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!

Also, aren't a lot of the Sale themes pretty esoteric? The one where they are characters from a book no one has ever read - Mr Arithmetic, Dame Grammar, Madam Media Studies etc. Surely everyone would just see girls selling stuff while dressed in newspapers or patchwork. And the Chinese one, Miss Annersley has to tell them the story of Willow pattern, who would recognise the Gardeners Cottage or whatever? Wouldn't it just look randomly racist?

Arf at Madam Media Studies! What gets me about the Sale is that no one ever has an idea to bless herself with, then they all think hard until someone shouts Eureka! Why does no one ever go oh, prefects' meeting tomorrow, Sale planning, hang on, I'll have a think now?

Poor Madam Media Studies Cheddar. She was probably looked down on by the other mistresses, and relegated to making nectar like coffee when Mddle told them to make their own for fucking once MFL became a compulsory subject, even for those not planning to be air hostesses.

You can get the Crown Of Success as a free kindle book....

Madam Media Studies.

One of my favourite Sale moments has to be the Willow Pattern one where some of the girls are making love in the boat. But you're right EElisaveta the Sale themes are reliably bizarre.

Am in New Mistress, up to the bit where Kathie sends home for a dress suitable for the prefects' evening - and is duly provided with one she wrecked years ago as a teenager by having a massive nose-bleed all down the front of. I can't help but picture her brawling outside a nightclub in it, or something.

How do they all tear their clothes so much? I read New Mistress recently and I can fairly safely say that I could manage leap frog, jumping over candles, inching along the floor on my elbows and dancing a jig without tearing anything. I might set myself on fire a la Thekla, but I wouldn't tear a three-cornered hole in my skirt.

Also, anyone who falls on a floor ever comes up covered in dust with black hands from grovelling about. Really? All those maids and yet inches of dust everywhere, despite the mellow gleam from hours of polishing?

Those continental trains have probably been sneaking in there, with their filthy soft coal...

I was actually trying to work out how you'd do leapfrog in long skirts. It sounds inadvisable. And, omg, I cannot help but delight in Miss Lawrence's inappropriate tight red dress. It sounds so Joan Baker!

Cheddar well, no prefects really need tho think hard because Joey will have the best idea anyway. Even when someone else has suggested it first, everyone will credit her with it, which probably most of the prefects fround rather disheartening so didn't bother thinking.

Is New Mistress the one where they have a staff evening which ends with follow my leader, where the leader ends by doing handsprings? Can you imagine?

Although thinking about it, I think it was Tom being leader, and although I can't imagine her doing handsprings-more likely vast amounts of pressups or something, so it probably wasn't.

Just got to the Jo-saving-Emerence-from-falling-over-a-cliff bit in Kenya and the staff are displaying some remarkable qualities. Miss Wilmot can lasso like Indiana Jones, and "Miss Dene literally flew down the path". Literally?

Ooooh I know, I was very dubious/tickled by Nancy's sudden lassoing skillz! And of course Rosalie's flying ought to be applauded, I'd not really noticed that.

DeWee the one where Tom is leader and finishes them off with handsprings is actually in Shocks, but the bit in New Mistress is remarkably similar. I actually don't know what handsprings are and have been meaning to google...

I think handsprings were just springing onto both hands, but not quite doing a handstand.
Frocks did tear quite a lot because fabrics were not so strong. Jumpers got caught and unravelled (the ones I knit still do.)
#emissaryfromtheplanetfifties

Well, in honour of everyone who's reading or recently read New Mistress I vote we have a rousing spot supper. I'll bring the shop-bought cake.

I'm a bit curious, though, about EBD's decision to make a teacher the central character of a book for children. Would that have been normal? I can't help but wonder if it was aimed at late teens or older who'd grown up with the Chalet School and hadn't stopped reading them.

My current read is Brenda of Beech House - I'm working my way through all the Dorothea Moores that I can find. Brenda's a princess from Nystrea (which probably shares a border with Belsornia although that's not mentioned) whose dearest wish is to go to an English boarding school as it's so dull and lonely at home with only a governess and maids, and a father who doesn't have time for her. Not to mention all the tedious rules and never being able to get untidy. At last the King relents and off she goes to Beech House. So far there's no sign that she's in imminent danger of kidnap by any mad relatives which is a tad disappointing but hey, you can't have everything. There's a mistress called Miss Ferrars!

That'll be because there's no Joey to rescue her if she gets kidnapped, of course.

V interesting question, re: the intended audience of New Mistress. It's something I've slightly wondered before about Oberland and v v v much wondered about Reunion (there is no way Reunion is really written for the 12yo girl, is there? Really? It's about a depressed middle-aged woman finally finding love, and various other adult women shouting at each other about how fat they're all getting and moaning about their achey knees!).

• For clarity, I don't think now think of Grizel at 40 as being middle-aged, but I'm fairly certain I would have thought that as a child. I think it's fairly critical to the success of New Mistress that Kathie is really about as young as it's possible for her to be, and it's pointed out repeatedly how many of the mistresses are much the same age (Sharlie, the bilious Joan Bertram) or only slightly older (Peggy, Biddy).

