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've been wondering about all the nazi escapees actually, there seem to be a lot of them!

I think the descriptions of the running of the households are awry because EBD wasn't posh enough to get it right. So we suddenly get Madge or Joey doing stuff that they would never have done normally. The washing would have gone to the laundry (even we did this until the colossal of excitement of the arrival of the twin-tub; my Mother's Friday evenings were never the same again). I am sure there would have been a char or two to do the rough work (normally a cheery Cockney in literature of course).
BTW has anyone read "Mrs Woolf and the Servants"? Fascinating insight into how patronising Virginia was to them, even though she didn't know one end of a dishcloth from another.

Well they headed off via Achenkirch. (Which is not the best direction if you want to avoid Germany, but maybe it was safer as they wouldn't be expected to go that way?)

I found a route that takes 44 hrs walking (admittedly most of it next to the Autobahn, but I don't think Google knows the mountain paths).

How unhelpful of google. What if you were looking for a goatherd hut to shelter in? I bet it can't do that, either. (Can I just say that I have nothing to contribute to the mapping conversation but I completely love that its being had? So cool.)

Snorted at twintub excitements on a Fri night, and also thebody's efforts to send the SLOC back to medical school. The nature of Jo's health surely doesn't matter, though, cos the prescription remains the same.

'Mrs Woolf and the Servants' does sound v interesting...

Oooh. In Coming of Age, Joey says "don't forget I have twenty rooms of sorts to sleep people" - this isn't actually really shocking, considering the way there's always space to pack another waif or stray in, but still, it's pretty bloody stark, isn't it? And poor Anna to do everything apart from the childcare? She must rue the day she let that Welsh bloke walk away...

Having Google Mapped myself, on the basis that the aunt's house was just over the border (I think), I've gone from Pertisau to a random place just over the closest Swiss border, which it reckons is a 36 hour/166km walk away. And at least it stayed within Austria/Switzerland without any other border crossings. Easy-peasy :o

I'd not noticed Maria goes missing, either...

We'll don't forget freudisheim did used to be the Pension Wellington. I think it mentions 6 bathrooms at some point (after they had converted some back to rooms/ cupboards).

I think they could have used this trail however with a special secret path so they didn't have to go to Innsbruck (as well as the secret mountain pass at the end).

Loving this map chat!

Now the pension Wellington is a bit of a EDB mistake as in changes Joey tells the staff jack is building them a chalet right next to the school and quotes twelfth night I think.

Poor bloody Anna she even has to mix bloody tisanes for shampoo.
And her face beams as she's pulling up those lettuces at 5am.

It's my belief she tampers with minnies breaks and there was no tree at all just a desperate attempt at mass murder.

Nell too right I bet she wished she had married him.

I just asked dd if I had a golden voice and she snorted and said it was crap.

Where's the instant obedience and the yielding to mamma. Huh.

Oh, just lift it up and sing her into submission! How about Hark Hark the Lark?

Twintubs at the Chalet School anyone? Anyone???

That walk looks lovely, must show the SLOC. I've been trying to persuade him to have a holiday in Austria the year after next

Not all of freudesheim was in use all the time was it? Stacey gets her own wing at some point doesn't she? Not that that makes Anna's job very easy!

Regarding Joey's mysterious ailment she had to see Sir James Talbot for:

I'm staying in my parents' house for a few days. I came across a Manual of Family Medicine from 1920. In the chapter titled "Diseases of Women", there's a section on womb displacement. Symptoms include dyspepsia and "if the displacement is considerable, it may require replacement at the hands of a gynaecologist".

Snorted at "replacement in the hands of a gynaecologist". No wonder the SLOC couldn't do it.
Twin-tubs were very exciting. Ours used to dance round the kitchen on the spin cycle. I had a friend who lived in a very studenty flat and she was bathing the baby in the twin-tub (not switched on obviously) when the health visitor arrived. Also a cousin who had a bath but no water heater. They used to heat the water in the twin-tub and pump it into the bath.
Virginia thought her cook-general was completely hopeless and useless. Eventually she sacked her after years of loyal service (watch out Anna) and the cook went to work for Charles Laughton and ended up writing a cookery book. I love the descriptions of housekeeping in Bloombury. Couldn't believe the awful beds at Charleston; how did they manage all that carrying on?

Eating - it is a really lovely area. However it is all quite some altitude, DS and I both felt a bit "odd" and that was only at Pertisau. (But we do both have minor health conditions which could explain it.)

Was James Talbot even a gynaecologist? Didn't he end up handling a whole range of complaints?

I think he's actually a TB specialist!

My dm's first washing machine was a top loader and it used to walk across the kitchen when on spin. It would get to the end of the plug lead and strain against it. Eventually it managed to pull it out with a puff of black smoke and blowing the main fuse to the house. What fun!

Our first washing machine (bought when I was 6) was a kind of big box that went in the kitchen sink with two rubber attachments to connect to the taps. I don't remember it that well, but I know my mum had to attend to it a lot. And it didn't dry the clothes or anything, we still had a mangle. But it was still an improvement on what went before - the 'dirty washing bucket' in the bathroom that my mum brought down to wash in the kitchen each morning as her first chore of the day. Happy times.

I'm enjoying mummytime's trail. I was in Innsbruck for work last summer, but because of work schedules I never actually made it to the Achensee the Tiernsee. So near and yet so far! But I loved Innsbruck, and I had some free time there to wander around the Mariahilf and peer inside the Mariahilfkirche where I'm sure someone significant (Bernie? Gisela?) got married. I'm determined to get there next summer, though, and I've booked a week here in July, hoping I'll be able to persuade one or both of my DDs to come with me.

Google maps has offered me a 46-hour walking route from Briesau to Scuol over the Swiss border, via Akenkirch. It involves some double-backing at the start due to Akenkirch being north of Briesau on the way to Germany, but I reckon that instead of the double-baking, what they would have done is strike off to the south-west just before reaching Akenkirch, then head mainly south-west, skirting some steep mountains and making towards Seefeld. Just past Seefeld google maps shows a section near the autobahn which presumably wasn't there in the 1930s, but it's through the built-up areas of Stams and Haiming. Not sure whether those would have been populated areas to avoid, but even if they were, it's a valley thereabouts so they could probably have got through reasonably well. I asked Google to show me a route avoiding it, and it only added an hour's walking time. The southerly part of the route looks quite nice walking, through valleys with high peaks on both sides, and although it might be wooded, nothing too hazardous. In fact, I might try some of it next July if the Tyrolean holiday actually happens!

Love the idea of re-enacting Exile in the Tyrol! You need to bag a handy doctor or two to sling you round his shoulders when your feet start to hurt.

Well there is a path up to the Mountain tops from Achenkirch on the West side, I'm surprised the trail doesn't go along there, instead of making that big loop to Innsbruck. There is a private road that goes into the mountains that way - but we didn't get to explore it. I think you probably could make a through route, but its possible that "rock falls since Exile" have made the route tricky.

diseases of women

Well some of the paths were none too safe, even in our day mummytime

I am 'packing people in' for a funeral next week, think I've got a bit carried away... can anyone lend me a buxom Tyrolese serving wench for a couple of days?

Dm has a very funny "maternity handbook" written in the 60s. Amongst other things it warns of the dangers of even sitting up in bed without putting on your support stockings. As for getting up to go to the loo in the middle of the night... that would guarentee you varocus veins at a minimum-even once!