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.

I saw on the GGBP site that they are reprinting Fardingales.....

No, that isn't Mrs Dale's tune Mornington. Did remind me of the Eric Coates music for "In Town Tonight", though.
Of course this discussion is not off-topic at all. Just reflecting the excitement of conversations at the parties held around Jack's powerful wireless.
Jolly windy on the Costa today. The patio furniture has been dancing around all on its own all day.

But I'm too young (that's not something I get to say often these days!) to remember Mrs Dale's Diary in the original - what I remember is the re-vamped The Dales. Somehow the Beeb thought that calling it The Dales would make it all 60s and modern . Mrs D was still rather worried about Jim though.

I'm still waiting for Champion to arrive. I was sure it would be in the post today, but no sign of it. I'll have to get hemming those sheets sides-to-middle to pass the time while I wait.

An interesting feature of St Mallory's Forever which I continue to plough through, is the centrality of interweb devices and blogging to the plot. It makes me feel very old and as if I live in a different universe. It's not as if I'm a complete techno-phobic (hey, I manage my way around this forum OK) but there's something about the way they use their many and various pieces of equipment to run their lives that makes me feel rather alienated. My DDs are in their mid-20s now so I can't really tell whether teen life has really moved on to this extent, or it's just the way it's portrayed in the book. I suppose it's something about the 'mediation' of friendship both in the sense that the media are involved, and there are all these intermediary devices as well as or instead of actually talking to each other, which has me feeling like a complete outsider - so different from all the other school stories I've ever read, where friendship is the central, real and immediate concern.

Apparently the last line of the last episode was, "I shall always worry about Jim, though".
How the internet is changing our brains and our patterns of social interaction? Well yes. SLOC was working in ICT from1971 and I started in ICT in education in the mid-eighties so we have been involved for a long time, but I do find the way that we all sit round on our ipads rather than talking to each other a bit worrying even though I am one of the worst offenders.
Have you read Nicholas Carr? I have read The Shallows, but I think there is a new book out now. He is fascinating on how the internet is changing our brains.

The last line of the CS could be "I shall always worry about Margot, she has a hard row to hoe"

What is the actually last line????

The last line in Prefects is:
"And with one voice they joined in her exclamation, "Up the Chalet School!""

Which I suppose is a neat enough conclusion.

It's quite a good conclusion, but not a really definite "This is the end" which it could have been.

I remember being struck when rereading the Famous Five how much of an end the end of book 20 was. I think she planned to stop there. Book 21 otoh (the real end) had a "this will be continued" feel.
I also think she planned on stopping the Avdenture series after, I think it was Ship of Adventure, when Aunt Allie and Bill were going to get married. It also had a final feel.

Fetch the special milk for I need it - how annoying is Adrienne? It starts out brilliantly - I am totally in love with the avenging nun that the Robin has grown to be, there's child trafficking in there and everything, Adrienne is actually quite an interesting character and BANG! She gets a hairdo, OOAOML pops up to say she looks like the Robin and that's that.

Pish! That would NEVER happen. Oh I'm raging!

I think you need to go for a lie down and sleep for the rest of the day Lonny. I've sent to Matey.

I think we also ought to ask questions about Robin's relationship to Joey and/or Jack. After all someone said once that Con was like her "two aunties". So obviously she must be a long lost cousin of Robin's too.

Adrienne is one of the few I've never read, and I can't decide whether I want to or not.

How about an alternative last line of the Chalet School: 'I shall always worry about Joey. She keeps adopting random babies is so sensitive and highly-strung.'

Champion is taking its time to arrive, so I might start in on Adrienne after Lonny's ringing endorsement. I read it once, ages ago, and I'm beginning to think it needs a revisit.

I suppose that is what passes for a ringing endorsement on the platz!

Silly people! I was a brevet-Aunt just like Frieda, Marie, Simone, Miss Annersley etc etc

Of course you were my lamb.

Just indulge an old friend from the Tyrolean days and don't drink any milk Uncle Jack gives you. Ever. 'K?

