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.....

The CS in a nutshell EElisaveta

Yeah, I was (and am) wilfully disregarding the 'perils' encountered in Camp. Also OOAO's near-death-through-overwork in Three Go. Happy to stand corrected on Exploits though - not sure about Thekla's illicit flammable petticoat, but Corney falling into the bowels of the earth meets my subjective criteria!

(Trying to establish criteria for 'serious actual disaster'. Had an initial disappointed feeling it might have included 'requires the assistance of menfolk' but actually I don't think that's always true after all - eg Lavender in a snowdrift. Sigh of relief.)

EElisaveta, you forgot the casual doping of girls/ women (mainly Joey) by the slipping of something in their coffee or milk.

I think a serious bilious attack from overeating raw bacon would have to qualify.

I would not want to be the school's H&S rep.

Hehehe, makes all the protestations about how the health of the girls comes first look a little lame, no? My unresearched hunch is that there are more near-death experiences at the beginning of the series than in the second half. I think they're almost one-to-a-book at the beginning but by the time we reach the second half there's less inevitablilty about it. I'm sure someone more familiar than me will be along to correct this...

Meanwhile, I've started my Tyrolean re-read so that I know which locations to look for when I go to Pertisau Briseau at the end of the summer. I found myself getting all tearful at first meeting with Herr Mensch because of where and how he dies. Am I taking this all just a little too seriously?

Mm, I'm not sure mornington. (Thrilling) Swiss exploits include Jo Scott saving Emerence, OOAO saving Kathie Ferrars, Nancy and Joan standing firm in the river and collectively saving the entire form, Eugen Courvoisier saving (?? Margot?), Bruno saving someone (very very hazy - have I in fact invented this?), Grizel and Len variously saving each other in Reunion, that train crash in which Joey steals baby Marie-Claire, Naomi in the motorcycle crash...

Also - it is right and proper to get all teary over Herr Marani's death in anticipation what do you mean these aren't real people

I always read the bits with Herr Marani in differently once I found out what happened to him....also Luigia

Yes, agreed. Also the first time I re-read Rivals after (much much later) first reading the Swiss book (forgotten which it is) where Jo mentions that Maureen had died young as a result of that accident - that was an additional sober feeling.

Phew, glad it's not just me then.

I'm finding it difficult to keep track of all the new girls arriving in School at - I'm sure the Merciers and a few others sneak in without being announced. Also, I know that EBD didn't keep track of ages, but I hadn't realised that Jo and Evadne start at exactly the same age, with a reference right at the start to the 12-year-old Evadne who will be coming to join the school next term. I'd always thought they started with about a year between them but Evadne didn't age as fast. Must be all that American slang keeping both her and Cornelia young.

I love the episode where Nancy and Joan save the entire form. It's one of my favourite scenes from the Swiss books. It's mad in a lovely way, unlike the train crash which is plain creepy. 'Oh look, there's a baby, there can't possibly be any family who would want her and even if there is, I'd do a much better job at parenting her than anyone else in the entire world, and besides she's just the thing to cheer up Erica so we'll have her'.

Oh, and doesn't Bruno go to Cecil's rescue when she gets kidnapped? Or have I conflated that with Rufus and Robin?

I don't think OOAO saving Kathy Ferrars counts. I think OOAO made the ravine open up with all her stamping and yanking, without which Kathie would have been quite safe. And anyway if it had been a real life-saving situation there would have been a doctor on hand immediately to administer special milk, carry home a delicate middle who would then be bathed, undressed and put to bed without waking, and marry a mistress (hopefully not Kathy because that would be Very Wrong).

Mm! I suddenly remember, very very clearly, Bruno saving a kidnapped Cecil. Unfortunately I don't feel confident as to whether this is canon or fanfic.

It seems odd that EBD would actually forget that Evvy was originally the same age as Jo. I can get that it would be impossible to keep any record of actual/relative ages without making the lists Jo realises she needs to make (fabulous 'don't do as I do, do as I say!' advice from EBD!), but you'd think she might remember whether or not someone was the same age as the beloved heroine. I wonder whether it was a conscious decision, to push some dominant characters down the school a bit as it got bigger?

Snortle at OOAO breaking the mountain with her stamping and yanking and clarion tones. I can definitely buy that version of events! (Also, I am slightly disappointed that Kathy appears to have to befriend her after this. IRL wouldn't it be much more like "ugh, Annoying Girl Is Annoying, and now! even more annoying! she only went and SAVED MY LIFE and now I have to be grateful even though she is STILL really really annoying!")
I very much appreciate that Kathy makes it to the end of the series without getting a doctor. I can never quite decide whether she would have been given one eventually or not... She declares herself a happy spinster teacher for life, in Reunion I think, but there aren't too many characters of whom EBD clearly thinks favourably and yet still resists the urge to marry them off. And especially at the end of the series, she's got the school/san Platz community so enclosed that she's not facing the risks of effectively writing out a character she likes because that's the cost of giving them that 'happy ever after'.

