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!

Arf at 'are you on glue?'

And yeah: poor Sybil. :( Overlooked and underappreciated, again.

Never entirely convinced by her particular persuasion towards altar cloths, though... Unless it was in some kind of pitiful and misplaced attempt at achieving absolution. A bit like wossname and the pagodas in Burmese Days.

Sybil is my absolute favourite child. Much nicer than spiteful Margot and far more interesting than dopey Len or suck up Peggy.

Sybil was by no means as nasty a child as Margot who didn't have to share her mothers affections and was spoilt. Also at 16 Sybil is a lovely girl whereas Margot nearly brains a friend with a bookend and bullies and teases poor Ted.

I wanted Sybil to go up design school and did the alter cloths! She should have been on the staff of Mary Quant and helped develop the mini skirt. Instead she goes neither and gets married.

Even then Jo is nasty about her as she says Josette had given her green garters and beaten her up the alter. Nasty cow!

Sod not did.

In the interests of research I tried to hump my mattress this morning. Stop giggling I know it sounds rude.

Anyway it wouldn't stay humped do no fresh Birmingham air could pass below it.

I am going to get pleuro pneumonia arnt I!

Agree, thebody, humping mattresses is something I could never understand. What on earth were they made of? Surely no self-respecting sprung mattress ever stays humped. I once lived in an unbelievably grotty bedsit (surprised I survived) and the mattress there was a horrible thin, flat thing which would stay in any position in which it was put, having lost all its spring some years earlier. Mind you, had I ever humped it, all that would have passed below was fetid dampness, so there wasn't much point.

Dare we ask what other tasks you've performed in the interests of research, thebody? Have you been investigating the effects of special milk? Turning sheets sides-to-middle? Putting your head through the back of a chair? Vaselining the iPads? Adopting stray children from train crashes?

All the above my lamb.

In addition cold baths, wedging scarecrows in springs, investigating salt mines with a lunatic in tow, drinking feather beds of coffee with thick cream, talking to the dolls in dds old dolls house in French and joining the French alpine club.

Re mattresses, I thought they probably wouldn't have been sprung? I don't know, I sleep on a futon which is way too heavy and awkward for any Chalet girl to fling around quickly each morning, but I suspect I could probably persuade it to stay humped, if I could be arsed. So I wondered if the CS mattresses would be some kind of futon type thing but with less heavy stuffing? That's probably totally wrong though...

Agreed btw, Sybil is my favourite of the MBR second generation. Apart from maybe Bride, good old sturdy Bride, she's a good egg. And I like Josette (again, early marriage a v disappointing outcome). I have to confess Len was one of my favourites as a child but I'm now not really sure why.

Crossed posts - loving your dedication thebody.

They usually sleep in haystacks, Nell, I believe. If there's no herdsman's hut available, anyway.

Interesting re the mattress. I remember ruey saying she wouldn't sleep on feathers for anything and unfortunately I still have no idea what she's banging on about.

A futon nell I think matey would object my lamb. Surely you have a doctor who could advise you or indeed any random man.

I like bride too she's a jolly sport.

My next investigation involved taking a boat and rowing out to sea. I hope to loose an oar and be forced to climb a cliff and be carried to a cottage by a naturalist, stripped and rolled in horse hair blankets.

Should be good.

Weren't mattresses either made of feathers (feather beds: not just for kaffee) or horse hair (actual boke).

Excellent work thebody my lamb. Of course I don't need to remind you to bend your knees at every step of your research, do I?

And don't let your toes turn in!

thebody I don't think there's much in my home done the Matey way, sadly...

Quick, lieblings, let's make for the island cottage so that we're on hand to sing thebody back to life after her shipwreck ordeal. I'll take my baby angel costume with me to complete the effect.

When did sprung mattresses become the norm? Or was it a continental thing? Or EBD's interpretation of a continental thing?

Horsehair or possibly kapok I think. (Just catching up, hope your little one is OK, Nell).
Beds definitely had springs before mattresses and sometimes a spring would come loose and stab you.
You could definitely hump kapok.

I did try a cold bath once....................once was more than enough!!

