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!

Was Remembrance Day a big thing in the post-WW2 period? When I was at a very traditional girls' school in the 70s we had huge commemorations for school events such as Founders Day and national ones like the Queen's Silver Jubilee and so on, but we did absolutely nothing for Remembrance Day - it just wasn't a big deal then. It seems to have become a lot more visible and mainstream in the last couple of decades - perhaps a combination of distance from the original events, plus the need to re-invent & re-assert 'Britishness' and 'British values' in an increasingly uncertain world.

I suppose I wonder whether back in the Armishire days the combination of a) the decline of the British Empire, b) war-weariness and c) the complexities (for EBD) of trying to mark Remembrance Day in a spirit of internationalism and reconciliation would have made it something just too hard to tackle in a children's book.

I have been Humping my Kapok no end since the choreography came out but I fear folk dancing may not be my forte. Partly it's the synergy with my Shaun the Naughty Sheep costume - my plumeau will keep getting caught in my wool and it makes me quite ungainly. I may have to be relegated to a supporting role in this figure .

Oh well, I can co-ordinate the arrangements for EmilyAlice's gift and presentation. What shall we go for, a dainty tea set with pretty lime green flowers on a gentian and flame background, or a framed picture of the Tiernsee?

More to the point, Elisaveta, what are the travel arrangements to get to EmilyAlice's? She lives in La Belle France, doncha know. Are we training it? I think I look a bit too much like a beatnik for comfort so I might have to go in a different compartment to the rest of you. Or are we going to break with tradition and have a fleet of motor coaches so that we don't have to risk the soft continental coal?

Let's not go for a shop-bought present at all. I think EmilyAlice would love a photo of us Humping the Kapok in our girlishly pretty costumes.

Dearest Princess, I think a sheep would add a charming feeling of a pastoral idyll to the scene (and would be helpful if we lose any kapok stuffing during the dance).
I can't possibly comment on your second paragraph, but I am compiling a tape in a continuous loop of every Nativity Play ever performed by our dear school for our very own Josephine, Lady Maynard. It will be concealed in a tiny lime-green recorder that will pin into her earphone plait.
I thought of this because I remember when they wanted to end Mrs Dale's Diary (I really am that old) someone suggested an endless recording of every episode at the end of which the entire cast would have died of boredom.
Perfect I thought.

So lovely that you are all coming. My SLOC will prepare the refreshments ( I hope you all like Calvados, it will definitely help ward of the pneumonia). You will feel very much at home because we live in the Suisse Normande. I think a parachute drop in the field would be best, there are not too many cowpats now....

Mmm calvados, yes please!

I say will we have to wear unmaidenly breeches for a parachute drop? What jolly larks.

I don't know Eating, breeches may be all very well for the young and trig. Now I am past the first flush of maiden hood (though still Kapok-Humping as lightly as a girl) I think I will stick to my well cut blue frock smoothed down with Belsornian fingers.

Hmm. I think I'll travel on ahead on one of those continental trains with the soft coal. That way I can photograph your choreographed descent into cowpat the field as part of Emily's present, and I can also pop in on Simone and slag off her new chateau on my way.

Isn't OOAO awful in Kenya? When Josette seeks her permission for Jo to become one of the Gang?

Also, there's an odd bit where someone (Josette?) refers to Tom, and Jo asks "who is Tom Gay?" The answer is some bizarre nonsense like "Tom is - Tom! I know it sounds mad, but that's all you can really say - she's sort of unique" or something. Erm, or you could just say she left the School last year and is now at Welsen?

Also is Con Maynard actually supposed to be a friend of Leila Elstob? I know she donated the dolls' house she won at the Sale in Does It Again to Leila, but I thought that was v much in the sense of 'for the poor poor dying girl of whom we have heard so much'. I can imagine Leila being enormously grateful and perhaps wanting to be friends, but I can't quite buy her semi-unconsciously calling for her in her post-op fever.

I thought somewhere it mentions that apart from Joey's girls no one really knew Leila (apart from sue of course) and I took that to mean they were at least friendly with her.

I think it's quite nice that she calls for Con, who never other than that, seems to be the triplet anyone wants first. In some ways it would have been better if we could have been shown them as friends beforehand.
I can picture a scene where the triplets come to see Leila, and Len starts tidying up/rearranging things, Margot just plays with the toys and pays no attention. And Con sits holding Leila's hand and occasionally smiling at her, while the other two talk non stop.
At the end, Leila clings slightly to Con's hand and says "You will come again, won't you?" very clearly meaning Con, and Joey says something along the lines of "Of course I'll bring the triplets to see you again when you're well enough," and kisses her all motherly and Leila wipes it off as soon as she's gone.

Aww. I can totally picture that too!

ISTR Odette Mercier being quite a friend of Con's, later on. Am I right? And if so, does she become Con's friend in the first instance or does Len 'sheepdog' her for a bit and then casually hand her over to Con when she's got her next project on the go?

I really like Con Maynard, btw. I always get the impression that EBD is least interested in her, out of the three. I can completely imagine Con growing up to be a really nice and thoroughly interesting woman, in a kind of boho writer quietly-radical very-true-to-her-convictions way. Definitely no quads, returning 'home' to the CS, jacking in everything to marry a milk-wielding doctor, etc.

Yeah, I always thought Len would grow up exactly as she did in Chalet Girls Grown up - married young, mumsy at 19 and smashing the plates out of sheer desperation by 30. Margot would have taken lots of lovers but essentially end up alone - she's not a woman's woman, that one. And Con would have been a feminist, very bright, very clever, very principled, dressing like an architect and gay. S'there. take that Joey

I've still not read CGGU (still not decided whether it would be an excellent or awful idea to do so) but I think really the Reg cheating storyline only needs a minor tweak to be perfectly plausible. It's just not really Mary-Lou, is it? Who would happily run off with poor Len's creepy husband? Phil Craven? Thekla? Leila Elstob?