I wonder the same thing about OOAO - marriage eventually, I wonder?

Half related to these ponderings, I have finally decided to give CGGU a go! And am now impatiently awaiting its arrival.

Bruno does help rescue Cecil. I think it's in triplets but I might be wrong. Cecil is kidnapped while out on a walk with rosli. Joey is away in England (possibly with Mary lou as her mother is ill?) So the triplets are home from school for a few days to look after the little ones. Len organises a rescue as Jack.is at the San.

And especially at the end of the series, she's got the school/san Platz community so enclosed

This got me thinking about how the San would have to be reinvented for a post-TB world. What would get people travelling to Switzerland for medical procedures? The only thing I can think of is - erm - euthanasia. I'm sure a special milk could be procured for the purpose, but I'm less sure that devout Catholic Jack would want to be involved. Maybe high-end plastic surgery? Do people go to Switzerland for that? Or perhaps a super-swanky health farm with near-death experiences thrown in.

I feel this may call for a Phil Graves pun of some description...

Is the story about Cecil getting kidnapped really quite sad, or am I misremembering? Isn't the woman who kidnaps her a half-mad bereaved mother? :(

She is....She thinks Cecil is her daughter. It is very sad.

Which book is the train crash/ adopting random baby in? And doesn't the child (was it Claire) get sort of forgotten about in later books?

My little bugbear was always when Joey named the triplets; she says she would like to have called one of them Claire but couldn't think of other decent C names to go with it. Yet she has Constance and later Cecilia!

Summer term I think and Claire does just vanish!!!

Yes iwanttogo that is irksomely ridiculous! She could just as easily have said 'I wanted all three to have C names but Jack vetoed it' or 'I wanted all three to have C names but I think that shared initial thing will be less cute when they grow up and also it will make the family's mail very confusing'. But I think there's a lot about the triplets that feels kind of rushed maybe? and not very well thought through - I'm surprised there's not more meaning vested in their names, for example, given how keenly attentive EBD often seems to be to names; and the godmother thing.

Or. Or. She could even have said, when she does eventually steal baby Claire, 'I always regretted not calling one of my first babies Claire, but I already had Con in mind and I couldn't think of a third C. Of course, i'd not yet thought of calling one Cecilia, after my long-forgotten once-beloved adopted sister, you know.'
That would even take care of the 'need to summarise family things for new readers' requirement fgs.

Memory's a bit hazy on this, but weren't the triplets born in the middle of all the flight-from-Austria-multiple-relocations time? In which case perhaps Joey had less time and energy to spare for naming parties than she might otherwise have done.

Yes - on Guernsey before the Channel dash with Blossom Willoughby's dad.

Really, though? I don't know, with the benefit of seeing it in the middle of all those things of course it's an extraordinarily busy time, but they're born (I imagine!) at least seven months after they've settled on Guernsey, and I think comfortably before either Joey or EBD has any hint that this isn't going to be their permanent home.

I shouldn't gripe, because probably I'd find a whole chapter dedicated to the naming and baptising and god knows what else of Joey's firstborns irritating but I do still think it's interesting that relatively little is made of it. I can imagine it being the sort of thing that EBD later looked back on and thought 'aw, wish I'd milked that occasion a little bit more'.

Actually, just thought when I was typing that, re: time lapses between arrival in Guernsey (and marriage!) and the triplets' birth. I bet there was a time, when Joey was looking much much more pregnant than dates would have suggested, where Madge and others were silently raising their eyebrows and thinking 'well, you didn't wait til your wedding night, did you?'

Nell! She is a Catholic by then - and what's more, an eternal Chaletian.

Nell My dm knew someone who after their wedding got very quickly pregnant with what she said was a honeymoon baby and went round telling people that the doctors had told her that she'd almost certainly have the baby at 7 months.
Dm thought it a kind of karma when the baby was indeed born at 7 months... 5 months after the wedding.

I found the "want to call another Claire but no other C names" irritating even when I read it as a child. I did wonder though whether she had initially called them by C names and the publisher (or someone else) said they were too similar so she changed it.

But the real for me is the Godmothers. She tells Madge she can't be because she's not Catholic, fine. But those she chooses she has no particular attachment for. Just seem really odd choices. Plus surely they'd have had the traditional 2 women, one man as godparents?