Some Fretwork and the Interminable Christmas Play at the Chalet School

[EmilyAlice]

Now girls, line up and listen because this term is a busy one. Firstly we are combining our hobbies club and the Christmas play, so we will need our fretworkers to get busy on the scenery, some beautiful découpage for decorations, our nimble-fingered needlewomen on costume duty and some scrapbooks for - er...
Now one other thing girls. As you know the Chalet School has moved from the Tyrol, to Guernsey, to Armishire, to some island or other and thence to Switzerland.
This term we have moved again and the first thing I want you to do is to find out where the bloody hell we are....

I have found my people! How long will it take for me to find my doctor and start giving birth to multiple trained-to-absolute-obedience children? I'm willing to stay out all night on a mountain or throw myself into a chilly lake if it will help. Would somebody mind PMing me the link to the shared drive?

Yeah, I'll bring some cake to eat the sardines off.
speisaal, if you're still awaiting onedrive details PM me and I'll send them.
I need to catch up properly later my lambs but first I need to ask a quick, important, and v scandalised question. I've just re-read CS in the Oberland - is "are you engaged to him?" a euphemism for "have you had sex with him?"
When I've read it before I've been happy to accept that "are you engaged" means exactly what it says. But this time I'm more inclined to think otherwise, because some of the "if that came to pass" comments make much less sense in relation to an engagement (which can be broken off, ffs; and which is apparently totally fine for Len when she's still a schoolgirl). And yet that seems a really unlikely choice of subject matter!

Ooh - Rivals begins with a description of "Good Herr Braun" which explains that "though he was only a fat old Austrian hotel-keeper, [he] was a gentleman at heart". That's one contender.

The opening of Eustacia is one I always remember, just as I do School at.

The first chapter of New CS (staff room chapter) might actually be my serious-favourite first chapter.

Ooh, Lavender - yet another one which begins with the imperious words of a doctor.

Shocks and Changes again both pretty much begin with the words of other random men (Mr Hope and Commander Christie).

I don't really own any of the later ones, which is a shame for this exercise as I bet there's some charmingly bonkers nominations to be had amongst them. I bet Redheads opens with a bang, frinstance; or Problem.

I should go to bed. I need to catch up on the ROW thread too.

And now back to my own current preoccupations with Oberland...

Elma Conroy - her father owns a chain of beauty shops. Does this basically make them nouveau-riche and therefore brash and tasteless, just like Diana Skelton and Joan Baker? (Is this also related to her being portrayed as a bit 'fast', whereas the saintly Peggy doesn't even think about boys?)

Grace/Phyll Nalder: theories on what happened to her husband?!

Redheads isn't as bonkers as you might think, given the rest of the plot:

"The lean, dark man and the solemn-faced schoolgirl had sat side by side in silence for some time. Suddenly he spoke softly without turning his head - almost without moving his lips. 'Copper! No; don't move. Keep on looking out of the window. Now listen! You understand that you must use your proper name. I know you've always been called Flavia Letton, but from now on you are Flavia Ansell. Got that?"

Can't put my hands on Problem, it's here somewhere...

I love Redheads.

There's something remarkably ironic in someone who is prepared to kidnap a school girl to turn her into a drug addict to get revenge; who when discovering it's the wrong child not only puts her on a train to get back to school, but leaves her with a train ticket too.
"I don't mind kidnapping, drugs or even murder... but not having a train ticket? Aye... that's too far for me!"

I think Problem starts with Rosalind in school being told that she's going to the Chalet School by her teacher. Why on earth would you get the teacher to tell her that?

Yes, that's how I remember the start of Problem, Witchend. And doesn't Rosamund address her teacher as Teacher? Which always made me think that EBD had never actually been inside a council school, where women teachers back in the day were invariably addressed as 'Miss'. I think in the US teachers were addressed as 'Teacher', though, so maybe EBD had been on a visit there? Or had North American friends with children?

Do children these days still call their teachers 'Miss' and 'Sir'? Mine didn't, but I don't know whether that was geographically specific (most of their schooling was in Scotland).

Welcome, speisaalmilk. I'm afraid you haven't been around long enough to be allocated a doctor of your own, though. You'll have to serve your apprenticeship either in the Baby Angels, or in EmilyAlice's dancing troops troupe. First task of course is to fashion your own dainty kalashnikov or set of wings out of sheets and a pillowcase - prizes available for the prettiest and most ingenious.

My older ones call their teachers Miss and Sir.

In fact conversations with my older one in particular go along the lines of.
"Then Miss came out of the classroom and shouted and Sir said she needed our exercise books so we gave them to Sir, who gave them to Miss and then Miss gave us another sheet which wasn't fair because Miss had already given us two and Sir said we didn't have to do it and he'd speak to Miss and Miss said don't worry she would too."

With 3 different "Miss" and two "Sir" but no distinguishing additions. I think the nicknames we used we less hard on the parents, but possibly harder on the teachers when they found them out. Mind you, being a German teacher with the surname "Long" and being totally bald is never going to end well. And that was one of the politer ones! We didn't (usually) address them by their nicknames though.

Dh was at a bog standard comp and they were "Sir" and "ma'am" which always gets me

Ooo, maybe we could add "which book are these the opening lines to?" into the range of exciting games to play on a Saturday evening when we tire of threading needles, collecting peas with knitting needles and playing the Kate game!

