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 can't remember if I've read Forever Amber or not. It clearly didn't make the impression on me that it does on Jennifer Penrose. I think I have - I remember lots of satin gowns, naked bosoms and then bubonic plague, unless that was another book...

so EBD no doubt intended to join in the condemnation but might instead have sent hundreds of young girls to their nearest bookshop to find out what the fuss was about

And of course, decades later, I'm now tempted to look it up to see if it's as exciting as all that!

Joey and Patricia is on the onedrive my lamb. Although please don't take that as a recommendation! It is quite short at least. I really enjoyed Helen McClelland's biog of EBD but both her fill-ins left me cold.

Maybe the inevitability of near-death (necessitating doctorly rescue, which in turn necessitates instant betrothal) combined with the absence of Jack is what made EBD's version of India slip quietly away without ever being published. Maybe there was no way that Joey could go across the world adventuring and still want to come back home to marry her BIL's junior colleague, brother of her former teacher, friend of the family type bloke.

I am about a quarter of the way into Jo to the Rescue for the first time (thanks to Cheddar!)
I'm glad to be reading it, but I can't imagine it'll ever be a favourite. I can't seem to warm to dear sweet wet Phoebe. I was willing to put aside my dislike of Jo at this age especially (she is hard going when she's floating about being all smug mother, isn't she?) because the idea of the quartet holidaying together with their various children plus Sybil is actually really nice, in a way which is a bit similar to the first half of Maids of LR only a bit more grownup because they all have their children with them. It's almost like the fantasy single parent house-share. And then bloody Jack turns up!

It's quite interesting on the image of parenting, though (which obv I would have paid zero attention to as a child!). The youngest children are explicitly still breastfeeding at night, which is quite interesting. Lots of stuff about whether children are trained to sleep through noise or accustomed to quiet. Very nice bit where the others insist that Frieda, who has recently had her second child, should have a lie in and breakfast in bed while the others look after her firstborn. The requisite passage about spanking in exceptional circumstances if nothing else will fix it.
Also a slightly bonkers bit where Jo appears to have dictated that the families can all visit Phoebe in succession, with a 20-min slot each. It reminded me a little of the bit towards the end of Reunion where Jo appears to arrange a sort of parade of friends and relatives past Grizel's hospital window.

Re-reading that, I'm quite sure that 'image' is an autocorrect, but I'm too sleepy to work out what I was actually trying to say there! Sorry.

Ah, OK, I haven't ever got into the onedrive. Maybe I should. Could someone PM me the details?

I read Visitors way back in the Dark Ages, before I'd got online and long before fanfic became a thing. So it was desperately exciting and I loved it. I did go back and read it last year, in my post-Briesau-trip re-read of the Tyrol books, and I liked it, though perhaps largely because I was location-spotting and Helen McClelland had obviously been there and knew the locality very well.

It's ages since I read Rescue and it's not one I've wanted to revisit time and time again. I do remember wondering, though, what it is with EBD and cellos (celli?). She doesn't personify other musical instruments, so why do celli get given names and personalities? Gawd, imagine if she'd done it to all the instruments in the New House jazz band, there would have been a very tedious few chapters getting to know them all. Or have I forgotten any other musical instruments that become characters in their own right?

I loved Rescue as a kid - I had a thing for soppily sweet romantically disabled heroines. I blame Cousin Helen in What Katy Did. Oh, and thingummy in Notting Hill, although I was a bit older then. I think there's another disabled woman in What Katy Did At School where the husband carries her up to bed. Plus various Black Beauty sequels (did anyone read them? The horses were called things like Black Romany) where the feisty heroine invariably came off her horse hunting and was paralysed and then the horse was sold on despite her tears.

Black Beauty sequels? I never knew there was such a thing. Were they sequels to the book, or to the (very different and as far as I remember completely unrelated) TV series? And did Anna Sewell herself write them, or are they by someone else? Though reading what you've said, they don't seem to have anything to do with either the original book or the TV show - which of course had one of the best theme tunes ever.