Hmm. On the health-giving properties of mountains?
Robin is so speedily recovered by being high in the mountains in Exile that she can somehow walk for long days - after needing carried on the previous days - enabling Jack and Gottfried to carry Nell.
Otoh, Maisie Gomme/Scott, following her injury in the Mau Mau uprising, is unable to live in the mountains in Genius due to her weak heart and has to stay down near the lake instead.

What is this? The effects of different ailments? The role of different types of person, homeopathy-style? Or a shift in EBD's personal strident beliefs on which kinds of climate are most beneficial?

I think more likely than him running off with someone he would decide he wanted to be on his own. He's a grumpy soul, who quite likes being on his own. I can see him saying "I've tried to please everyone else the rest of my life. Now I'm going to please myself." And going off and setting up (very successful) medical centre elsewhere, in which he is totally immersed.

Len would then spend the rest of her life hoping that he might come back, but not wanting to beg. And probably hiding from Joey that he'd gone for anything other than a short time.

... Which would be surprisingly easy to manage, because in spite of Jo tactlessly and wholesale-ly greeting her at every visit with "and has Reg come back yet?", she'd always be quickly rushing on to tell Len the boring details of some other boring Old Girl's life.

Genius also contains n-word ick, btw: Cecil is likened to "a little n- baby".

And I have ordered some dustwrapper protector to make my hardbacks all nice and shiny, in spite of the fact that most of my dustwrappers are photocopies anyway.

Hello chikabiddies. Apparently my dh did know a doctor specialising in the white mans plague and I have been drugged for 10 days.

Woke up at penny rest. Just the place for a tired mother.

A random sailor doctor visited yesterday and has told me I have to give
up feeding the baby myself, No idea who he is but doctor knows best.

Who needs kapok? Is this for the sale? I jolly hope you will all do your best my lambs and play the game.

Nell my lamb I expect Maisy did not hump her mattress. She will never get better if she neglects this.

Better turn matey on to her.

Can anyone advise me - there are several transcripts which I can't open. They download then it says unable to open. Is there something I can get to make them work? I am rubbish at IT and reading on a tablet. Thank you!

EElisaveta I've got no idea, sorry. That's never happened to me.

Hahaha thebody at 'random sailor doctor'. Doctors do indeed always know best, whoever they are and however they arrive.

I am onto Problem. At moments it makes me sigh, at other moments it makes me laugh out loud, especially the bit where poor Joan is happily eating her cheap shop cake.

I like Problem. Was one of the first ones I read, which helps. Rosamund and Joan are both very realistic characters.

Does have its moment though. Tom's mum saying to rosamund that they were once very poor-so poor they had to reconsider sending Tom to expensive finishing school.
Rosamund wanting to know why ML was so important.
And her managing to be horrified by the languages "what lessons and all" twice! Once when Mrs Gay first tells her, then again upon arrival. Because Mrs Gay obviously didn't give her a prospectus or anything would she?
ANd the odd way Joan arrives. We see the letter, the teachers saying "not keen, wait until next term" at best. And then she arrives very shortly afterwards. I can't imagine what blackmail they had on Joey to get entrance that quickly. . Saying wait until next term would have been what most schools would do anyway.

Do we ever see a new girl not being shocked and horrified by the languages?

It's such a funny one, because EBD is so clearly trying to make an Important Point about snobbery being wrong. There are places which are really understanding - like when ML's all "Jack! She talks- about- boys!", and he says but she comes from people where it's normal to leave school and be a grownup with a job at fifteen, it's different. But then there's Miss Annersley saying "it's hard for you because you've found your standards are lower than ours"!
In the end, poor Joan's 'sin' is taken to be pride, isn't it? And pride is something EBD/the CS is as keen to stamp on in the 'well bred' brigade just as much.

Funny moment when it's acknowledged that Joey oughtn't to join in with the Joan problem when Nancy brings her back from wherever-it-was-she-ran-away-to and Hilda gets to deal with it on her own! Also funny when Len runs Rosamund over to find out from Joey why Mary-Lou is so special, I agree.

I like Joan. I like how, even when she is still cheerfully hating the school, she's strategic enough to think she ought to get all the language learning she can out of it, at any rate, for her employment prospects. She's canny, isn't she, and EBD clearly explicitly recognises that and I think sees it as a good thing just as much as one borne of circumstances.

There is a lot of bonkers 'advice-seeking', though. When the heads go to consult the staff-room about accepting Joan and the agreed suggestion is 'write and ask for more information' - srsly?

Oh and the second half of the term seems to suddenly whizz past between chapters? One minute it's half term, the next thing it's the winding-up of the term and we're reflecting on how much Joan's progressed? Couldn't she at least have stuck in a dommy sci ingredient mix-up or something?

I also really don't get Simone requesting a day's holiday to commemorate the birth of her third-born. Partly it's just mad, partly it's really not Simone - is it?

nell I think Joan wolfsdown the shop brought cake but what can one expect from a gel whose mother was a shop girl.

I agree I really liked Joan too mainly because she swears at MaryLou and that's like telling the queen to piss off.

Love the advice asking. It's usually any random bloke like Herr Braun, commander Christie, any father and every doctor.

Of course there's always they private line to freudeshime too of course. Joey always answers with a chuckle and what's up now Hilda? A new girl what's wrong with her?

Ah but does Joey ever have a day's holiday for any of hers. I can imagine Joey thinking "next time I'll ask for a week, then the girls will love me more."

Have managed to open the transcripts and now enjoying Does It Again. I note that the Sixth will be performing a Rapper dance at the Sale - that should be interesting. They will of course be dressed as Chinese people to do this.