International Incident at the Chalet School

[RueDeWakening]

Hear ye, hear ye! Gather ye hence, all angels (be-costumed with slightly tacky silver halos and suchlike) with your lark-like notes and prepare to dazzle us all with your charm.

No, not you Joan. Shop bought cake and cheap looks for you, my dear. See Matron for some milk on your way out.

Am I in the wrong play?

Have filled a grey winter afternoon re-reading "Does it Again".
I think we have discussed it already, but my goodness the title is apt, isn't it?
Strange new girl loyal to dead elderly relative.
Absentee parents who have forgotten how their own child works.
Margot's devil.
Emerence is careless.
Falling into lake.
OOAO is jolly reliable.
Rescue by passing doctor and dog.
Willow pattern sale (FFS).
Joey diagnoses problem (she should do, she has diagnosed it six times already).
Doll's house blah, blah, blah.
Maybe the first 'flu epidemic though?
It was almost as dull as a winter Sunday in Normandy...

I wish the other angels would take their cues from me. I would say that I am such a perfect angel I don't even need to polish my halo but that would be a very smug thing to say so I won't.

EmilyAlice is that the book where Con says Daniel bit the lions which is ever after referred to as the most sidesplittingly, eyeswateringly, falling of chairs and general hilarity, funniest thing that has ever occurred at the school? To the extent that it will probably be written on Cons gravestone.

I know right Emily - I thought exactly the same about that title!

Feud has a tad too much applause: two full minutes because Miss Annersley says she will read the nativity script. Three cheers for Joey because she has sent some of Anna's greengage jam - twice over. As in, three cheers at the announcement, and another three after the eating. She's not actually present herself. And it's Anna's bloody jam. What is this weird cult?

Yes the con thing with Daniel biting the lion! It's just not funny but even the warped Naomi Elton laughs like a bubbling stream at it. Just don't get that one.

Who have been saved by passing doctors.

Carola, Margot, Len/Grizel, Len again from strangulation by Cecil's kidnapper, anyone else?

And they all end in marriage for a teacher. Oh and there's always a big dog in tow too.

To be fair things must be pretty boring to cheer jam!

Thingy, in Mystery (presumably this is the doctor Mary Burnett marries, though I don't think it's made explicit). Dorcas? Falls down the cinema steps.

And - I mention this every time - but in Phil Graves' (what a name...) case, he's brought a whopping great knife on his dog walk, and then keeps Hilary sedated in his house for about a week. Ugh gah ick this is not romance.

In the later books, there's a proliferation of Old Girls Who Never Really Mattered: Winnie Embury is the most obvious example, but also Irma Ancockzy in Future, and Nancy Wilmot, Rosalind Yolland and Barbara Henschell joining the staff.

I can't quite see the reasoning behind this. It feels like a missed opportunity in some ways - if she wanted to bring back old characters, why not choose someone readers might be more interested to hear about? Alixe von Elsen, maybe, or Jacynth Hardy.
Maybe she preferred to use non-characters for this purpose, to save the bother of looking up what details she'd created before - so it's almost a case of creating a brand new character, and provides a no-strings hook for series continuity. But actually, because they're such vague characters before they return, to me it feels less like continuity and more just like random confusion: you feel as though you ought to know who these people once were, but you don't really. And then you look it up and realise Winnie maybe once spoke one line in Rivals and that really is all there ever was to it.

Or maybe that really is just me.

Is Does It Again the one with Prunella, EmilyAlice? The troubled new girls who take half a book to be saved by St Joey/OOAOML and then hook a passing doctor for a teacher start to blend after a while.

I am up writing a report and could heartily cheer a bit of greengage jam right now. I am late starting the report because of planning Elf on the Shelf tomfoolery for the morning. It amuses me very much to have named the elf Elfie Woodward

Yes it is Prunella (is she ever mentioned again?) and the side-splitting Daniel moment.
I just love the fact that he is called Dr Courvoisier though. Like Captain Beaujolais in Beau Geste. Has anyone else read those? (His name is Beau Geste and he does a beau geste, geddit?).
One imagines both authors in the alcoholic haze necessary to write such hackneyed twaddle, allowing their eye to light on the nearest bottle for inspiration in choosing a character's name.
No greengage jam here, but should be about 12kg of marmalade by the end of the day!

Prunella is mentioned occasionally as Len's first friend. She's in Lower VI in Trials, interacting with Naomi a bit. I am also midway through Does It Again! I quite like the lack of originality about those prefects - Sale theme? Um, what props have we got? Willow Pattern stuff? That'll do, pig. It also contains the line "who had ever heard of a girl of fourteen demanding privacy?" which always makes me laugh. It sort of shows Len a little bit, especially at the beginning when she falls out with Prunella, but she's still fairly lacking in personality.

Ah. My response to that bit where Len loses her temper is kind of - give it up, Elinor! Stop insisting Len has a personality, for it is plainly not true!

That said, I do remember liking Len as a child. But wtf did I know then, I mean, I also liked OOAO!

Snortle at the assorted alcoholic name-inspirations. And also at Elfie Woodward the elf.

EElisaveta but my lamb it is one thing to cheer rapturously for greengage jam when you are up late working (don't work yourself into a fever like Mary-Lou did, my lamb!); it's a different thing entirely to do so only moments after two full minutes of applause at the thought of Miss Annersley reading the boring nativity script. Although, plied with enough greengage jam, I may yet one day actually read the nativity chapter...

