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!

Gosh, that advice sounds positively archaic to have still been around in the 60s, DeWee. Dr Google has found some more gems for me on this website. I particularly like 'Watching sports might be too exciting for a pregnant woman' from Planet 1940s.

I wouldn't have minded being kept in bed for a few days post-childbirth while my devoted Tyrolean maid-of-all-work took care of everything, though I suspect I wouldn't have liked the food I'd have been expected to eat - assuming new mothers were treated pretty much as invalids and put on a 'light diet'.

Noooo, surely new Chaletian mothers would get quaint little cakes with positive featherbeds of whipped cream, all the better to drop crumbs all over their new quads?

I'm in Theodora ATM - it has been a run of really rubbish books from about Excitements onwards, and I only have Reunion / a few I've never read before / the sheer surrealism of Redheads and Althea to look forward to now. :( Apart from finishing and starting on the Abbey books, or the LRs, or Jean of Storms, or... I can't decide.
Anyway, my main observation is that the last few books in a row have all whinged specifically about German predicates always coming at the end of the sentence. (I've never learned German so I really don't know wtf this is about, but I'm accepting it until someone corrects me.) I'm sure this is only a newish complaint at this point. Do you reckon she'd just discovered this fact, not actually being a trilingual Chalet girl herself?

My other observation - look at us on the last page, yet again! Does anyone have a good title ready for the next thread? I haven't an idea to bless myself with.

Not an idea between us, shall we ask joey for advice?

I've gone back from Triplets to the Tyrol days and "joey returns". only coz I had no internet last 2 weeks and I didn't have any more oberland books on my phone.

What about something relating to the Christmas play for the next title?

The Chalet School Humps the Kapok?

Its part of what really confused me about German. Maybe she'd only just realised/had it moaned to her, or was now living with someone who moans about it. German imho starts off easier than French, but then you get to the grammar and it gets confusing, although I think it may have been less confusing to people with a solid understanding of formally taught Grammar and/or Latin.

Who was it that uploaded the Abbey books? Thank you very much, whoever it was...and any chance of some more? I've never read them before but have quite enjoyed those few.

What about "life-threatening incident at the chalet school" as our next thread? It is the season of blizzards, skating on cracked ice over a spring, doing the splits while skiing, OOAOML having her head shaved etc etc

The Chalet School never seems to decorate for Christmas, does it? In fact, the only actual Christmasses I can remember are the lovely one with the Mensches and one in Heather Leaves School (which is not precisely CS but which I loved because it sounds so lavish). Oh, and the v boring Ritual in The Lost Staircase. Why do we never get a picture of Christmas at Joey's?

The Chalet School Humps the Kapok?

Perfect!

Speaking of which, are we fully rehearsed for Emily's birthday performance? Have we made sure our devoted Tyrolean maids have washed, pressed and starched our baby angel costumes? More importantly, are the travel arrangements in place? All tickets bought, everything packed: something to read on the train, peppermints in pockets (in case Grandmother isn't in our carriage), Girl Guide cords so that we can effect a daring rescue in the event of a terrible accident, special milk for anyone who gets over-excited, and of course some spare baby clothes in case a little mite should need adopting on the journey? So much to do, so little time.

Nell you might want to have a look at Dorothea Moore when you reach the end of your Chalet odyssey. I've just finished the un-put-down-able Runaway Princess and I recommend it most highly.

I hope the dance is all ready? I am rushing home on Monday on the special soft-coal Eurostar to get ready for you all. But please remember that the most important thing is that the 27th is also Joey's 96th birthday. I understand that she is very excited and thinking of lots of patronising things to say about France and the French. We must make sure she gets lots of Calva. (I have some that is 60% proof, will that do?).

(You may need the strong stuff for yourself EmilyAlice if you're going to be stuck next to her all evening...)

Ahem. Three cheers for Mrs. Maynard!

'CS humps the kapok' is utterly brilliant but is it cliquey, and do we mind if it is? On the one hand I am keen to welcome any and all new Chaletians without people having to feel they have read every thread before joining in. On the other, we want to recruit strong helpful women and not spineless jellyfish who are put off by a bit of kapok-humping!

Could go for the less inspired 'celebrations at the CS'? Given the thread will at least feature a certain combined 65th/96th birthday kapok-hump (and my practice has been going splendidly, though my downstairs neighbours might disagree, and I've got the coffee service all wrapped up and waiting, as well as a couple of boys' comics to give homesick and crying high femmes to hide behind...) and possibly also Christmas, the nativity etc, depending on how talkative we all are...

mornington, agh: when I hinted at my difficult post-readthrough decision-making, did you really think the problem was that I needed more good ideas of what to read? Hmm?

Cheddar I think the Chalet School is just too devout for such fripperies as Christmas decorations. It's the same as not being allowed to clap after the Nativity, isn't it? Tinsel interferes with earnest devotion!

