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....

And I was born in 1971!!!!!

The Chalet School and the Lost Daughter. Ho hum. 🤔

Cripes, 1971 was certainly a landmark year.

It could be. I have no time for small families and may have had triplets or quads or something and mislaid a few here and there.

Did anyone else catch the program about children's TV the other night? Not exactly sure what it was (helpful) but there was a bit about Valerie Singleton on Blue Peter racing a motor boat. Happened in 1968 - year before Althea was published and made me wonder if motor boats were a 'big thing' around then, or if EBD watched it and thought she'd pinch the idea. I've always thought the whole motor boat thing was a bit random, coming from a school that was pretty conservative in most ways!

Well, I may have a locket, that is hard to open, with a photo inside to prove I am someone's 23rd cousin 10 times removed thus allowing me to be a part of the Bettany/Maynard/Russell family.

Oooh, a regatta! Bags me to walk the greasy pole and collect the bag o' mutton! I think I could also manage to ride a panicked carthorse dressed a a mermaid/Neptune/Amphitrite (btw, does EBD think all wild Irishers hunt to hounds or something? Cf Deira wanting to have a horse before her/Norah Fitzgerald/Mollie Bettany saying 'any daughter of mine could manage that old spaltreen' or something equally colloquial made up).

Btw, I recently watched a documentary about the Chalet School in which lots of women in early 90s Deirdre Barlow glasses, sweatshirts and paisley calf-length skirts went to Pertisau am Achensee and got on the steamer.

Btw, I recently watched a documentary about the Chalet School in which lots of women in early 90s Deirdre Barlow glasses, sweatshirts and paisley calf-length skirts went to Pertisau am Achensee and got on the steamer.

Have you been imbibing too freely of the light country wines or the special milk Cheddar my lamb? Or has there really been a documentary about the Chalet School? I must see this!

Loving the idea of a 70year-old EBD watching children's TV for plot ideas. I think she must have been watching Magic Roundabout when she was writing some of the later Swiss books.

didyoueverstoptothink.wordpress.com/tag/elinor-m-brent-dyer/ Chalet blog that made me laugh a lot.

Documentary!

Best bit in that blog is "OH NOES THERE IS A PINK WORM IN THE ENGINE!" Also a post entitled 'The Chalet School: If There's A Mountain We'll Try To Jump Off It'.

Just watching the YouTube documentary. I am so relieved to find out that Elinor never owned or drove a car. 😀 Very interesting to see all the fans we don't look like that do we 😮

No, we all look trig and trim. they all look like my MIL and her sisters

Ahhhh I've seen that documentary before. It made me very happy but no, it's true, we are all trig and trim in our gentian blue revers.

There's something about EBD and Blue Peter colliding that feels all sorts of wrong to me. I don't really think of the Chalet School as persisting much beyond the 1940s, which is partly to do with hardly bothering with the Swiss books (also the way the Gornetz Platz is in a sort of weird time warp of earphones and radio parties) and Blue Peter feels as improbable a Chaletian bedfellow as, well. Armed robbers and motorboat races, I suppose.

There's something about EBD and Blue Peter colliding that feels all sorts of wrong to me.

Oh dear, you've got me thinking about all those other 60s programmes Jack was secretly watching up at the San while Joey had her radio parties. Emergency Ward 10, perhaps, as comfort viewing? Or a good police drama like Dixon of Dock Green? 'Mrs X has taken a turn for the worse' would have been code for 'Crossroads is starting in half an hour, get yourself here', and 'Mr Y won't last through the night' meant 'It's the final of Opportunity Knocks'. Margot's devil was, of course inspired by early episodes of Dr Who.

The platz existed in an imaginary nether world where the fifties and sixties never happened, and the world of post ww2 Switzerland is very much reminiscent of Austria between the wars. Except that the only way EBD could maintain that was to ensure that the school and SAN and all who belong to them do not ever in any way interact with 'local' society.

I reread three go yesterday. And then read the unabridged version. There is a big huge plot device that amarda removed. I'd never read Gillian Linton's love story before. And the relationships between characters make so much more sense.

Plus they seem so much more human at the school when you have a teacher coming in and plaiting a girl's hair for her, and so on.

Also rereading thrilling term at janeways. So many awesome EBD special names. And 2 sets of twin 12 year olds arriving in a single term. Harmony and melody, and then philomela and philomena, whose parents are Phillip and Phyllis and other three sisters are phyllida, Philadelphia and Phillipa.

I realised too just how many truly abusive fathers there are in these books. In the unabridged version of three go miles Barras is beyond awful.