I loved Reunion as a kid. Our copy was in the back of the car that was nicked and burnt by delinquent neighbours one Hogmanay. We therefore romanticised it hugely as the best book ever. Btw, we did not live in some v dodgy neighbourhood in the inner city! That was the only bad thing that ever happened there and everyone was scandalised.

What did you like about Reunion as a child, Cheddar? Assuming more than just mourning its loss.

I only ever read it as an adult, and it's the only CS book I'd say I've come near to hating. I've never wanted to pick it up more than the once, whereas I read all the others about a quillion times when I was in my 20s. The scene where the breakfast guests wreak havoc (and really, would a small bunch of adult women do quite so much damage) and Joey tells poor Anna off for making a fuss makes my teeth feel funny and my toenails tingle with the sheer injustice of it. I might be misremembering its awfulness having only read it once and that was some time ago, but I'm not about to go back and check.

I think I was about Kathie's age (and reading CS books in secret) when I first read New Mistress. I was so envious!

Oh, I really like Reunion - I only read it for the first time when I got at the transcripts this summer, I think. I can't imagine I would have enjoyed it at all as a child. I really like that Grizel finally gets her happy ending (and on the whole I'm not much enamoured with 'marrying a doctor' being the best happy ending any woman can aspire to, but in Grizel's case what she absolutely wants and needs is to be someone's most beloved, so for me it's appropriate and celebrate-able here), i like how kind Joey is. And I think it manages a nice dose of nostalgia for the older, better days without spoiling them by having Joey and a bunch of uninteresting Swiss-era prefects faffing about in Tyrol.
It also has some of my favourite unintentional funnies - best of all is the poor hysterical teenage stranger in the lift when the power goes - Margot slaps her and then Hilary hands her mother(?) a couple of tranquillisers! And also the evening when some teacher or other turns up at Freudesheim and says something like "Jeanne's darning her stockings and Nell says she's not coming out in this weather".
Even the bit about the breakfast havoc - on the one hand, I did have a v similar "oh god, poor Anna, and how very easy for Jo to be all laidback about it", but on the other Jo is unusually reassuring to poor Sophy Hamel who is mortified about it all.
It is one of the very few post-Gay books I want to buy.

New Mistress was one I loved as a child and still really like now. I always loved the staff scenes etc so a whole book which was basically about them was bound to be a favourite. i especially enjoy her failure to appreciate Mary-Lou, until that irritating near-death thing.

I loved the fact that lots of favourite characters came back again - Corney, Evvy, Grizel, Maynie etc. I was also fascinated by the near-death stuff as a kid and used to lie awake at night wondering what it was like to nearly die (particularly the scene in Rivals with Jo in the lake starting to freeze to death and wondering if the babies would remember her), so any book with a near-death/dramatic cliff-edge rescue was a favourite. Hence also loving New Mistress and Gay From China for very different near-death chat.

I've been trying to remember what Maria Marani did after she finished school and it lead me to wonder if anyone's ever done a spreadsheet / follow up of all the old girls and where they ended up etc.

I also liked reunion as a child but only I think because my school library had a hard copy and it's the only hc I've ever read. I always wished id nicked it but was far too much of a goody two shoes to do that!

Cheddar which CS books are your un-favourites, due to lack of near-death experiences? Does such a beast truly exist?

Thereis Maria definitely turns up in Switzerland to be Joey's help after Beth Chester gets married. I think it's supposed to be an emotionally healing experience for her. But I can't actually think what she's supposed to have been doing before this - at home with her mother, possibly? Or with Gisela?

Maria Marani did a stint as au pair to Joey, then married a Mr McLaren who I think was a secretary at the San.

Well, um, Shocks, Changes, um...Then lots of the later Swiss ones, but that's just because they are shit despite NDEs - Prefects, Althea, Challenge, Barbara, Ruey...I didn't used to particularly like Lavender Laughs, but I'm rather nostalgically fond of it these days.

Peggy...Triplets...

Of the ones I had when I was little, I didn't like CS in the Oberland as much, or Theodora, basically because Margot gets into trouble. Theodora however I now do like - definitely one that improves with age. I think it helps that I now have the unabridged version - I love reading ones that I had as Armada, and practically knew by heart (this applies to School At, Head Girl, Exile, Highland Twins and Trials and Theodora) and then you get the uncut version and there are suddenly all these little extras that you didn't know existed.

I loved New Mistress as a 12-ish-year-old, and it made me think about teachers as real people for probably the first time. ever Even now, not having reread it for years, I remember it really clearly.

Reunion I was desperate to read for ages because it involved all the old favourites coming back, but when I finally got hold of a copy it was rather a disappointment and now I can only remember the Grizel plot.

Gosh, I see I'm in a small minority about Reunion. Maybe I should try it again? Though in my head it's Grizel and Deira who should live happily ever after, so I'm not sure that Grizel getting her doc will quite do it for me.

I'd love to see that spreadsheet if it exists, Thereis. Though thinking about it, hasn't someone written a Chalet School encyclopedia? It probably says what happened to all the old girls and staff.