I need a Chalet School fix

[Dilbertian]

Please help:

Where can I download a Chalet School book? I'm astonished that I cannot find any as ebook.

(When you're under the weather, nothing quite hits the spot like a bit of EBD escapism.)

We're just being silly. Online invitations for instant gratification aren't usually associated with wholesome boarding school tales, that's all!

@Classica

We're just being silly. Online invitations for instant gratification aren't usually associated with wholesome boarding school tales, that's all!

Solid lumps of comfort ahoy!

@Classica

Forgive me, Miss Brent-Dyer, for my vulgarity. I feel ashamed.

Are you Elma ‘Goes to Roadhouses Unchaperoned With a Man Named Stuart’ Conroy? The St Mildred’s Fast Girl, who plays bridge on Sunday?

I remember Elma! She was a bitch if memory serves, who received scandalous letters from that Stuart character. But of course, exploring ones burgeoning sexuality was the hallmark of a total cow. Much healthier to never notice or mention the male of the species until you're 19, when you're married off to your former doctor and start reproducing at an alarming rate.

I would absolutely recommend: The Chalet Girls Grow Up: A Sequel to the Chalet School Series by MERRYN WILLIAMS

Obviously not EBD but I loved it.

@StrychnineInTheSandwiches Thank you for the Beswitched recommendation! I downloaded it from the library and inhaled it in a couple of hours. Really, really good.

@MajorCarolDanvers

I would absolutely recommend: The Chalet Girls Grow Up: A Sequel to the Chalet School Series by MERRYN WILLIAMS

Obviously not EBD but I loved it.

It’s regarded with frank horror by a lot of CS fans, who think its kitchen-sink misery tainted the series. I thought it was kind of hilarious…

@Classica, the proper way to get married is for a masterful doctor to ‘decide what you mean to him’, be hailed as a ‘solid lump of comfort’ by you in some crisis though you’re just a Jolly Schoolgirl, and then for you to spend your life alternately sedated and pregnant.

The insufferable Robin singing Joey back from the jaws of death, everyone suspected of having TB and being subjected to fresh air, creamy milk and a trilingual education, but never actually developing it, weirdly sickly religious interludes, an obsession with cakes and curtseying etc. Fabulous.

Nailed it! As has spending your life alternately sedated and pregnant. I think it shows that EBD never married or had children herself. I was also not hugely surprised to learn that the boarding school she set up and ran herself (in England, not the Alps, disappointingly) was not very successful.

I've got dozens of them, mostly in ancient paperback form. I think I may have read the lot. I used to buy them with my pocket money when they were all still in print as very cheap Armada paperbacks. Didn't know then how heavily abridged they were, but as far as I can make out a lot of the abridgement relates to the endless descriptions of the shows, concerts and sales of work, so no great loss.

@Dilbertian

Thanks for the Abe Books tip. I've ordered 3 books - 2 of which I have definitely not read. But I'm going to have to wait to read them! It's just not fair. I'm poorly and I want to read them nooooooowwwww 😭

I'll probably be well again by the time they come!

So which three have you ordered? Don't keep us in suspense.

A Leader in the Chalet School, Rivals of the Chalet School and Eustacia Goes to the Chalet School.

I've also been dipping in and out of this article about girls' school stories. Interesting. But not escapist.

www.ju90.co.uk/his.htm

I'd love to re-read the Christmas scene from 'The School at the Chalet' where they spend Christmas with Frieda's family.

@Dilbertian

A Leader in the Chalet School, Rivals of the Chalet School and Eustacia Goes to the Chalet School.

Rivals and Eustacia are two of my favourites, along with Jo Of and Lintons — still in the endearing, smallish stage, Joey hasn’t morphed into the icon of untouchable awfulness she becomes later, and the girls do normal things like go out to buy apples from the apple woman and have disastrous walks which involve them climbing mountains and showing up the Saints.

But I think my favourite thing about the early books is that no one is endlessly reminiscing about the good old Tyrol days because they’re still happening (I mean, by the Swiss books, I just wanted ONE current CS girl to say ‘Yeah, how quaint — maybe move on now?’ to Joey, or a triplet to roll her eyes about Mamma’s embarrassing reminiscences), and also Joey didn’t have any children whose number and varying colouring she could boast about yet, she was just a schoolgirl who was popular and had a nice voice but was also a bit of a twit some of the time.

I wouldn’t have minded if she boasted about her successful book, but 11 kids just makes you speculate about the state of her pelvic floor…

Books!

Yeah, the all-knowing, ever-forgiving Joey and her absurd fecundity. Weren't all her family ridiculously fecund? The series is gorgeously escapist, but she took suspension of disbelief just that little bit too far.

@Dilbertian

Yeah, the all-knowing, ever-forgiving Joey and her absurd fecundity. Weren't all her family ridiculously fecund? The series is gorgeously escapist, but she took suspension of disbelief just that little bit too far.

Dick and Mollie used to intrigue me — these young, warm-hearted likeable characters who just kept pumping out babies in India who were expressed back to Europe to the Die Rosen nursery at a rate of knots.

I mean, I get that it was normal for Raj Brits to send their children ‘home’, but they were conceiving so compulsively that they once left two born-close-together babies at the Sonnalpe on the same furlough, and while ‘mercurial’ Mollie seemed mildly tearful about it, she immediately cheered up by giving Joey a typewriter!

How many other CS fans felt smug last year when the rest of the world was learning the word 'furlough' for the first time?

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

How many other CS fans felt smug last year when the rest of the world was learning the word 'furlough' for the first time?

I first encountered it in 'What Katy Did Next' - yes, I felt smug

My smugness was tempered by the fact that I’m pretty sure that as a child CS reader I pronounced it ‘furloff.’

But 'furl off' would be a much better way to pronounce it.

Oh yes, I doubt very much I knew how to pronounce it as a child!

-ough is a right bugger for pronunciation.

Slough (place), bough, plough
Slough (off, e.g. dead skin), rough, tough, enough
Furlough, though, dough
Through
Trough, cough
Lough (Irish loch)
Thorough, borough

And another one when you add in ought, wrought etc.

As you were!

How many children did she end up with in the end? And does the include her ‘adopted’ ones?

I also find Biddy so bizarre, originally she’s shipped to the village school but they later decide she’s too bright for that and the whole school adopts her

I also enjoyed the abbey school books, they don’t seem as well known as the chalet school?

Need to dig out the copies I have and see if I can find more.

I remember those. Did they have something to do with country dancing?

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Characters/ChaletSchool

This says 11. Very funny analysis of the Maynard offspring, btw!