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.

Actually I think she does fall off, but bounces on a small hillock of kapok..

Right into the arms of a handsome doctor.

Right into the arms of a handsome doctor.

Who doses her with brandy from the small flask he just happens to have about his person (or maybe it's carried by his trusty dog, we can work on that detail later), takes her home, drugs her and keeps her there for a week. Joey drops in a couple of times to sing the charms of King Herod and his Cock. A bevy of baby angles dance round every now and then, accompanied by Princess Sheep, but that may have something to do with the special milk.

And the handsome doctor decides that even though his patient is only 15 he 'knows what she means to him' and is 'prepared to wait'

And the school gets a day's holiday. Hip Hip...

Baaaaaa.

...and have just totally outed myself as a name changer on another thread! Yes, 'tis I, Elisaveta Arnsonira. Now, how do I get posts deleted?

Don't worry dear, one sheep looks very like another. Maybe take off the tiara though?

Ahem.

Er - where were we?

Don't you fret, Princess, if Cosimo finds you on this thread he'll have all of us to contend with. We'll set the baby Angles and Picts onto him, and if that doesn't work, we'll hump his kapok until he begs for mercy. That'll larn him! We'll probably have to write out what Shakespeare says is an excellent thing in women 500 times in penance, but it'll be worth it.

If Cosimo comes here and sees some of this I think it will be the last we see of him!

we will hump his kapok and King Herod and his cock hilarious.

Doctors that rescue, so Dr Courvocier, Dr Graves, Neil Sheppard, Dr Jem, the Sloc, Dr Peters, any others missed?

Ooooh, copious quantities of inappropriate applause for this most touching Christmas play.

thebody you forgot Mary Burnett's (nameless) rescuing doctor! Also Dr Reg, but maybe you left him out on purpose because ugh.

Falling I keep meaning to make a nice easy copy&paste list of all previous threads, with links, in the helpful style of some of the long-running threads in Relationships with all the useful links gathered together at the top, but, erm, I am much better at good intentions than I am at getting on with things so it hasn't happened yet!

Emily I am storing up an irritable feminist appreciation of school stories post for when I have the time/kay'ach to copy out sizeable chunks of Bob Dixon's 'Catching Them Young' - which is an interesting book and makes many good points about many books, but I think some of what he says about the CS is seriously problematic (sometimes just plain wrong) and to a great extent isn't actually very feminist in how it overlooks the key strengths of school stories. I think though his analysis is also accidentally flawed because he hasn't chosen the most representative handful of CS books to analyse - he includes Eustacia and Tom and even, I think, Althea. It's not quite that I would want to cherry-pick the most overtly 'feminist' of the series, but Eustacia is a cack-handed rip-off of another book and Althea is frankly bonkers...

As library pree (am I still library pree? Or am I a naughty sheep or somesuch?) I've cobbled together the threads - who remembers that this whole thing didn't start out as a CS thread, but a discussion about whether Malory Towers or the CS was better?!

Thread 1:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2066331-To-wonder-whether-youd-prefer-to-go-to-Malory-Towers-or-the-Chalet-School

Thread 2:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2079584-To-think-we-are-all-ready-to-remove-to-Inter-V-at-the-Chalet-School

Thread 3:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2099698-To-start-a-new-term-at-the-Chalet-School

Thread 4:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2111602-To-ask-all-Chaletians-to-get-ready-for-Madames-birthday

Thread 5:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2131237-To-wonder-why-MNHQ-still-havent-given-us-our-Chalet-School-topic

Thread 6:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/childrens_books/2159963-New-Home-for-the-Chalet-School

Thread 7:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/childrens_books/2193596-Autumn-Term-at-the-Chalet-School

Thread 8:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/childrens_books/2243225-International-Incident-at-the-Chalet-School (this one!) :o

Have I missed any?

Oooh of course How could I forget Reg?

Now Mary Burnett! Didn't her dh write articles as she threatens to out Joey into one as women in her sphere whatever that was as an author. I may have got mixed up but was he a doctor? Or a journalist. Or knowing EDB she got confused.

Althea is bonkers indeed. Is the speedboat debarcle In that one. Where Joey has to tell 3 senior teachers and HIlda how to deal with 3 sulky teenagers.

The most most bonkers though has to be Adrienne. That's frankly insane.

who or what was the Sloc? I havn't worked it out yet and just skate over it when it crops up in the books.

SLOC is the solid lump of comfort, which admittedly if you haven't read Exile isn't at all apparent that it means Jack :o

DOH, of course it is. pardon me for being a bit dim.

Ooh library pree you are unfailingly brilliant. Thank you.

Mary Burnett definitely marries a doctor, presumably the doctor who accompanies Dorcas Brownlow (and Mary) to hospital after she falls down some stairs at the "flicks". The thing about some acquaintance writing Joey into a book or something rings a bell but not necessarily a Burnett-related bell...

Althea and Redheads are both gloriously bonkers. I can well believe that Adrienne is similarly inspired! Alas, this seems the best to be hoped for from the later books... Speedboats! Kidnappers! Space travel!
Not that firebolt! flash flood! sulphur cakes! Cosimo! are any more reasonable occurrences, really... But there is a difference, I just can't identify it right now.

Am I being v dim? What book is Eustacia based on?

How could you forget?
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/a1626409-The-chalet-school-and-ofsted

Thanks Rue for that.

Emily I don't think The Ofsted thread was part of this 'conversation' but a separate thread in it's own right.

Am I being v dim? What book is Eustacia based on?

Glad you asked, Cheddar, I thought it was just me didn't know! And I also don't know Catching Them Young. I plainly didn't pay sufficient attention in the Third Form and I'm missing some basic ground work.

Two Sams is also completely bonkers - two girls, similarish names (well, both shorten to Sam...), from different continents. Of course they're long lost relatives! :o

Don't know what book Eustacia is based on, I know we had a bit about some CS books/parts of them being total rip offs of other school stories though, was Eustacia one of them?

Yes forgot the insanity that was Two Sams

Although Adrienne has that certain nuttiness that surpasses all others.

I think it's in the way she speaks like a comedy French person all ah and exclamations.

Reminds me of Allo Allo.