Whisper it softly, but I never liked the Katy books. I tried with them, but to no avail. Ditto Anne of Green Gables.

I didn't mind Katy. Never got on with Anne of green gables.

I never really liked Anne either, but do still re-read all the Katy books!!

I loved the Anne books and still do. Katy I liked but not as much.

The Black Beauty sequels were definitely not written by Anna Sewell, but at this late juncture I can't remember who did write them. Oh, I've Googled and it was the Pullein-Thompson sisters - there are about 8 sequels about Black Beauty's family of which I remember about 6. Coincidentally I retrieved some books from my mum's last week and they included Ponies in Peril by one of the Pullein-Thompsons! Which I devoured in about an hour, followed by Pony Jobs For Jill by Ruby Ferguson.

There arent more cellos are there in the books apart from the 2 already mentioned? EBD does seem to be rather fond of the things.

Is there a transcript of "Jo to the Rescue" or whatever the one with the holiday with Phoebe is called? I can't spot it in the one drive and my copy is long lost in the heaps of boxes in the garage. I'm trying to read in order for the first time ever. I'm missing all the new fill in books so wil, have to add those to my Christmas list?

There's a few violins too. I think Vi Lucy plays and so does Len. Not sure what the other triplets play, can imagine Con being good, but Margot not really doing enough practice and stopping much sooner than the others.

The violins don't get names though.

I don't think (other than Corney's orchestra) and instruments other then string and piano get mentioned. You'd expect there to be a heap of flute players and clarinets if nothing else. Nina conducts the school orchestra so we can assume there are other instruments.

I find it interesting that she picks on the Cello. She obviously liked it, but I can tell you, from playing in a school orchestra that school skirts + cello = lack of dignity!

I bet Jack Lambert played the drums (she has to be musical as EBD liked her)

I am sure one of the books has the triplets heading home for half term each carrying an instrument....but i can not recall which one now...Maybe Richenda?

Doesn't Frieda play the flute?

I think Jack Lambert is one of the tomboys who are tone deaf and cheerful about it, like Dickie Christie or Tom Gay (aren't those just marvellous names written next to each other?).

I seem to remember Frieda playing the harp somewhere, in a concert or play - but I could be making that up!

I think Jack Lambert is one of the tomboys who are tone deaf and cheerful about it, like Dickie Christie or Tom Gay (aren't those just marvellous names written next to each other?).

I'm sure they could whistle, though. Probably whilst standing with their feet wide apart, hands in pockets.

I'm re-reading the early Abbey books at the moment, and loving all the references to Jen and Jack (short for Jacqueline in case anyone hasn't read them) being husband and wife, and 'tucking up' with one another any time there's a shortage of beds which happens all the time, it being the Abbey series. And then there's Mary, shut up in her London flat with her solo sexual fantasies until Jen and Joy rescue her through folk dance. No cellos, though, just plenty of morris pipes and a fiddle or a piano every now and then.

You're right, it is the harp! Sucks to me.

I've read a few Abbey books but I think they suffer from my adult eye - I would have adored them if I'd come to them as a kid, with all the rippling red hair and folkdancing on the lawn. I did snurk a lot at Jen and Jack bed-sharing, too. I liked the earliest couple that are on the OneDrive - later ones seem to be very inbred and you have to know the characters. Much like later CS, I suppose!

One of the problems with the later Abbeys (apart from endless plot recycling involving secret passages) is that all the main characters have at least three names - their real name, their nickname or nicknames and their Abbey queen name which is usually a flower or colour. So Jen Robins, for instance, can be addressed as Jen, Jenny Wren, Mrs Wren or Brownie, which must make it almost impossible for latecomers into the series to know who is who.

Have checked in Richenda...Con has a cello, Margot a viola and Len a fiddle..

I think I read recently that Plato played the flute.

Oh yes, I think there's a reference to them making 3 out of a string quartet.

Can't imagine Plato playing the flute. He'd play a brass instrument like a tuba or a trombone.

