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.....

Oh, Nell am envious. Make sure you tell us what you thought when you get back!

Oooh, thanks mornington for that - I shall do exactly that and almost no need for any further research on the matter, thank you!

Yeah, I suppose it does make sense that Mary-Lou's bell-like clarion tones translate into a pleasing singing voice - I must try to read those references to her speaking voice as I assume EBD intended them (excellent clarity, voice carries well when in mountain!catastrophe type situations, agreeable alto pitch) rather than as I can't help but infer (inability to reduce volume as appropriate).

I think the sax is actually rather particularly disapproved of - I don't think it's just that Corney is unmusically crap at it, I think it's somehow - inappropriate? Too adult? Too masculine? Too unapologetic? Too American? Not sure. The complete absence of woodwind instruments hadn't really occurred to me before, but it's true and now I'm curious! A flute seems perfectly innocuous - was that just not a thing at the time?

At my secondary brass instruments were unusual for a very simple reason. We didn't have any teacher (until I was in the 5th year). We had 2 piano teachers, 2 woodwind teachers and a string teacher.
Because we were a day school there usually were 1-2 brass players around. They usually managed to find someone to play on Remembrance Day.

Our orchestra would have consisted of around 20 strings (violins and cello), 30 woodwind (mostly clarinet and flute) and 1-2 brass.
I do remember the trombone's first note knocking our music stand flying at a concert once. Worthy of the Chalet School that one!

At a boarding school they probably would have had even more of a lack of brass players if there was no teacher.
At another local secondary they didn't have an orchestra, they had a brass band and people that arrived playing a different instrument tended to change.

Although dm did comment when the brass players arrived en mass once a teacher had started that they did tend to drown out the rest of the orchestra even with a few of them.

At my boarding school there were probably 7 brass players in total the whole 7 years I was there. It was the head of music's job to find a teacher if anyone wanted to learn an instrument!
Even at Uni (and I did a music degree) I think there were only 3 other female brass players while I was there.
When I took over as head of music in an all girls Junior independent school there were no brass players at all....there were 16 when I left a few years later and numbers rising..
In school by the river even they have to borrow brass players from the Academy....
I suspect EBD (in common with many people ) felt brass was for boys..maybe she should have had Tom Gay arriving completer with trumpet!!

In Mary Lou, doesn't ML sing flat a lot and infuriate Plato, and then Jessica Wayne steps up and sings horrendously, hence the Big Row? That's why Mary Lou rushes off to the Abbess to pontificate about how it's all her fault really, please don't be mad at Jessica and ignores Plato's behaviour, thus showing her stunning maturity once again.

I think rather than sings flat, it's that they're doing a particularly complicated bit and she can't get it. Maybe she says she starts flat and continues flat? I don't think it's meant to imply that Mary Lou can't sing, just that it's particularly hard. I think they were all (except possibly Verity) singing it wrong.

The bit in Mary Lou about the singing disaster says that its a new song with one or two pitfalls in it, and over one the entire form fell down despite repeated attempts.

Plato then looses his rag and then hauls the girls out to sing it one by one. ML then sings a few bars of it flat and ets made to repeat it over and over again until she gets it right.

Ah yes, public humiliation as teaching technique. Those were the days!

I'm thinking about the teachers we see losing their tempers - I suppose I mean hot-tempered rather than bad-tempered. As far as I can recall it's Plato, Herr Laubach and Vater Bar. Can anyone think of any others? Now, is this because they're men and therefore have limited patience with girls, is it their artistic temperament, or is it because they are artists first and teachers second, unlike EBD's favourite mistresses (Hilda, Nell, Nancy, Kathy, probably others) who are 'born teachers' - though it's quite interesting how Kathie, coming in later in the series, still has to learn the tricks of the trade which seem to be innate in the others.

I do think there's a shouty (male) artist thing going on which EBD likes to use - and perhaps finds easier to depict 'on stage', so to speak?

I was re-reading the gardening prank in Exile earlier this week, and when the girls are planning it, the rationale is along the lines of "it's fun to wind up Bill and Charlie (because they will get cross in an amusingly dramatic fashion), but you'll pay for it in the end; but Evvy will also get cross in an amusingly dramatic fashion, and she can't do so much about it because she's only here one day a week".

I am struggling to think of an actual example of any of these three losing their temper Herr Laubach style - I can only think of short snapped remarks and severe looks - but perhaps EBD was more concerned with making them impressive, and therefore struggled to actually write them as they happened (bit like the occasions in Miss Annersley's study which reduce naughty girls to tears but nobody ever repeats what was actually said...)

