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 recommend the story I'm reading in the Sally Denny Library at the moment. It's called You Can't Choose Your Family & it's about the Maynard boys at school, mainly Charles.

I think the hair chopping is mentioned in Janie Steps in..she tells Nan about it...but that might just be wine confusing me!!!

Yeah, he just walks up to her and cuts her hair because he likes it bobbed! And her sisters applaud this because Janie suits bobbed hair and looked terrible when she tried to grow it.

Something I remember being a bit boggled by is the opening chapters of 'In Tyrol' where they talk about Mike's 'naughtiness' and how his Uncle Jem should have beaten him. It's sort of interesting because Jo is actually the one objecting to psychologial cruelty to a child and insisting that she's not ill and won't have him punished any more (he 'made her ill' by getting stuck up a cliff and this was of course terrible blasphemy because Jo Got Ill)

Funnily enough Nell, our local supermarket here in Normandy had a special offer on Guernsey "gâche" (the delicious cut and come again cake) last week.
I have never seen it before, but instantly thought of Joey.

I find EBD's whole approach to corporal punishment quite confusing, but it's clearly something she's given a lot of thought to and has some very definite ideas on. (I suppose probably this is true of most people who advocate it, then and now - that there are varying temperaments of children which determine who will or won't respond to it as desired, and that there are specific circumstances in which it's called for and specific ways in which it ought to be delivered.)

The hair thing sounds terrible - clearly I have blotted it from my memory. I suppose it's the same school of 'hilarity' as Jo writing to Madge to say that she's so fat she broke the ceiling - is all this wholly explained by the humour of the era, or is it partly EBD's misjudgment too? 'My husband cut my hair without asking, and my sisters applauded him' would be a straight LTB, surely.

Emily did you buy it? I wouldn't have been able to resist.

No didn't buy it - low-carbers here (featherbeds of whipped cream fine, cake not). Have to say it didn't look very exciting, perhaps EBD just read about it in the guidebook.

On the gache front....

Its not a cake as such, its more like a teabread as it doesnt have much sugar in it. I My kids love it sliced, toasted and with lashings of butter.

Anyone fancy making one. It will be quite runny when you pour it into the bowl but it still bakes beautifully.

Balls, I'm hungry now thinking of it

I've been lurking (and name changing) but I had to come back to this thread to share with you that, not only does my 8yo DD1 read Chalet School books, she's also happily now working her way through the fill-in ones like The Bettany's on the Home Front. Weirdly, her favourite one so far is Jo to the Rescue, and she says its because it's got plenty of younger children in it. I'm really enjoying bedtime reading at the moment

I have no idea what she makes of the religion etc, but it's certainly doing good things for her vocabulary.

This is going to sound very silly, but I always thought that gache was an EBD madey-uppy thing like Joey's special fruit drink which I suspect had more than a touch of the light country wine and that I'd only find a recipe for it within the pages of the Chalet Girls Cook Book. DD1 is coming for a flying visit next week so I might make it for her welcome tea.

is gache anything like bara brith?

A bit like bara brith but doesnt involve tea- bara brith does

I actually have a copy of the Cook Book - give me a minute and i'll see what recipes it has.

right, Jo's recipe for Raspberry Wine:
two cupfuls of sugar
three cupfuls of boiling water
once cupful of fresh raspberries
one bunch of mint
two cupfuls of lime juice

Dissolve the sugar in water, and let it get quite cold. Crush the raspberries and mint together, and add. Pour in the lime juice, and let it stand in the coldest place for two to three ours. Then strain, and pour over cracked ice into small glasses. Float a fresh raspberry on each glass, or a few mint leaves if you prefer, and serve.

"This," added Jo, "is not one of those things you can bottle. I believe you have to use yeast or alcohol of some sort for that. But is makes a real fancy drink for a big 'do'."

none of the drinks recipes have any alcohol, other than in Jo's lecture about tea:
"Here and in other countries on the Continent, you have it with slices of lemon; and some folk put in a spoonful of rum. I remember Frieda," she added, "that the day Grizel and I first came to tea with you, your mother asked us if we wanted lemon or rum with it. I was young and shy then, so goodness knows what would have happened if Bernie hadn't said she knew we preferred milk! And what you idiots are all tittering about in that way, i can't think!" she concluded.

There's then a spiel about two teapots, and brewing the tea in the first one, then straining it into the second pot, which I've never heard of before (make tea in mugs here).

OMG, I've just seen the prices my first edition is going for on Abe Books - anything from £40 to £140 . I paid £7 about 8 years ago for it in a second hand bookshop

Loving this. Ploughing my way through the very abridged unabridged versions on the onedrive. Can see I have lots more exciting revelations to come ...
Just finished 3 go with GillIan meeting Clement Peter - they do go in a lot for love at first sight and a whirlwind courtship! Plus if those girls had asked me if I was going to marry someone 'because he needed looking after' I would have lectured them for nosiness then run a mile 😅

The hair chopping is new to me unless it's while in a coma following a head injury.Does Julian literally cut her hair without her permission? Jesus even for EBD that's bad. Can you imagine Janey posting that incident in AIBU.

I seem to remember Jack offering to thrash Elizavetas boys following her husbands death of they got too much for her. Very very strange.

Yes the obedience thing is wierd. Margot is frankly nasty and spiteful so clearly in training to be a future nun. I went to a catholic school so know.

I think I might choose Herr Brawn.

Empress off to read it now

I desperately wanted someone other than joey of course to out baby her and have quads. Someone like Simone who seemed to have trouble conceiving after Tessa and Jo kindly pointed out that she must have been upset as the rest of them were steaming ahead with real families can you imagine a more spiteful remark.

I also shudder at the mention of sending hankies and things to the nuns laundry and sure they are full of poor pregnant unmarried girls. The amount of orphans like Lucy peters whose parents have been conveniently killed in plane and train crashes never seems true. Some poor girl robbed of her baby and given to morally superior married couples in my view.

Thank you for that link, Empress! I have devoured all the Eilidh stories on there and come up for air somewhat sadly - two of them aren't finished and were shaping up really well. The ones about Charles were brilliant - I was so sad when I got to the end and realised it was unfinished! I was a lot less keen on the Helena story where Len runs away and ends up working for a characterful older woman and raising 7 children as a governess. It was too similar to the life she was escaping for me. Then there was a really promising one about Daisy tracing her parents' early history, but it wasn't finished either.

Yorkie and Cheddar 😄

The Charles one is moving on though, there's more of it than there was last time I looked.

Any more recommendations for good fanfic?

Oh gosh, there was a brilliant one I read in the Sally Denny Library not long ago where a union activist got the job of kitchen overseer - she organised the kitchen staff and maids, and led them out on strike. It was so good, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was called memory of a flea. Sorry, I'm not being much help, am I? And ages ago, before the Sally Denny Library, I got hold somehow somewhere of a Marlow/CS crossover which was brilliantly written, but not (at the time) finished. If that sounds familiar to anyone, I'd love to read it again, especially if it's been completed.

Ooh, I think I recall the union activist one - quite probably by Alison H.

And actually, I'm going to look up the Marlow/CS crossover right now - I know I've seen it on the SDL before but I didn't read it because I was Marlow-ignorant back then. In fact, this week I have been exploring Marlow slash fanfic on ao3, and can thoroughly recommend a fairly short but very enjoyable Marlow/Miss Pym Disposes crossover, for anyone who has also read that. (And if you haven't, you really should. I love Tey generally, but I love Miss Pym best of all.)