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 just read Heather and have calculated that they only spend two hours a day in formal lessons with their governess. In my former profession I would have declared this unsatisfactory.
I think it rambles a bit as a book actually. First Heather has to be redeemed then the child of the vicarage.
Too many characters in search of a plot?

Aww, I love their little school with the stove that stands on a sheet of asbestos! I think EBD definitely saw it as a book of two halves - first Heather's unhappiness at leaving Ripley/redemption by Janie, and then Heather herself using what she'd learned at Ripley (ie the schoolgirl code, not being priggish, bravery etc) to redeem Cressida. The good and bad of a big public school, in fact! And I like that Heather doesn't teach Cressie - she just fights with her and gives her unvarnished opinion until Cressie gradually learns not to be a prig.

Hello everyone, i'm not entirely a new girl, but I have been having ripping adventures trying to find the school after the last thread school I was on relocated. I've basically been wandering around the world unaccompanied but it's okay because I'm a Guide and therefore equipped for anything.

Could someone PM me the details of the shared drive?

Laura and Imp, I've PM'd you both. (Apologies btw Imp - I thought I'd already sent you the details!)

Drat you, Nell, I've just purchased Regiment of Women on Kindle!

If it's any consolation, I'm a bad influence on myself too - I promptly ordered Legend by the same author after reading (parts of) the thesis. Yes, hurry up and read it so we can discuss. You should also totally write that PhD mornington. I keep coming back to wanting to write a paper on something related (the exact thing I want to write varies slightly each time I come back to it, I think, but essentially it's about lesbian readings of the CS). Probably I should stop pretentiously regarding it as a bona fide academic project, re-brand it as a blog post (or a small collection of blog posts) and actually get on with writing it at last.

Whatever you write, link us to it on here! You too, Mornington.

My reading of Regiment of Women has been interrupted by DS, aged 2, who peed on my phone. Phone is now on radiator drying out.

Cheddar, we must be sisters by marriage or something: I dropped my phone down the toilet the other day because I was too busy trying to tell DS off at the same time. Mine has survived, apparently unscathed. I hope yours will too.

I am reading Seven Scamps at last. I'd vaguely anticipated not enjoying it very much, possibly because I have a recollection of EJO being a bit nonplussed by the dedication. I am liking it a lot so far, though. I think 5yo Tim is pretty well-drawn (even if he does suffer from the inevitable toddler-talk). The arrival of the new stepmother is very well done, I think. Interesting to contrast her with Grizel's stepmother, who is far less sympathetically portrayed, and whose perspective we never get to see.

Imp every time I see your name I have a double take. I'm sure you should be frolicking about a small, disc-shaped world, playing music-with-rocks-in

Nothing to apologise for Nell, I'm an app-illiterate idiot!

Rue that is indeed my usual habitat, but I rather think music-with-rocks-in would be frowned on at the Chalet Yurt School (well spotted, most people are oblivious, bit of a minor character I suppose )

Chudleigh isn't on the shared drive ☹️️. But I'm delighted it exists, and it gives me renewed hope that the manuscripts of Why Gay Left China, Jesanne and the Hidden Staircase, and Joey and the Robin in India will eventually turn up.

By the way, how (and why??) does a character called Arminel!!! turn into the prosaic Gillian?

Hello everyone. I'm at the station at the bottom of the mountain, could you send a delightfully handsome (and inexplicably single when there's a whole school full of pretty women nearby) doctor to drive me up to school once he's had a quick look at the tubercular woman who's coughing her lungs up on the platform?

I was a mistress at the school many years ago but left to marry my sweetheart who I saw all of once a year, mentioned smugly daily and sulked when the mail didn't arrive bang on time.
Astonishingly things didn't go that well when we wed. He didn't like the cold baths, the morning walks or talking French on Tuesday and Saturday and German on Wednesdays and Fridays. He also felt my strudel rolling technique was clumsy. Then he had a mistress and a gambling problem business losses and caught pleurisy. I nursed him devotedly but he died as did our twins, my mother and the neighbour three doors down. I had a complete breakdown which required a stay at Penny Rest but now it's three weeks later I can't wait to get back to school and find work to fill my empty life (and find a new husband )

Shall I take prayers for the c of e girls who'd like to hear about my miserable marriage?

Ah, but I have a copy of Soul Music signed by the man himself! I've just started DD (9) on the Tiffany Aching books, she's enjoying them so far but I'm not sure what she's making of the Nac Mac Feegle

I think GGBP have reprinted Chudleigh Hold. The story of Jessane and her staircase is in The Lost Staircase which they have also republished. I too however hold out hopes for one day someone emptying a box that belonged to some old Aunt and finding a manuscript for Gay's story hidden away inside!

I have also often wondered how Arminel Chudleigh became Gillian Culver...and considering EBD often used slightly unusual names what she didn't just leave it who knows!!

Well now I'm jealous you'd better watch out for sharp stones hidden in snowballs this winter!

My two are more at the "Where's my cow? " level of Sir T. But I did download the audiobooks of Tiffany Aching in preparation, and I'm really enjoying them

Have we all been expelled? This thread has disappeared from the Children's Books topic and I had to do a search for it. What's the gaff? Didn't MNHQ like our scrapbooks which we plastered all over AIBU offered to the poor children to keep them occupied? Was our special milk a little too special? Did the baby angels bring down the ceiling of the MN speisesaal when they were rehearsing in their dormy?

Perhaps if we cry ourselves into a bad headache which as any fule kno is the only true way to indicate repentence MN will relent and re-instate us.

Has anyone been to collect Northernlurker yet? Such a wonderful asset to the staff. I would go but I have burnt out the engine of my car running it on reindeer droppings. I could freewheel down, but how to get back?

You need Dr Jack to collect her in the Monster (which I believe is an old bath-chair combined with a bicycle)!

Yeah, definitely get Dr Jack to fetch her. Dr Jem doesn't think women's weak wrists should be allowed to drive up or down these hills anyway.

mornington my lamb I can assure you we haven't all been expelled

(Did you unwittingly put it on your blocked threads list? Not that I've ever done that myself, oh no...)

Expelled? Only midnight bacon consumption or liaison with Nazis would lead to such a drastic response. We are all the nice sort of naughty which can be redeemed by prayer or a wholesome admiration for the elusive beauty of Gill Linton.

Still at the station. Would I get more attention if I threw myself in the lake? There must be one nearby, this school has the affinity for deep water that Joan Baker has for inappropriate eye shadow.

Oh dear, we are on our way, but it is 1377km across the steppes as the crow flies, and no cream cakes en route.
Do you think there is a Chalet School dentist called Phil McCavity?

I like bacon for breakfast

May I request the shared drive details too please, many thanks