I think possibly it's more fun (or more realistic, in EBD's teaching experience?) to have dramatic outbursts in music or art lessons than in history lessons? A bit like it's more fun for things to go practically wrong in domestic science or science lessons, they better lend themselves to it.

There are a few bits where one mistress or another is in a particularly bad mood for whatever reason (usually illness) and snaps royally at the class. Of the top of my head - the bit in Eustacia with Miss Stewart and Eustacia's pen, where I think Charlie has toothache.

The bit in Leader with Miss Bertram when she has a bilious attack (wtf is a bilious attack, by the way? I always thought she felt sick - is that right?) and reams Jack and her little pals out, immediately before the snake incident where she faints.

Kathie saying Margot can't go home to prepare for her birthday party in New Mistress, because her arm is aching after the whole glacier incident.

Pretty sure there are others - my somewhat rambling point is that mistresses do lose their tempers too, but as far as I can see it is always, always, excused by them being ill in some way and therefore not as able to cope with the vagaries and peccadilloes of Middles.

What a wonderful thread! So happy to find so many other CS fans all in the one place. I read the books over and over again right through my teens and into my early 20s. My sister had loads of them and recommended them to me but I ignored her for ages (we didn't really get on). I'm not sure what prompted me to read them in the end - perhaps I ran out of books? Anyway, I think the first one I read was either 'Three go to the Chalet School' or 'Carola storms the Chalet School'. There was a Mary in my class in school and I tried calling her Mary Lou but for some reason, she wasn't very receptive to the idea .

Inspired by this thread, I'm planning a re-read of the books. I wonder what I'll make of them after all these years?

I don't really want to buy the physical books though. If I could somehow get them on my kindle, that would be great. The only EBD book I've found is 'The School by the River'. I've already read the sample and I'm planning to buy it on pay day which is Thursday. I'm very excited about reading an actual EBD book even if it's not a CS one.

I loved the 'Sound of Music' comparisons early on in the thread. The boy who spies on the pupils in 'Exile' reminds me a bit of Rolf in TSOM.

I also love the idea of Maria Von Trapp/Joey Maynard appearing in '16 Kids and Counting'

Verrrry jealous of those of you who have visited the Tyrol. I feel the urge to do a Salzburg/Innsbruck trip. I think DH would be a tad suspicious though.

As for introducing the CS to your DC, they have a copy of 'The School at the Chalet' at my local library and I persuaded DD to borrow it a few years back (she was around 8) but she never got past the first page! There was a very long descriptive passage about Joey and DD wrinkled up her little nose and said, "This is really boring" . She was less than impressed by 'Ballet Shoes' and 'Anne of Green Gables'. Alas, she's more of a JK Rowling/David Walliams reader, despite my best efforts .

Oh, I looked up the GGBP publishers and while they have a few titles available for kindle, they only accept orders from the UK

There is also the bit in Gay Lambert where The Bubb gives her what seems like an OTT punishment for being made to look silly infront of Dr Maynard.

Would I be allowed the onedrive login info please? If so could someone please message it to me

Tayto and Freezer, I've sent you both the OneDrive details. It hasn't got every book but it's got the vast majority, plus some of EBD's random non-CS titles.

By the way, is anyone here also a fan of urban fantasy/steampunk? If so, have you read The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman? In the sequel, the heroine turns out to have attended a certain Austrian boarding school featuring near-death experiences in lakes or near glaciers. I properly squee-ed and then Googled frantically, and discovered that yes, the author calmly admitted to appropriating the Chalet School as Irene's alma mater.

By the way, is anyone here also a fan of urban fantasy/steampunk?

Never heard of it. But I think I might need to go and investigate.

There was a Mary in my class in school and I tried calling her Mary Lou but for some reason, she wasn't very receptive to the idea

This comment reminds me that when I started reading CS it was after compulsively reading and re-reading Malory Towers for quite some time, and the Mary-Lou there is small and timid. The image of a shy and retiring ML was so firmly entrenched for me that it took ages to get my head round the EBD version.

Verrrry jealous of those of you who have visited the Tyrol. I feel the urge to do a Salzburg/Innsbruck trip.

Oh, do go. I went for the first time last year and can't for the life of me imagine why it took so long. I'll definitely go back in the next few years, as soon as time and cash permit.

