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!

I'm reading Lavender at the moment and Mollie McManus changes forms in the space of 5 paragraphs!

I'm reading New Mistress and Biddy starts off as form mistress to something like Upper IV, but a few chapters later she has Verity Carey and Nina Rutherford in her form, who are both contemporaries of Mary-Lou, who is currently a prefect and in Lower VI.

I'm finding the fanfares for the arrival if Nancy Wilmott a bit strange too. I may have missed out on some of the later Tirol books, but I'm not quite sure who she is! I remember a Hilda Wilmott who was a Saint and dreamy and artistic, and I think Polly Heriot's guardians were Wilmotts too - was Nancy related to neither of them?

She is indeed a Saint, and I'm not sure whether Hilda Wilmot is an EBDismed Nancy or a sibling or just a coincidence - like poor old "Daphne Russell - no relation". So she really only appears in New. She is a prefect during the whatever-it-is thingy that necessitates Nell sharing Con's room (you'll notice I recall all the most important details...) and seems much the same good egg that she later is as a mistress, though lazy and maths-hating.
That she might grow from being maths-hating to inspirational maths teacher seems kind of plausible to me - especially given the contrast made between her and Miss Slater, and how Nancy can make anyone understand it all - but is a bit undermined by the fact that EBD seems to forget how much time has elapsed since she left school and declares she is 29 in Challenge, when in fact she's two years younger than Jo so much be 36/37!

Have to admit I'm finding Hilary following the School to Switzerland kind of odd, too. But I like to imagine that she and Biddy - once Biddy moves in with her - host some excellent and thoroughly debauched parties for those who decline their kind invitations to bloody Freudesheim radio parties, which makes it a more reasonable state of affairs.

Emily - "orangey"? Surely you mean "flame"?!

No sadly not flame, more dirty orange. In the memories of the girls who were at my school in the twenties, I have found references to tussore dresses and "fold" mountains, just like the CS.
Am re-reading Carola and chuckling over the "is she really fifteen, my wife and I had imagined someone much younger bit (in front of log-burner and OH has just brought me a glass of Prosecco).

Nell loving the picture of biddy and Hilary holding far more interesting parties then ear phones joeys radio ones.

Emily it would take years of prosecco and councelling to sort out the abandonment issues of poor old carola. Her mother couldn't even be arsed to fly over with her dh to see her. Ditto Melanie Lucas etc.

I am reading island and am so bloody irritate,
Annis is returned traumatised,after a near death experience, and needs rest and quiet and Hilda to break it to her gently that her father is still alive.

But no Joey rushed up asking if anyone had told her yet, bouncing around and matron even says they haven't told Annis yet as they know Joey wants to.

No tact, no sensible gentleness just a middle aged woman incapable of acting like an adult and making it all about her!

Fat podge of a girl oh dear.

Worse that poor Winnie being a house end

Seeing this in active reminded me that I was watching Little Mermaid with DD for the first time at the weekend and, when Ariel rescues the chap who is drowning & gets him to shore, she sings to him and then this massive dog bounds up, licks him and the chap is fine again. Very Joey Maynard!

if Ariel was in lime green with earphones it would be spooky!

DeWee, where is your DD putting the emphasis in 'Mamma'? If it's on the first syllable then it's babyish. If on the second syllable it's Victorian enough for Maynard standards. You'll have to play along by doing your hair in earphones and breaking out the lime green twin sets.

I just asked dh if one of my greatest assets is my golden voice.

He snorted.

That's what comes of not marrying a doctor!

His lamentable failure to appreciate your golden choirboy tones and qualify as a doctor entitles you, in return thebody, to refuse to darn his socks or bear him 11 children. That'll larn him!

Give him a second chance - ask him if your best feature is your eyes-which-have-never-yet-needed-glasses?

(Also, what is with the failure to marry a doctor? I mean, how does he manage to sedate you when you get overexcited?)

Damm, I married the wrong kind of doctor. Should have hunted for an MD, rather than settle for a PhD. He never brings me matrons special hot milk, just talks maths at me till I nod off ( or I say" yes dear, that’s nice") .

On the plus side, I've not been talked into having a gazillion and one children in teh house. but maybe being non conformist Methodist, Baptist, Anglican mash up rather than catholic converts also helps on that front.

Probably you can get a coadjutor to provide the drugged milk? Or otherwise I suppose you could employ one of the kidnappers from Redheads. Actual medical qualifications surely irrelevant.

Oh dear, UniS, that just won't do! A PhD is not a proper doctor, especially if he cannot provide special milk (I know have a slightly disconcerting imagine of a lactating doctor, but you didn't need to know that).

I discovered yesterday that I've been reading too much CS, when a lecturer asked if we knew what "passing" meant, in the context of the lecture he was giving on Critical Race Theory, and my first instinct was the Chaletian lesson "parsing".

Oh, and I bet no one will be able to guess what I'm studying from that!

Now I'm off to persuade DB1 he wants to come with me when I pick DB2 and 3 up from their party because it's dark and I'm a wuss . Coming, Nell?

See also: "you'll pass with a shove"?

UniS I've one of those wrong kinds of Doctors too. He has been known to bring me hot chocolate when I've nagged enough

morning she says "mam-ma", but as I prefer it to "mam-mah" I won't be suggesting that.

Your right DeWee, PhD = able to make hot choc.

Ah, so is it the lack of PhD that means my non doctor husband can't make hot chocolate? (Or indeed special milk, coffee or anything helpful...)

Probably.

Ds2 (18m) calls me mammah, but seems to be transitioning to mummy. I shall put away that twin set and stop growing my hair.

In one of the Ruey books there's a whole bit about how the boys have stopped using Mamma and Papa. I think Steven says Pa at one point and Joey shudders. She's so delicate and sensitive...

I have a vivid memory of trying to introduce Mums to my own mother after reading it in a school story. My mother --->

Also as a child I never realised how much breastfeeding there is in them! It's rarely mentioned explicitly but it's there a lot.