Oooh yes, Emerence, I do love the Janeways names! Melody and Harmony - plus the conceit that only girls with fathers belonging to the Arts can attend the school.

I never read the Armada version of Three - it was the very last book I ever got hold of, so I had read a lot about Verity refusing to sing carols and OOAO, but it felt almost flat when I did read it. I think I had hyped it up so much as my Last Chalet Book that only a proper, melodramatic Rivals or Princess would have done the trick, chockful of kidnappings, fireballs, the KKK, falling-through-ice-heroics, and near-death experiences saved only by the singing of the Red Sarafan. Three is really rather placid in comparison - Mary-Lou's 'brain fever' just doesn't quite live up to Joey's pleuro-pneumonia (or in fact Joey's brain fever in School At).

I was also massively underwhelmed by Three Go. I think I remember reading it (most likely Armada) as a child, because I remember expecting it to be about the triplets starting school and of course it's not. In the context of the entire series, it's one of the better post-war ones, but if you view the series chronologically there is imo a big drop in quality between Gay from China and the three short stories, and then another big drop between Rosalie and Three Go.

That said, Gillian Linton's is one of a vanishingly small number of romances which actually makes any sense at all! Miles ahead of dubious shit like Hilary Burn being sedated for days by random Dr-Graves-who-walks-with-a-big-knife and then suddenly being engaged to him.

I rather like three go, other than the rather twee voices they lisp in to show they're juniors from time to time, and Joey's delight in calling people "Mokes" after picking it up from OOAO, which always made me cringe-it's so obviously an attempt to sound "with it"!

It's quite a nice ordinary showing of the new juniors arriving. Although I could never decide whether the third in three go was the third junior (Ruth Barnes wasn't it?) or Clem.

I'm pretty sure the Three Going are Mary-Lou, Verity-Anne and Clem - Ruth doesn't really feature much other than being a generic extra new girl so they can have the "goodness, I hope you don't have a double-barrelled first name too!" gasp.

I thought I'd read the unabridged version but I can't recall Miles/whatever his name is in this book Barras(s) being particularly awful beyond other adults having tempers in the books. Though it's odd how much has changed regarding not just not hitting or spanking children nowadays, but also not dragging or shoving them or locking them in places when needed, nor even shouting at them - which means my kids find most of Blyton and loads of other books from my childhood quite terrifying, when that really wasn't the intent of most of them! The parents in modern books are either so amazingly awful that they aren't taken seriously (Dursleys), or are limited to sighing and saying "I'm really very cross". My mum asked me how I discipline children if I can't hit them and I had to admit that sometimes I wonder... Sometimes I wish I'd never read about children trained to "instant obedience" as my kids really would never make Chalet continentals!

Hallo can I join in? I have been reading my old Chalet School books to my daughter who now wants to go on holiday to Austria next year to see mountains and lakes and all things Austrian.

We are currently enjoying Rivals of the Chalet School where I was rather shocked to read the girls researching the Klu Klux Klan and thinking this a jolly good way to get at the girls from the rival school. This part clearly went right over my head when I read it myself. Tried to vaguely explain it to DD without much success.

Currently waiting for child from other school to fall in the lake to be rescued by Joey (this is the main part I remember about the book) and no doubt the old bronchitis kettle will be dusted off to help her recover from the pneumonia/fever/whatever she will inevitably suffer.

I have been reading my old Chalet School books to my daughter who now wants to go on holiday to Austria next year to see mountains and lakes and all things Austrian.

How on earth have you managed that, Cedar03? Neither of my DDs ever took to the Chalet School and they refused point blank to read them. Welcome, btw.

All together now, girls, a rousing chorus of The Red Sarafan to welcome Cedar03.

Strangely, the scene in Three Go which stays with me is OOAO in the apple orchard with the gardener explaining different types of apple to her. There's something about moving into a house with its own orchard and a gardener who can talk you through apple connoisseurship that evidently appeals to me. It went downhill once they went to school.

mornington I tried various heritage apples a while back, russets etc, and was hugely disappointed that Worcester Pearmains are brown and rough and taste of cotton wool!

Strangely, the scene in Three Go which stays with me is OOAO in the apple orchard with the gardener explaining different types of apple to her. There's something about moving into a house with its own orchard and a gardener who can talk you through apple connoisseurship that evidently appeals to me. It went downhill once they went to school. grin

That scene is possibly one of the reasons I enjoy my tiny orchard of 5 different apple trees.

The ku klux klan bit is jarring. I didn't know what they were talking about when I first read rivals a gazillion years ago, but when I reread it as an edumacated adult I found myself really struggling to forgive EBD for whitewashing violence etc.