There are a few bits where one mistress or another is in a particularly bad mood for whatever reason (usually illness) and snaps royally at the class.

Yes, I'd forgotten that. Is it just the B-list mistresses who are allowed these lapses? I can't recall any instances of Hilda or Nell losing control, unwell or not, but maybe there are. I always wondered why Jo didn't get into more trouble for walking out of Herr Laubach's lesson after she'd driven him to losing his temper. I can't image anyone else being allowed to get away with that, Head Girl or not.

Jo did get landed with extra maths after being kicked out of art classes, though.

I've just spent hols in Bavaria and there were lots of moments which could have been in a Chalet book (and I took my handsome doctor with me!), villages called Wengen and Lauterbach, local brewery having a week of Tirolean specialities, and lots of men wearing Tracht, so making it easier to imagine what the male characters were meant to look like. Saw a perfect Gottfried, Herr Braun and Onkel Riese...

The children waxed as lyrical as any Chaletian about all the Kuchen mit Sahne and the luxurious hot chocolate!

Is it just the B-list mistresses who are allowed these lapses? I can't recall any instances of Hilda or Nell losing control, unwell or not, but maybe there are.

I've just been skimming Goes To It and there's a bit where one of the prefects is complaining that Nell's just had a massive go at her for not ensuring the girls go quietly and calmly down the correct staircase for dinner (or something similar, I've forgotten). The prefect in question couldn't have been there because she was bandaging up Bride Bettany's finger instead at Matey's request (Matey herself dealing with multiple Ozanne black eyes) - but Nell has had a massive go at her before she can get a word in edgeways to explain this.

I actually don't think Charlie is B-list in the Tyrol books (I think she's more central than that), but I think she comes from an earlier era where mistresses are not required to be perfect, poppets out of lessons but tartars when roused etc.

I think though that none of the male staff are EBD's 'proper' characters and so she's happier to use them as a comedy cross person rather than someone likeable, respectable, basically reasonable, who may make a mistake (especially when ill or stressed) but will be honest and honourable about it afterwards etc. I quite like all of the male staff, really, and they do have distinct personalities but they're also fairly one-dimensional a lot of the time. Frau Mieders is comparable for being denied any real depth, but she's nice and so doesn't really do the gruff fury thing of the male artistic types.

Urgh. The dear little Tiernsee is due a week of thunderstorms.

Admittedly I was definitely interested in such an event - there's a lovely description in at least one of the books of thunder rolling around the mountains etc. But I wasn't exactly hoping for it all day every day. Accuweather gives a slightly more optimistic prediction...

Maybe I can go out and get swept off the edge of a mountain and rescued by a passing doctor, though.

Oooh, Nell, make sure you take pictures of the peasant's hut where you take refuge, and upload them so we can all see. Also kindly upload sound files of your englekind playing the zither, and the recipe for hot chocolate made from snowmelt.

Was it only me who always thought the hot chocolate made from snowmelt sounded delicious, btw? Which makes no sense, as I'm sure I wouldn't have felt so yearnful about hot chocolate made from rainwater.

Not sure about the hot chocolate made from muddy, twiggy avalanche snow where they had to skim the hot chocolate out without getting lots of mud too. I am not convinced that mud would lie at the bottom of the pan, come to think of it - wouldn't it all just swirl up and be horribly silty?

Don't forget to teach your DS to say "Gruss Gott!" and to rhapsodise about the toppingness of sleeping in one's clothes in straw in your shepherds' hut!

On the subject of A/B list mistresses in Tyrol - A list were Madge, Hilda, Nell, Charlie and Miss Maynard, plus Matey, I would say. Even Mademoiselle hasn't got much personality beyond kindly Frenchwoman (although not one of her pupils would ever forget her) - not sure where I'd put her. Miss Nalder never does anything to justify her being Margot's godmother, so far as I can see - she's definitely not an A list mistress.

She's also not an A-list godmother, being the only one who doesn't get a triplet named after her!

Bleurgh, I am sure you are right about the mud. I have no idea what I was thinking as a child - I think it's the visual similarity between fresh snow and frothed milk, maybe?! I shall report back on the recipes and merits of snowmelt chocolate, oniony soup and blackened bread, after our forthcoming near-death experiences in the Tyrol.

Nell have a fab time in Tyrol. Do try not to fall in the lake though...

In the meantime, can anyone tell me if the Armada version of Eustacia is adbridged? IF so I may be able to justify the GGB version on Amazon...

According to this website there are minor frequent cuts in Eustacia.