I don't think anyone plays a brass instrument, which always annoyed me as a child. Plato is mentioned as playing the flute in at least one play/panto. And is it Herr Laubach who plays glockenspiel??

My lambs, this thread disappeared from 'I'm on' and I have just caught up with it all.

I think I am about to give away my awful cultural ignorance - I suspect there exists such a thing as a 'grown up' glockenspiel, but I just have a vision of big gruff scary Herr Laubach bent earnestly over the sort we used to play at school at age 6 or so and it's... peculiar.

I'm sure Con Stewart also has a viola at some point so I feel quite certain EBD has decided they are a characteristic of red hair. Is Mary-Lou also cheerfully tone deaf, in spite of being one of the beloved ones, or is she a singer? I have a sense of her being cheerfully tone-deaf, but of course she might grow out of that around about the same time she becomes tall and beautiful with curly hair blah blah.

I should get round to trying the Abbey books from the onedrive. Rosemary thingy in World of Girls (or World of Women? Forget which, both worth reading IMO) mentions about Jen and Jack, husband and wife etc. I like this idea, naturally.

The onedrive is indeed lacking Rescue, and a few others - I think Leader and Mary-Lou perhaps.

My lambs, I am going to the Achensee for the first time in about a week! Any advice and recommendations much appreciated. I'm taking my 4yo and we're staying in Achenkirch rather than Pertisau Briesau - will probably visit Briesau once only with a vague plan of going back later, so I don't have to do ALL THE THINGS this time.

I have quite a large glockenspiel in my house. Very envious of your trip to the dear little Tiernsee....keep trying to persuade DH...

is some wonderful grown-up playing of glockenspiels and xylophones and the other one (metallophone?). Confession: I don't like the sound of the glockenspiel, it sets my ears on edge.

I think the nearest we get to a brass instrument is Corney's brief dalliance with the saxophone. Did girls simply not play brass instruments in the time EBD was writing? I always imagined Mary-Lou having a pleasant and masterful alto voice, though not, of course, in the same league as Joey's choirboy tones. I may have made that up with no evidence at all.

You'll love Pertisau Briesau, Nell. It's only small so you'll get a good sense of it in a few hours. There will be buses from Achenkirche, but a nice way to get there would be by boat lake steamer, and it's worth getting an all-day ticket so that you can hop on and off. You can either walk or get a bus to the landing at Scholastika - the boats go clockwise round the lake, so on the way there you'll get to see Seehof (the landing is called Achenseehof and I didn't recognise it at first!) and Seespitz. If your little boy is able to walk from Seespitz you could get off there, have a look at the train if it's in, and then walk to Briesau. It's about two miles, and completely flat along a path and then a road. Or you can just stay on the boat till Briesau. At the Briesau landing stage is the Furstenhaus Kron Prinz Karl which has a great beer garden - I recommend their kaffee und kuchen, and especially their kaiserschmarren. There's a few little tourist shops by the lakeside there, not much, but nice to have a browse in. If you're walking, you'll go past a wonderful photo exhibition outside the Hotel Post of Briesau from the 1950s onwards as you come into the village - if you've stayed on the boat, do go back the way the boat came along the lakeside and see it. Then go inland (all of about 100 yards!) to the tourist information office - the library is in the back room of this building, and there you'll find the EBD plaque. Then it's back on the boat where you should watch out for the dripping rock which you can see quite clearly as it now has a tin roof underneath it - it's a couple of hundred yards from where the metalled track peters out and becomes a proper lake path. The next stop, Gaisalm, has a play park for children so you might want to get off there and have kaffee und kuchen (part 2) - it's a lovely spot. On the final bit of the journey back to Achenkirch you'll see the most demanding part of the lake path which you won't be doing with a four-year-old, but look out for the lovely secluded beaches that you can drop down to from the path, and plan which ones you'll swim from on a future visit!

Saxophone is rather strangely considered woodwind I think. So not even Corney's counts.

I think Marylou gets a solo at some play with a wonderful alto at some point. I'm certain she isn't tone deaf. That's reserved for EBD's "big tomboys".