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.

When my DDs were in primary school, the top year were allowed to wear the local High School uniform, or items thereof. The idea was that if the precious darlings outgrew anything in their last year, you could buy them replacements from the secondary uniform rather than something they'd only wear for a couple of months - colour-wise it worked OK as the primary uniform was red and the High School one was black. In reality the kids always nagged for the full High School uniform at the start of their last primary year. I think the point with the Marlows was that there was so much gear put aside by older sisters that the twins never had anything new. I'm not sure whether that dates the series a bit, and whether it's less appropriate by the 80s when the final book was set. I certainly remember getting hand-me-downs from my sister (and passing them on to younger next-door-but-one neighbours' children in turn) in the late 60s and early 70s but after that clothes became both cheaper and less good in quality, so I'm not sure that it was a custom that persisted, at least not once children reached their early teens. Or maybe it was just my younger DD who flatly refused to wear her sister's outgrown clothes!

I read the Herr Marani fanfic last night. Hmmm. I'm not sure I'd use the word 'lovely' to describe something with so much extreme violence and brutality in it, and I didn't weep buckets I'm afraid. Hats off to the author for attempting to fill in how Herr Marani might have died - but as I should have remembered before reading it I can only take the juxtaposition of sentimentality and extreme brutality when done extraordinarily well by the most accomplished of writers. The example that comes to mind is in Gone to Soldiers by Marge Piercy which I love. Usually, though, sentimental storylines set in concentration camps or other massively de-humanised environments don't work for me.

But for now it's hey for school. My mother is the jolly, sensible type, so my trunk full of regulation brown, flame, gentian blue and scarlet garments, correctly name-taped (I spent endless evenings sewing them on) is already making its way across Europe. I snuck in some sanpro when my jolly, sensible mother wasn't looking, but apart from that, everything's just as Matey likes it. So without the artistic and/or dying relatives that the rest of you seem to be able to produce, it looks like I'll just blend into the background. Will anyone even notice if I arrive five weeks late on foot triumphantly waving my Swiss army knife?

I've been back several days already, staying with Aunty Joey.

Had good hols, everyone?

I'll be along soon. Daddy is traveling to some middle European place he will not tell me about on some business he won't speak off. He will me drop off at random train station to meet a teacher. They will recognise m . As I am sure to be the only person alighting with an umbreela, lax stick and rug bundled together in one hand and my over night case in the other.

They were very gone on posession of an umbrella at the Chalet School. Yes Unis but remember that there is another school in the locality so don't get on the wrong charabanc.

The thought of Matey and sanpro.....shudders. It would have been those awful Dr Whites things with a belt and hooks. Shudder shudder shudder.

Bonjour mes amies! I hope you all had good hols. I got 'Murder Most Unladylike' for Christmas from my lovely Dad. It's set in a '30's boarding school full of lesbian, alcoholic, murderous mistresses/masters. It's great fun

Has anyone suggested Giverny and Trebuchet on the baby boards yet?

Or the twins in the second form, Hilarity and Jolatity, hilli and jolli for short.

I have taught a child called Giverny and actually she was lovely. Her mother loved Monet's garden! Trebuchet...i shall await.

A girl at school told me that she knows of two boys called Oppulence and Joy.

I was at primary school girls named with Camel, Bucket and Poopak.
Then at secondary with boys, Lord and Earl.

Was a multicultural part of the world I grew up in, even more so than the Chalet school, who to my knowledge have had only one non Caucasian white pupil. The brief school career of Lillamai , Lavenders friend. My primary school had something like 25 mother tongues spoken across 200 pupils. We could never have managed languages day by day, not enough repetition.

I'm really not sure which was the most unfortunately named of Camel, Bucket and Poopak...

Flapping I am so, so pleased I've never heard of those Dr Whites things other than through the works of Judy Blume , they sound horrific!

You don't need to include ALL languages in your day by day turnabout though, UniS - just English, French and German. Remember those Norwegian sisters who turned up not speaking a word of any of our three languages, yet were fluent in all 3 by half term? And the Hungarians too - Irma and...um...something beginning with A? who also settled in remarkably quickly considering nobody could understand them.

It's only Saturday afternoons and Sundays when it's a veritable Tower of Babel :o

English, Polish and Arabic?

maybe with Japanese offered as an extra.

They were and very thick. Must have been dreadful.

Yes, everyone got very fluent with seemingly only French lessons. How they found staff that could teach their subjects in fluent French and German, I don't know but it was very forwarded thinking of her particularly when you think how suspicious and wary of foriegners, languages and 'foreign muck' (food) many British were at the time of writing. To espouse that Johnny foreigner was just as honourable, decent and civilised (in fact more so) than the plucky Brits was a brave thing to do. Len Goodman on Room 101 said yesterday that he'd never eaten 'foreign food', he came across as a complete dinasaur but I remember that attitude back in the day (had an
Italian father who was told to change his name by his consultant back in the 1950s because he'd never make it as a Dr if he didn't and was only accepted by Cambridge to study medicine as all the other med schools rejected him due to his Italian background.) so to have a school where German was spoken must have seemed very exotic.

What I have enjoyed as an adult reader is EBDs descriptions of places and the food. To dreary brits in a land where a lamb chop was wow, it must have seemed amazing.

I shall just remain silent unless I can speak English. Not because I object to speaking them, but simply because I won't understand anyone else and no native speaker of the language will understand me.

I was at school with a family of 7, whose names alternated between the exotic (I think Roxanne was the oldest) and the totally ordinary (Emma).
Dm reckoned the parents took it in turn to name them, and had totally different tasted.

Other than on the journey to and from school did any chaletian ever make use of her umbrella? given the penchant for catching colds after being caught in a rain shower I guess not?

I never got why they hated the umbrellas so much either. I'm not desperately keen on umbrellas, but it seems to be a standard thing that the middles loathe them.

Isn't forcing them to carry umbrellas a feature of the Peggy Regency punishment, or am I making that bit up?

Good Morning ladies.

I've been absent due to the busyness of DD arriving in November. She has red hair so is bound to have an exciting life (at least that's what the CS has taught me.

And you're not making that up Nell. Umbrellas are a feature of the Regency punishment.

Oh congratulations Toni!

Shame it's only one, but I suppose we can't all be as wholesale as Jo... ;)

Congratulations! Redheads at the CS are Go!

Congrats ToniWol!! Any name for her yet?

Elisaveta is a nice name--

Not sure what happened to my second sentence there.

Toni would you like us to have a naming party Dr Jem style? I vote for Prunella Wol.

My vote goes to Rufus Wol. Congratulations, Toni, and get her name down for the CS quickly - I hear they're stowed out with the daughters of Russian oligarchs these days, and you wouldn't want little Rufus to miss out.

That's a good point about umbrellas. I don't ever recall girls taking them on a walk or an expedition, which makes one wonder exactly what they were used for.

She's Katherine Theresa (Katie for everyday).

We're working on her being a musical genius though. First music class this week.