At my brown and flame school we were allowed to call the mistresses by nicknames from their surnames, Tompkins becoming Tommy etc.
Sorry I have been absent for a bit. Have been out on the steppes practising with the troops troupe. (Mind you on Wednesday morning I felt like doing a Captain Oates and staying there). Chalet School girls are pluckier than that though.

Chin up, EmilyAlice old bean. We can invite you-know-who to the Christmas play, send him for a post-play chat with Miss Annersley and he'll emerge a reformed character. Or if all else fails, your troops troup can take him out onto the Steppe and do their thing.

We could get Matey to sort out his hair?

We can invite you-know-who to the Christmas play, send him for a post-play chat with Miss Annersley and he'll emerge a reformed character. Or if all else fails, your troops troup can take him out onto the Steppe and do their thing.

I think this may be the best suggestion I've seen all week.

Great! I'd love to see him plucking chickens in the wind too

Although I think the feathers thing is much more David Cameron's lesson - "you thought you could just offer this little referendum, effortlessly win it and emerge stronger than ever - but now look what you have unleashed, and you can't get all your feathers back again!"

At my brown and flame school we were allowed to call the mistresses by nicknames from their surnames, Tompkins becoming Tommy etc.

At my supposed to be brown and fawn but anything vaguely brown-ish or fawn-ish even if it's a blue-ish shade because after all it's the 1970s school the older teachers took it as a bit of a compliment if you gave them a nickname based on their surnames. I think they believed it to be a sign of affection, not sure we saw it like that. But the younger generation didn't like it, and you got into trouble if you called them anything except Miss or Sir. We tended to refer to them by surnames only amongst ourselves.

Is Madge the only CS mistress who doesn't have a nickname? I'm not counting Madame as a nickname because it's a title. And OK I know 'the Abbess' is technically a title too, but it's much more tongue-in-cheek. Shouldn't Madge have been 'Betty' or some such?

The feathers can't be Cameron's lesson, because he was already Head Boy. It's more Gove's, the wannabe Head Boy who then found there were other reasons besides Cameron filling the post that meant he wasn't chosen - but by then too late to take back all his disloyalties. BJ, on the other hand, must have Bettany DNA in him if you go back far enough, because he was just as disloyal but ended up as a fairly senior prefect all the same.

She might be the only significant mistress without a nickname (allowing for all the necessary subjectiveness in deciding who is 'significant' enough!) - but I think there are others. Ivy Norman? Marjorie Durrant? Any one of the three Mlles? Later on nicknames seem to become compulsory but in the Tyrol era it seems 50-50.

Very very good point about BJ and the evidence of his Bettany DNA.

Oh look a Constance Felicity (or Felicity Constance) on the baby names thread!

I love it when CS names pop up on the baby names board.

I didn't realise that Forever Amber (of Jennifer Penrose reading-smut-instead-of-gardening fame) was actually banned! (If only in Boston...) Perhaps it was rather more scandalous than I'd given it credit for. (Although this makes it all the more amusing that, presumably, EBD sent all her impressionable young readers off to find out exactly what made it so inappropriate...)

Well girls, the forecast looks very wet for tomorrow so time for a carol rehearsal methinks:

Once in royal David's city
Stood a lowly cattle yurt
Where Joey Maynard lay another baby etc

Thanks to whoever recommended Heather - I enjoyed it, though the ending is a bit Redheads-ish. Does anyone else suspect that EBD thought that Janie was too good / nice a character to waste so she'd just try to turn Joey into her and hope nobody noticed? (Obviously adding a few more babies and making her a bit more interfering)

There's an interesting scene in Exile, I think, which was deleted from the Armada version, of Joey and Janie meeting for the first time. Much mention of both characters' beautiful skin. They naturally become immediate fast friends, which is the reason why all the Ozanne/Chester/Lucy children have brevet-auntied Jo, despite lack of much evidence of actual interaction (think only that bit and the bit in Highland Twins where Jo goes round for breakfast when the train is delayed, also deleted from the Armada version).

All together now, baby angels, no slacking at the back there:

God rest ye merry, Chalet girls, let nothing ye despair,
Not even when you’ve boiled the clock or tilted on your chair,
Or dressed as noble savages and made the locals stare.
Oh tidings of powder in the bath
Didn’t we laugh?
Oh tidings of powder in the bath.

Remember, gentle Chalet girls, work hard and play the game,
And when you’ve Vaselined the board, stand up and take the blame,
Strive every day to be a credit to the brown-and-flame,
Oh tidings of boiling up the clock
Terrible shock!
Oh tidings of boiling up the clock.

And ever speak, ye Chalet girls, in tones so soft and low,
For gentlewomen do not shout (or shriek or screech), you know,
Pray think about what Shakespeare said so many years ago,
Oh tidings of writing out those lines
Squillions of times
Oh tidings of writing out those lines.

Dream sweet, oh blessed Chalet girls, of work and rest and play,
Of arguing effect to cause and back the other way,
Of romping 'round the mountainside and sleeping ‘midst the hay,
Oh tidings of cloves in apple pie
Give it a try,
Oh tidings of cloves in apple pie.

And when at last it’s time to leave, take memories galore,
Of Special Milk and lakes and cakes, and doctors by the score,
So send your children to the School – ‘twill thrill them to the core,
Oh tidings of countless of sets of twins,
Triplets and quinns,
Oh the measureless, the countless Bett'ny twins.

Brilliant.

(And why do I feel like crying?)