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 will sing a solo in a soprano which, although sweet, has none of the golden quality of bloody Joey's voice.

I liked the first play they did.

The Youngest Shepherd? Me too.

Have just bought a hardback edition of Monica Turns Up Trumps, and discovered Helen McLelland's biography of EBD is on Kindle Unlimited! Happily reading about the young Elinor for free (and ignoring the slightly odd tone of the narration).

I meant to say that MTUT was £6.59! Amazing.

For goodness sake Mornington my lamb, what's all this rot about banning singing people back from the brink of death?

Gracious, you make it sound like all those sanatorium doctors should actually cure people with antibiotics or something! You'll have half the sixth dead by November and a nice mess that will make of the nativity.

That's OK rumble us Maynards can learn a part in about half an hour so we can take over from the sixth.

Ah yes, Con and her flypaper memory!!!

Sorry, rumble, for a moment I forgot where I was. Please forgive the momentary lapse, and please, please, pleasiest please, don't make me lose my part as a baby angel. I will look so girlishly pretty stomping skipping about the stage and I've been looking forward to it for months.

Are people who aren't the Robin even allowed to be baby angels?

Only if they are Felicity Maynard, who is allowed to be not only a baby angel but the baby Jesus as well!

That seems nearly as ungodly as the second sight thing!

I am contemplating pushing Peggy Bettany and her silvery curls over a cliff so that someone else gets a decent part in this year's play.

I asked if I could be an Angel and Miss Annersley is still laughing.

Oh I do hope she says yes.

I have another stupid question, please. There has been ever such a lot of phones being cut off, and 'have they put the phone back on yet, oh dear no, better walk over to the Round House instead' etc. What is this - is it a wartime thing, or just an inept early telephone thing?

Telephone lines used to be quite fragile, I remember as a child. You often got a crossed line. And I would imagine with snow and strong winds in the Alps, overhead cables would often come down.

However even with lots of underground cables etc, my DCs schools have all had times when the phones didn't work (or they lost internet).

Yes, I remember crossed lines as a child, or the telephone system going down in very stormy weather. So I can imagine during the 40s and 50s it would probably have been a fairly frequent occurrence.

Thank you both!

Another question (sorry): where has Grizel gone? Am reading Highland Twins and there is now a Miss Ames who, along with Miss Denny, is "responsible for the piano side of the school's education".

(And wouldn't Grizel also have liked to have seen Elisaveta?)

Grizel went to New Zealand to open a shop with Deira. I think. I'm sure there's a bit somewhere about Miss Annersley maybe lending her the money to do it, since she can't access her inheritance till she's ancient 35. Can't remember when she goes, but she definitely is over there for a considerable time, before coming back in bits because Deira is marrying the man that she (thinks she) loves. She is then redeemed by meeting Dr Shepherd and she finally gets to marry him, reproduce and thus become a Real Chalet School Girl.

I'm sure I haven't got to that bit, though, because I'm certain she's still there in Gay (being annoyed by Miss Bubb stopping Gay teaching Jacynth the cello). I suppose it is just a random omission from Highland Twins but it seems quite odd when EBD goes to the lengths of listing other piano teachers instead!

Anyone else have difficulties reading Tom Tackles the Chalet School? It just feels very disjointed and odd. I know it was written 'out of turn' so to speak, and was originally serialised for a magazine. I just don't think it works as a novel and is definitely not up to the standard of the other Armishire books.

Something which I didn't realise about Tom until v recently is that it's not written as far out of sequence as I'd thought: the two Chalet books it was serialised in were 1948 and 1949, so at most it's one book out (if EBD wrote Three Go first - also 1948).

I don't recall finding it disjointed or odd, but may revise this opinion when I get to it again. I do think it (plus Mystery and Rosalie ) is generally weaker than the preceding books, but I also think those three are generally stronger than the ones which follow.

I do think there's something slightly experimental about all three, and I'm not sure what it is exactly. (I think this also about the first six books, but that makes sense as they're the first. The logical explanation is that it's EBD trying to work out how to write stories for the Chalet books, but I'm not entirely sure how different this really is - they don't feel much shorter, and splitting into two is hardly proper serialisation - is it?)

I have a soft spot for Tom , it being one of my first books. What does feel a bit odd is the fact that there are no mentions of the War, since it is written afterwards. The Bettanys sailing from India in Spring 1944 wouldn't be a very good idea, surely. And aren't Peggy and Bride still living at the Round House in a later book? That said, Bride, Tom, Julie, Nancy, Elfie, Anne etc constitute one of my favourite age co-horts - there's no bossy leader like Joey or Mary-Lou, and everyone seems more like equals - and Tom is the first book where they really come to the fore.

Grizel doesn't go to NZ until after she sets Len on fire in Carola. so yes, where is she in Highland Twins? Does she feature in the second half of Exile or Goes To It? I can't remember specific mentions but she easily might appear briefly.

She's definitely in Exile because there was a scene of Joey showing her engagement ring and asking Grizel to be bridesmaid. Poor Grizel assumes she's going to be chief bridesmaid but Joey tells her, quite bluntly, that naturally that role will fall to Robin.

I can't recall if she's in Goes To It.