A fête worse than the Chalet School

[EmilyAlice]

Roll up, roll up!
Bid for a mortgage on the doll's house! Pin the tail on the St Bernard! Guess the weight of the handsome doctor! (Or pin the tail on the doctor and guess the weight of the St Bernard). Knit a lime green liberty bodice against the clock!
The Chalet School fête is open.....

I was angel number three this year. Can I have a promotion and be angel number two?

I have misplaced my scarf, Matey will be cross with me. I suspect I shall come down with pleurisy and pneumonia as soon as I open the door.

never mind that it's too bloody hot for that nonsense still, it's raincoats we need not scarves

Rue, you can be the first CS girl ever to use an umbrella (other than for leaving behind on trains). And I've been practising my restorative singing over the summer so no worries on the pneumonia and pleurisy front.

Just thinking about the Christmas play makes me feel like crying.

On a completely unrelated matter, I have a question for anyone who's read Exile recently. When the school reopens on Guernsey after about a year (?) Biddy reappears. My question is, where has she been in the interim?

Ooh, what will my promotion from First Sheep be?
Maybe Biddy got lost in the Nazi escape tunnel network Mornington. Or stuck in that time warp that leaves her, Amy Stevens and Maria Marani permanent schoolgirls.

Just re-reading New Mistress. After the incident where OOAO pulls Miss Ferrars off the crumbling mountain path (another school trip risk assessment bites the dust), Matey tells them

"I'll touch you both up with my own lotion" . Followed by "no, I won't insist on bed, Mary Lou, don't look so glum" .

I've only read the Armada version of New Mistress and I don't remember that particular quote - did it get changed for the p/back, or was I too irritated by the veneration of OOAO innocent to notice?

Witchend, you certainly can have a promotion to Angel No 2, but the question is, may you? However, I gather Angel No 2 is a highly contested part this year and you're likely to find that people are queuing up to engineer an accident for you so that they can steal your moment in the limelight. Me, I'm quite happy being one of the undifferentiated bevy of 50something-year-old baby angels. See us skip merrily around Joey who still retains her golden choirboy tones.

You will be ok...all the people who queue up to engineer accidents will have nasty falls while skiing and thus do themselves out of any part in the play at all..

I was a narrator last year due to my clarion tones. Please may I have a more exciting part this year??

Why don't you understudy Mary-Lou hels? I'm sure you can arrange for her to have she'll have an accident sometime.

i always wondered where Biddy went! Rationally I'd guess she would go to the Russells (they do later put her through university, don't they? And I can definitely picture Madge unquestioningly housing as many of her girls as necessary, for as long as it took) - but I'm quite certain it's never explained.

Super envious of mornington's trip to the Tiernsee.

Interesting point about Con a while back. I wonder if she was 'elusively pretty' like Madge?

I didn't know the Russells put Biddy through University - I suppose if I thought about it at all, I thought it would still be the Guide company. Although come to think of it, do we ever see the Guides raising funds as Guides, for Biddy or any other cause?

Elisaveta and Hels, are you sure you don't want to join the baby angels? There's still room.

Nell, if it's at all possible you should go to the Tiernsee. I loved it, and I can't think now why I left it so long. It's more straightforward than I thought to get there, and not particularly expensive so long as you steer clear of the fancy hotels. It's definitely added to my enjoyment of the earlier books. I re-read a few, and realised how much I'd skipped over the descriptions of the place and details of walks and so forth because of not being able to visualise the area. Of course it's more built-up and populated now than when EBD went on her famous visit, but the landscape is essentially the same. One of the hotels on the lakeside in Pertisau Briesau had a display of photographs of its frontage since the 1950s, and the earliest one pre-dated the metalled road on the Briesau side of the lake, so I think was pretty much how EBD would have seen it. And quite apart from the CS connection, it's a nice place to go to for a quiet, scenic holiday.

I'm not sure I have the - ahem - build to be a baby angel. I am more one of those girls destined to play St Joseph in CS Christmases.

Hmmm, I am not sure I have the looks for a baby angel, and I am certainly too old.....but in the name of The Play I will give it a go!!!

I think the current average age for a baby angel is just shy of 67 and a half, and it's definitely a part for the more gorgeous girl. Whoever heard of a skinny angel? Anyway, it's the sincerity that matters - so long as we feel suitably reverential as we thud skip our way merrily across the stage the audience can't help but be impressed.

I'm sure I recall some sheepdogging Chalet girl explaining that the Guides raise money to help fund the San, in addition to the sale of work and church collections etc, but (I may be making that up and also) I can't remember any actual instances of fund-raising activity.

I told very-new-SLOC that we will one day be going to Pertisau Briesau. She looked sceptical.

Very-new-SLOC, eh, Nell? Are congratulations in order?

Jockel is busy building an on-stage erection so that the baby angels can sit down for a mid-play breather if we need a little rest.

Ooh, is there room for a Cock under Jockel's erection? I am still identifying as King Herod's Cock though I think Mornington may be promoting me even further this year.

I have to say I am rather hoping Gaudenz may be getting involved in the erecting too.

Girls, girls....really. What would The Abbess say if she heard this conversation??!

I'm not sure, but I know it would make me feel a total worm, and I would never disclose it to anyone. But by the end of the book it would make me a Real Chalet Girl.

And I've cried so much I've given myself a bad headache so Miss A has sent me to bed. How on earth did she guess that bed was the one thing I was longing for?

Just been on the GGBP website and they are publishing another prequel...

www.ggbp.co.uk/before-the-chalet-school-the-bettanys-on-the-home-front-by-helen-barber/

Thought people might be interested!

I'm sure she's written ones before, which ones?

I think the bettanys of taverton high.

Oh, that's great news. I loved the Bettanys of Taverton High, it's one of my favourites of all the CS 'extras'. Thanks for the heads-up, Hels.