And on that note, I hope everyone is in the hall ready to rehearse!

Maybe those naughty middles are indulging in post ironic mischievous I've enthusiastic applause because school life is so very very dull. And no one has yet made a school rule forbidding over clapping of jam.

In fairness, there was that time when Len put her hair up in a ponytail. You can't say she's not cutting edge .

I think part of Len's blandness is the fact that her goodness doesn't come from within, the way Robin's does. Robin is a genuinely good person and her goodness gives her a real strength of character. Len is good in an obedient, unquestioning way and I really suspect that if Joey told her to do something bad she would do it, because 'Mamma had told her to'. There's no strength of character there at all, it's just sanctimony really.

Anyway, I'm so looking forward to another rehearsal. I've scrubbed Peggy's blood off my halo with a pan scrub. It's looking a bit odd now, and my Les Sylphides dress is torn from that encounter with the manger. Still, it's the beauty of the acting that counts isn't it? Not the silly costumes

I think there's just too many books with Len in so you forget she threw water over what she thought were robbers, rescued her sister from an insane kidnapper and fought off an armed kidnapper I think she was good at appearing goody goody but deep down was the adventurous type just biding her time until she can leave home.

Well, she wasn't very adventurous when AliceEmily someone locked her in the lost property cupboard. She had to spend the night in the san with a large mug of hot milk. Apparently she's too distraught to appear in the play and her part has been given to someone else

I love that idea Eating but I just can't believe in it myself. :( I picture Len marrying Reg more or less straight out of uni, and setting up home on the Platz somewhere. Maybe they'd delay having babies for a bit (I don't think she would have more than three or four anyway), or maybe she'd be the first to combine motherhood and teaching, but either way she's definitely end up teaching at the Chalet School at some point. And she'd go to Freudesheim for tea at least twice a week. Poor Len.

I think perhaps she also suffers a bit from EBD's (genuinely accidental?) retconning of Joey-as-teenager. Joey was never the butter-in at school - in fact she resents responsibility right up to when she leaves. She does become a champion butter-in when she's an adult, yes, after she's had her own babies... But before then, even her various dashing-to-the-rescue moments were characterised as being sort of heedless, really - and Len is never allowed to be heedless, because she's tagged as 'responsible eldest' from day one. She's never a naughty Middle either! So she's this kind of static character for eighteen years. She's nice, but she has much less charisma than either of her sisters, or Joey herself, or Mary-Lou.

Anyway don't you think the Abbess looks thrilled with our rehearsal? I heard her telling Miss Ferrars that she was just speechless!

Actually, why aren't the triplets ever naughty middles? Apart from Margot, who's naughty but not really in that kind of prank-playing Middle way afaik? It can't be that EBD went off the whole idea of 'nice naughtiness' in her more idealised later books, because Ailie Russell, Janice Chester and co are allowed to be "imps of the first water". She wrote some lovely groups of irrepressible Middles - the Quintette, and Biddy/Alixe/Betty/Elizabeth (even though this group had to be split and re-cast due to the war) are among my favourites in the series.

I really loved the Biddy/Elizabeth crowd. They were naughty in a really believable way, including trying to sneak on some lipstick without the staff noticing and having a crafty fag up on the roof during that play business. Much nicer than Mary Lou et al whose idea of being naughty was pulling each other's hair or tilting back in their chairs.

And talking of fags and plays, Miss Annersley nearly caught the chorus of angels sharing a Marlboro light back stage. Luckily we saw her in time and threw it into the props cupboard.

By the way, what's that funny smell.

The cast and chorus of the Nativity play stood silent in hushed expectation.
And as they watched, a tiny delicate figure, clad in a lime green and silver tutu, delicately sprinked with tiny shards of golden marmalade, descended the grand staircase en pointe.
The chorus raised their golden voices,
"Oh-oh Star of Wonder, Star of Light, Star with Royal Beauty Bright".
And Miss Annersley, touched with awe and wonder at what she had seen, wiped a tear from the rheumy old eye that had never needed glasses and said,
"Carry on girls".

I think the biggest random character for me is Winnie whateverhername is who gets Mike dumped on her

...but suddenly the fire bell rang (waking up the whole valley) might possibly have reverted to Tirol there, sorry about that and smoke could be seen wafting out from the props cupboard. An inhuman shriek came from the same direction, possibly the bullock who had got in to munch on the raffia manger was slightly singed.

Isn't it Len who announces that she's going to join the Alpinist's Club as soon as she's old enough and flummoxes both parents with how much she knows about it all? They're in the car going somewhere with possibly Ruey or Melanie or someone. See, that's what happens when you send your kids to the boarding school next door and only see them briefly to shriek with laughter at some random occurrence, rather than actually parenting them. They begin to Develop Ideas Of Their Own.

"And lo a fireman appeared from yonder following the wondrous flame....'

Gosh, I'm late for rehearsal again. I was up late last night, hard at it until the early hours () making my new sheep costume from all that cotton wool I nicked from Matey's cupboard quickly acquired. The costume was pretty nifty, I stashed in the props cupboard read.

Oh no!!!!

Ooops. Sorry Elisaveta

Ooh, Len the future Alpinist seems to be organising a local branch of the RSPCB. Hasn't she just inherited her mother's mantle?

And a number of the younger mistresses seem to have suddenly got engaged.

I do love a happy ending!