Ah yes bend your knees you blatherskites!

Humping kapok it is then. Mystery solved.

morning my lamb continental is special coal that makes you dirty, scrummy black cherry jam and plumeau, is that French for duvet?

Please feel free to serenade me out of my coma like state after a cold dip in the sea. Can you open your mouth and sing with a voice full of tears? Don't worry if I shudder it's just my nervous breakdown being averted.

Nell really? Take an order mark ! You must try harder. All of my spare sheets and blankets are carefully wrapped in cellophane and stored in the right cupboard. I have 6 sets of each for each bed.

Off now to chuck myself into lake lucerne as fancy a doctor and dog rescue this time. Or could do the same in a Lilly pool in Wales.

Here comes the (date rape drugging)and the engagement.

AFAIK a plumeaux is a feather duster.
Wouldn't keep you very warm in the Alps with a window open, would it?
When we bought our first one it was called a continental quilt.
Nobody in our village seems to do the hangy out the window in the morning thing that you were always supposed to do.

I shall hector you out of your coma with my authoritative Head Girl voice! Don't forget you could also just watch a child tumble down the steps of the cinema - sounds far less taxing. Or you could just supervise a child on an exeat - then you might even win an artist instead of another pill-happy doctor.

Cold baths: I have gone through numerous phases of these, c/o the Chalet School. Worst of all, I am sort of still going through one now - I started again when my boiler went kaput a while back and I think I've only had one or two since the weather turned earlier this month but once I give in and switch the heating on I may well go back to it. There is something I either perversely enjoy about it, or find inexplicably compelling - not really sure which.

Also black cherry jam, I bought some of that this weekend and felt oh so Chaletian, but now I wish I'd just got strawberry instead cos its nicer.

Properly snorted at "you could definitely hump kapok" which sounds filthy. (Thanks Emily, he's fine fine fine. As Matey would say, fortunately children are as quickly up as they are down, or something.)

One plumeau, two plumeaux obviously.

"AFAIK a plumeaux is a feather duster."

That does remind me, though, that I have an absurd attachment to sleeping with the window open, year round, and believe on some instinctive level that it is healthful to do so. It is possible that I have just decided this because I enjoy it, but it may well also have Chaletian roots.

I thought that the CS beds must have had some slight variation on the army style biscuit mattress , maybe the gels were allowed their biscuits jointed rather than 3 separate pieces.
Barbara Danter writes on a BBC WW2 oral history archive page
" We also had to barrack our beds in the morning before we left the hut for breakfast. That meant that all the blankets had to be removed from the bed and folded in a special way so that the last one wrapped around the other two, and place them in a tidy manner at the head of the bed on top of the pillow and the biscuits - the biscuits made up a very thin mattress and was in three square pieces, which moved very easily when in the bed."

www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/70/a2107270.shtml some fascinating stories on there.

Seriously a bloody feather duster? Well what's with the mild guernsey climate of beds without plumeau. Flip can't spell it either. I always was a dud.

I feel the need to hang my pillows and duvet out of the window to air but have no balcony. That's what happens when one doesn't marry a doctor.

Nell yes but I couldn't stand by and watch the artist hit my child so hard he couldn't sit down for a week( WTAF)

and re your cold baths my lamb I just had a hot one with bubble bath and thought 'Good grief I am as fast as that commen Joan baker'Solid old Nancy Wilmott didn't have bubble baths just added good old salt and scrubbed herself clean.

Next I will be using face powder and rouge.

UniS liking the cut of your jib my lamb.

UniS thanks so much for posting that it was fascinating reading.

Not least because it seemed that the staff were trying to be kind and did have the children's best interest at heart. Really interesting.

Oooh, I sleep with my window open too! Or I do when I don't have a small infant sleeping in the same bed room.

People used to sleep in feather-beds in ye olden days. I think they were like feather pillows only a mattress, iyswim. Remarks in ye olden books (Eustacia, plus a bit in What Katy Did At School) suggests that at some point feathers became considered unhygienic, which tbf they probably were in those days. Wonder what EBD would have made of fancy-schmancy goose down pillows?