coming as a shock in Althea (? or Adrienne?) where they meet up with beatniks on the train because it simply hadn't occurred to me that the CS existed in a post-50s world. To be fair, though, I think if I were to have a go at writing a school story now, it would be hopelessly dated. In terms of plot, characters, language etc it would likely read as a strange mixture of 70s/early 80s (my school days) and 90s/early 2000s (DDs' school days). I might manage the odd 2014 cultural reference, but I have no real idea about how schools might have moved on since I was last in one. How much contact with schools and schoolgirls did EBD actually have after the Margaret Roper closed? Because if she didn't have much, it's hard to see where she'd have got any new material from, and easy to see why she more and more needed to recycle her old stories and experiences.

Lonny, I prefer to think of Joey in lime green sequins on Strictly.

Oh my. You'd pity the dancer who got paired with her, wouldn't you?

Good point about diminishing contact with schools and schoolgirls (and again, perfectly matches my own subjective dating of the series nosedive at ThreeGo...). Although, wasn't EBD unusual among the main school story writers for having been a teacher at all? (ISTR one of Blyton's daughters saying that her school stories were based much more on her own school experiences, rather than those of her daughters who were actually the right generation for it.) I loved the staff room scenes as a child and I love them even more now, and I can't help thinking that all the best ones appear during the time she was running the MRS - though I am still only in St Briavel's ATM so may yet revise this judgment as I plough on.

I think there's a circular relationship between her actual weakened connection with real-life schools, and the relocation of the CS to the Platz, too - the Platz is kind of weirdly untouched by the outside world, IMO. Her space travel happens at exactly the right time, I think - but again, like the beatniks reference, this is a somewhat jarring/laughable moment. Also the thing where Kathie Ferrars rolls across the motorboats like James Bond - bless her, it's the 'contemporary' features that let her down most towards the end. Lost my thread a bit - circular relationship: EBD's possible dissatisfaction with the modern world, an very-fictional enclave setting where having any kind of connection to the modern (British) world is kind of challenging...

I was at boarding school in the 1980s and a lot of the CS later books read quite true to me. In the Junior house (8-12 year olds so years 4-7 in current terms) we had to have our bed making checked, had counterpanes that had to be up and over in the day, folded down at night. Drawers and rooms were checked for tidiness..although we were not removed from lessons to sort them out.

Only dresses and skirts to be worn except Sat/Sun afternoon, bath rota..and at least at the CS they had separate bath rooms it seems...our bath cubicles had two baths in! However we were allowed to have them hot. At the weekend we mainly went for walks, made up plays etc...It certainly was not like the 1980s out in the real world!!! (or so my non biarding school friends tell me!!)

No no no, Joey and her golden voice would have been on The X Factor. In fact, she would have won the first X Factor and then returned as a judge by popular demand, where she could make sweeping statements about contestants' weight, console them for being voted out by making sympathetic speeches/mothering them, and show them how to do it by singing The Red Sarafan or Parry's Jerusalem at the drop of a hat.

Yes Cheddar. Exactly that. Brilliant. with the addition of a Simon Cowell jaw drop - after all, who goes to an audition wearing a lime green twin set - as her golden chorister tones first hit his ears.

Morning Mornington
My favourite DLS Peter Wimsey books are Clouds of Witness, Strong Poison, Murder Must Advertise, The Nine Tailors (probably my absolute favourite) and Gaudy Night.
Dinna be tempted by The Five Red Herrings. The wee Scots accents will drive ye insane.
There are a couple of great telly versions, Ian Carmichael and then Edward Petherbridge and Harriet Walter for the later ones. I have both boxed sets and they are comfort viewing too.

Thanks, EmilyAlice. Such is my trust in you that I've ordered The Nine Tailors from the evil tax-dodgers. Do they make a profit if you get a second-hand book for 1p through their site? Feeling bad about it already.

Off to work now, happily chuckling at the thought of Joey as a judge on X Factor. What price her special sandwiches and fruit drink on the Great British Bake-Off?

The Nine Tailors is my favourite too! It's the one I read first thanks to N. MArlow reading it in one of the AF books. We have the telly versions too and enjoy them although the Ian Carmichael ones are clearly made some time ago! At first we found that annoying but soon got so engrossed we did not notice!!!

Oh my, Joey on the Bake-off! Now that would be entertaining!! Especially if Anna was a contestant too..and Karen..who would win????

Yes the Ian Carmichael ones do look old and he is very unconvincing as the young Wimsey at the beginning but excellent later on. I like Edward Petherbridge too though.
I just have to live with Amazon downloads here in France when I want a new book... Just succumbed to the latest Laurie Graham about one of Queen Victoria's granddaughters. Very funny, as usual.
I think if the CS were all on Bake-off, then Paul Hollywood would say with a sneer, "I think you have overdone the cream to be honest"...

I prefer Edward Petherbridge. He is more the Wimsey I imagine when I read, although neither are exactly what I imagine.

I wonder what Paul Hollywood would make of all those fancy bread twists they eat so often. They must be experts at making those!!!

Loving Joey on the X factor.

Aibu my dd has just started at a new boarding school.

On Monday she fell over the side of a cliff, on Tuesday she was buried in a snowdrift, on Wednesday she was carried to safety by a young doctor from a flash flood, on Thursday she went to tea with a tall dark lady who Insisted on singing to her and then fell into a box and on Friday she got stuck in a tree.

Now I have a letter from the tall dark lady who says dd is very well and has slept the clock round as her dh drugged her milky drink and she's now engaged to the nice young doctor who rescued her.

A tad concerned as she's just 15.

Wwyd? Aibu to go and see the head whose grey eyes never yet needed glasses? Or the manly one with the white hair?