Opinions please! I've been given an Amazon voucher, and while I have to spend some of it on a tedious textbook, I thought I might treat myself to a CS book to cheer myself up alongside exam revision.

Options that I either haven't read or have read but don't own are Changes (new release by GGBP, I think), Summer Term, Jane, Mystery (and Robin Heeds the Call), Mary Lou (I have this but the old paperback one, which I think was heavily edited?), Lavender Laughs (ditto) or one of the new-ish fill-ins like Champion or CS and Robin? Any recommendations?

If I had the choice of the above I would get either lavender or Mary lou. Although I quite enjoyed changes.

Goodness, my lambs, it is very cold up here in the north of France isn't it? Crossed shawls and winter plumeaux all round. The chateau was very cold when we got back from Iberia and we have the great wood-burner, porcelain stove going full time. Gaudenz seems to have gone awol so SLOC and I are humping wood instead of kapok. with cold.

I'd agree with Hels

Haven't been on for ages (taken over by life), but I thought I would let you know about dd's costume for book week, her and three of her friends are going as Chalet school characters from the early days, dd is Joey and her friends are Grizel, Frieda and Mrs Bettany. I have to make 3 brown ties this afternoon!!

DD2 went as Len a couple of years ago. She had cream blouse, brown gym slip and blazer, and orange tie. Unfortunately I don't think anyone (including the teacher) had a clue what she was.
I suggested she reused it last year and went as Malory towers but she wasn't impressed. Not sure what she wants this year, but Ds is wanting to be a Lone Piner. I thought this would be easy until he thought Mackie would be the best one to go as. Hmm.

Sadly my dd is still a bit young for cs characters a book day. She wants to be a jumblie...but I don't think blue and green face paint will go well with swimming.......

Oh no is book day coming up again? It takes me by surprise every year.

I am reading CS Wins the Trick, and finding it quite off the Platz wall. EBD asserts that the "Welsh hills" are in England early on, and the Camp Fire stuff is pleasantly wacky. Josette is HG despite being only sixteen - one might suspect Bettany DNA was playing its part except that poor Maeve is there, over a year older and overlooked. There is also some stuff about putting hair up which I remember confusing me when I read Mary Lou as a child. Were you supposed to be a certain age to put hair up or not? And why would the 'up' do deter a gang of young demons from lobbing stink bombs?

World Book Day is on 5th March this year - 4 ish weeks to go, bags of time. DD is going as Hermione Granger apparently, no idea what DS wants to go as but it's unlikely to be a CS character

Re up dos, you put your hair up on your 18th birthday I think, to show you were a grown up.

Oooh, lots of possibilities for your DS, Rue. He could go as a doctor in white coat brandishing tranks. Or Rufus/Bruno. Or he could be Gaudenz. Or a generic clock golfer resplendent in - erm - whatever clock golfers wear. WhyamIhere those sound like excellently-brought-up girls!

I got the impression hair went up on your 17th birthday, but that might be something I made up based on the older CS girls putting their hair up. There's a lovely line in one of the Tyrolean books where Madge says that seeing Frieda ('a girl who was one of my junior middles') with her hair up makes her feel old. And doesn't Joey grow her hair deliberately in her later years at school especially so that she can put it up? Presumably the young demons in Wins the Trick would take more seriously someone with their hair up (= adult woman) as opposed to someone with pigtails (= girl). Because of course young demons never dare to play tricks on adults!

The hair up thing always made more sense to me in the earlier books, where presumably the convention was fairly universal. By the early 60s wouldn't it have been a rather dotty anachronism? Or did it last longer than I think?

It's my son's 7th birthday on world book day and he wants 100 books he might not get quite that many though. He hates dressing up but has a Dennis the menace jumper I crocheted him so I think he'll go in that. It's a bit small for him really and my trick of adding a stripe won't work this year as it's getting tight!

Haven't a clue about the hair thing- I assumed it was a posh thing. My hair was always short and spikey when I was a kid. Now it's long and blueish.