Is there a current chalet school thread? Anyone fancy it?

[FelicityBeedle]

Was introduced to these on MN a few years ago, having a reread. Forgotten the extent to which I want to shake Mary Lou!

Imagine Matey having to deal with periods. She'd probably give them brandy.

I reckon Frau Mieders was always nipping at Matey's brandy stash after cooking classes. "What is it this time, Anna?" "Margot Maynard spilled flour everywhere. It took forever to clean up. I need a drink, stat."

I always imagine the abbess likes a tipple, her and Bill. I think Bill makes a face at some schnapps when she does her ankle but I bet she likes the good stuff

If the gym slips were woven wool, you could be fairly confident that they were only spot cleaned or brushed during term time except for complete disasters. It’s one of the reasons for the emphasis on smocks and pinafores.

I don’t know how available dry cleaning was (my mother, born in the 20s, considered it a luxury), but you could sponge woollen suits with turpentine at home.

I’ve seen a 1920s uniform list which allowed boys 3 suits including one for Sundays.

@Papergirl1968

Girls probably started later in those days, because they'd have been smaller, thinner and lighter than the majority of teenagers today, with a few exceptions like poor Sophie Hammel, who was always described as big! I reckon the average would have been 14 to 15, but 16 or 17 wouldn't have been unusual.

Even allowing for different ideas about average body size, EBD seems to have had some odd ideas about weight — doesn’t she invariably describe Nancy Wilmot as ‘plump’, and then in one of the later books tell the reader she’s 5ft 10” and weights slightly over ten stone??? (I think it’s in the bit in Althea where they find a mysterious burglar searching in their drawers (!) and subdue him by sitting on him.) But either way, she wouldn’t be ‘plump’ at ten stone and that height! By modern standards someone of that weight and height would be bang in the middle of the healthy BMI range.

God knows how she envisaged poor Sophie Hamel, who we’re always told is ‘big’. And if Joey was actually ‘goblin-like’ in her unhealthy early Tyrol days, did she look as skeletal as Gollum??

The artist who did the '80s/'90s Armada books seemed to think so, if Princess is anything to go by. Joey does look a bit like Gollum on it. Although it's not as bad as manly Joan Baker.

Do you mean this one with a sort of terrifying Dolph Lundgren Joan Baker, @KevinTheGoat? I'd never even seen that one! Is that supposed to be Rosamund in the background, looking like she's at least 35 and extremely harassed? Though I suppose she should be, as Dolph Baker is clearly about to whack her with that tennis racket...

I had this one, where a permless, rather chic (even 'dainty') Joan looks a bit like Christine Keeler, and where the weird bit is Rosamund, who appears to be leaping across the road, grinning widely as if she's onstage in a big musical number singing about feeling very, very happy, rather than seeing an ex-friend-turned-bully unexpectedly on the street, while recovering from emergency dentistry...

Bloody hell Joan is terrifying in that! I agree Ros looks demented in the second too

Those are truly terrifying covers.
I can't see their PE/tennis skirts being that short in those days. They are similar to the ones we wore in the 80s.

This cover always makes me laugh - is it Margot in the water? Not going to end well ...

I love all these covers. I properly love the original early covers (Nina K Brisley?), but the ridiculous Armada ones are their own delight.

It's an interesting point I'd not really thought about before, re: the 1980s covers having a very 1980s look. I guess the thinking was that it made them look more relevant and less dated for the (then!) modern readership, but it's then an interesting juxtaposition with the books themselves being very much of their time (and by the Problem era, perhaps anachronistic even then).

My first CS was this one, which was a very confusing cover - it actually belongs to Head Girl

It looks quite famous-five like, doesn't it.

Even as a child, I always thought the grandfather-from-Heidi figure on this one was just wondering what she was wearing ...

Jo Returns is set in the 30s, yet Joey has sixties hair and a sixties dress. Oh, Armada. Actually, I did like some of the sixties hairdos on the CS girls.

@PigGondola yes, that's the one I mean. Angry manly Joan and her perm. One of the girls on the cover of '80s Armada Theodora also looks like a bloke, I think it's Margot?