Given the amount of Calva EmilyAlice is offering, perhaps we should call it International Incident at the Chalet School? I do love humping the kapok though :o

I think International Incident at the Chalet School is excellent. And however hard we hump the kapok it might look a bit tired after 40 pages.
I don't think we need worry about the dawn party though. There are only the cows and they won't notice.

I also think International Incident could cover another ripping adventure when we re-create the escape from Austria, taking turns to carry each other and the trusty Rufus and mysteriously losing people along the way.

International Incident at the CS definitely works for me! So many exciting possibilities...

An excellent title......!!!!!

Why do we never get a picture of Christmas at Joey's?

I think EBD would find it really hard to work out what to do.
One one hand, she would like Joey to have lots of nationality's traditions combined. But at the same time want a really traditional English Christmas.

She would find it hard to mix the Joey being totally overcome with the religious significance of Christmas, with Joey going over the top and "no one doing Christmas the same" type of remarks.

But actually I rather suspect it would be Joey invites large numbers of people over, and leaves Len to entertain multitudes of children and Anna to do huge catering, some of whom she only invited less than 24 hours ago.

I think Freudesheim would have been full of people at Christmas and nobody would know who had invited whom. Everyone would go round saying, "he must be a friend of Reg's" and then it would turn out that most of them had just wandered in off the mountain.
"So kind and hospitable the Maynards" (unless you had small children of course, in which case you might not get to take them away again at the end).
There is a book where this sort of thing happens I think, but can't remember what? The first Cazalet chronicle has people that the Brig has met on the train and invited to dinner and then forgotten about, but I don't think it is that.

I think an older Jo would have loathed Christmas. Presumably the school was shut, so no popping over there for the ego massages on which she seems to become utterly dependent once the school has settled in Switzerland. She's somehow so much less of a person, and so much less resourceful, than in the earlier days. I get the feeling she would have stuck on the radio, waxed lyrically if passive aggressively about the challenges of entertaining guests on top of being a proud mamma of 8/9/11, and left all the work to Anna and Len.

I wish, though, that we'd seen a Christmas or two at Plas Gwyn. My money's on a traditional British Christmas but with a few extras picked up during Joey & Jack's time on the continent. Christmas decorations would have been ye olde English holly and ivy collected from nearby woods and country lanes on Christmas Eve.

I'm with Interntional Incident at the Chalet School on the one condition that the incident provides me with opportunity to wear my baby angel costume. I'm sure it'll come in handy as a great disguise in the escape over the Swiss border, or maybe for dazzling someone's mad uncle or vengeful criminal as he tries to abduct us.

Or we could call our next thread Chalet girls go wild at Christmas. And if it attracts a few undesirables looking for some apres-ski action, I'm sure we can soon convert them with some special milk and a little restorative singing.

Hmmmph, Nell, there I was offering you a way out of your post-mega-Chalet-read doldrums, and you're not even grateful.

so ungrateful and ungracious of me, mornington. I am just Joan Baker through and through. In fact I am currently wolfing a packet of Minstrels which is surely on the slippery slope to shop cake.

Christmas stuff is all amusing and also interesting. I am now actually really surprised that EBD didn't once feel like doing a holiday book of the Maynards' Christmas. Is there not one in any of the annuals or anything?

Christmas at Freudesheim would have definitely involved numerous invitations to the 'foundation stones', in order to still get her fix of ego-stroking/displacement parenting - and bloody hell, can you imagine the difficulty of turning down those invitations? Mlle would probably get away with "mais non, cherie, I will be climbing in the mountains I am afraid", and Matey would probably be glad to spend Christmas with Jo, what with Jo being her heart's darling though wild horses wouldn't drag it from her, but - poor Nell and Hilda. :(

Jo would probably not do Christmas presents on the grounds of true gifts coming from God, or something, a bit like the odd moments when her children are devoutly ungracious to near-strangers (Len at Daisy's(?) wedding, Con to Mrs Elstob). This would not stop her from fuming because Jack hadn't bought her anything/the right thing.

Agree that they would do a mostly English Christmas with random touches of Tyrol. I think actually EBD could have written this beautifully, isn't that just the kind of aesthetic detail she revels in? It's like cretonne curtains but better.

Definitely a place for baby angels and Shaun the naughty sheep in the International Incident, IMO! Chalet Girls Go Wild sounds a bit like the sequel to CGGU...

A twirling birthday star, a host of baby angels, a naughty (and secretly royal) sheep and a bunch of overgrown Chaletian schoolgirls parachuting into an EU country singing a simple but charming harmony extolling the virtues of beauteous EmilyAlice. Add a few gallons of special milk heavily laced with Calva and it sounds like a party to remember! Kapok humping will be the least of it...

Here we are then: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/childrens_books/2243225-International-Incident-at-the-Chalet-School

We're starting with the nativity, angels to the fore. Which is better than Angles, as seen on DS1s school nativity programme... :o