Nina K Brisley's art is the best, especially in the early Tyrol books. Her little Joey is so cute.

@YesToThis

This cover always makes me laugh - is it Margot in the water? Not going to end well ...

Yes, that is Margot and Prunella Davidson is the girl diving in to rescue her.

And Biddy O'Ryan gazing fetchingly into the middle distance in the hope of finding her doctor ...

@KevinTheGoat

Jo Returns is set in the 30s, yet Joey has sixties hair and a sixties dress. Oh, Armada. Actually, I did like some of the sixties hairdos on the CS girls.

@PigGondola yes, that's the one I mean. Angry manly Joan and her perm. One of the girls on the cover of '80s Armada Theodora also looks like a bloke, I think it's Margot?

Nina K Brisley's art is the best, especially in the early Tyrol books. Her little Joey is so cute.

Yes,that makes me think of her Princess which has Joey looking like a proper child. I suppose Armada wanted more of a cool teenage vibe

Some are daft! Joey must be the most described character in the books yet we get this

@FelicityBeedle

Some are daft! Joey must be the most described character in the books yet we get this

Is that meant to be the triplets behind her?! Surely they are at least 8? 10? by this stage?

@FelicityBeedle

Some are daft! Joey must be the most described character in the books yet we get this

And is that Robin discovering her in the crate?

Mind you, given that she’s grabbing a stone-wielding Nazi, this is presumably a somewhat unflatteringly dumpy, pudding-cheeked Robin on this cover?

And who is this confronting this nattily-uniformed Nazi on a different Exile cover — Joey and Robin?

And this 80s Eustacia cover cracks me up — she looks like a nosy, disapproving neighbour in a sitcom (all she needs is a bosom to hoik), and who on earth are the others meant to be? Is the toothy, dark-haired very boyish-looking girl Joey?

I quite like that depiction of Eustacia actually! Also can we all agree that Stacey is an even worse name than Eustacia? Tash might have been a nice shortening

@FelicityBeedle

I quite like that depiction of Eustacia actually! Also can we all agree that Stacey is an even worse name than Eustacia? Tash might have been a nice shortening

But isn’t Eustacia pronounced Ewe-STAY- sha? Or Ewe-STAY- see-a?

I’m never convinced Eustacia is worse name than many other CS names, anyway. It’s better than Grizel, Evadne, Madge, Cornelia, Mary-Lou, Zephyr, Josette, and, while I like Helena and Constance as names, Len and Con are awful.

Yeah it’s Eustacia with a long A but CS nicknames never make sense, see Len for Helena and Ricki for Richenda which is said with a Sh sound

EBD definitely had a thing for girls with boys' names. Dickie (Delicia), Tom (Lucinda Muriel), Len (Helena), Jack (Jacynth), Bill (Miss Wilson), Charlie (Miss Stewart, reference to Bonnie Prince Charlie), Ted (Theodora), and Joey is more of a man's name too, although I remember Katie Holmes' character in Dawson's Creek was a Joey.

'Con' is also a swear word in French, but I'm not sure if EBD knew that.

I’m always interested in how, in a fictional universe filled with fanciful and/or international girls’ names (Gisela, Bernhilda, Jacynth, Elfie, Loveday, Ilonka, Blossom, Evadne, Luigia, Bette, Renata, Alixe, Elise, Carlotta, Elisaveta, Charmian, Primrose, Yseult etc) EBD has Joey give hers rather plain English names, even though several of them are born in Guernsey or Switzerland, and Joey is presented as such an easily international figure, linguistically and otherwise, and so given to zaniness.

Helena, Constance, Margaret, Felicity, Cecily, Philippa...hmmm, yes those are pretty English names. The closest she gets to a 'foreign' name is giving Cecil Marya as a middle name, in honour of Robin's dead mum. I know the triplets are named after established characters (Miss Wilson, Miss Stewart and both Madge and Margot Venables) and they all have Mary as a first name, which apparently is a Catholic thing. Joey's rationale is that she doesn't want to call her daughters names that might date.

Merryn Williams evidently didn't like 'Len' either, as she has Len calling herself Helena in CGGU.