#chalet school

I make a note of British as this definitely one of those cultural differences between UK and USA…

Dick is a normal name/nickname! Yes, it has gone out of fashion in the last couple of decades (influence of Americanisation?) but it is still around.

I remember two people with the name Dick growing up. Not my generation, admittedly. One was my parents’ age and one was my grandparents’ age. But the older one was a close family friend who we would see all the time. (I do think there was a Dick in first school with me, but I might be misremembering so I’m not technically counting it).

I was also an avid reader as a kid and read a lot of popular British children’s books. Off the top of my head the characters I can remember with the name Dick? Dick Bettany (Chalet School), Dick Callum (Arthur Ransome Books) and Dick (Famous Five). I’m sure there was more. Needless to say this name was still relatively normalised for British kids in the 90s-00s even if it was going out of fashion as an actual name.

I feel like it is a very recent (hello, American internet) thing that the name has become so improper/awkward. Not helped by modern filtering which will recognise it as only a “bad” word.

Anyway, to bring this to a point - in fan fiction it always seems to be “Parents didn’t speak English/didn’t know what it meant”, which is a reason but always feels way overused as a excuse (and where does the idea that his parents’ don’t speak English come from? Have I just missed this in the comics somewhere?).

There are many other reasons for Dick to have the name he does without it getting put down to a “language barrier”: Why not just that they were in a more culturally diverse community and the British nickname was acceptable (especially as much of Europe tends to lean more to British English than American English)? Why not be because a relative/friend also was called that and he was called after them? That his parents liked a book/media character with that name? That “Dickie” as a young child’s nickname is cute but that his parents assumed he would grow out of it as he grew up - but he never did because they died and that’s what they called him? Just that this is what his parents called him and it doesn’t need excuses?

Also Alfred? Would recognise it as a potentially awkward name for modern times but he isn’t going to find anything wrong with it as a name or have problems with using it (other than the politeness of using a nickname vs full first name). With his age & background he probably has known plenty of people in his life that have used it.

Hillerska Boarding School from Young Royals

Chalet School from Chalet School

Groosham Grange from Groosham Grange

Kinzville Academy from Webkinz

Gravity Falls High School from Gravity Falls

The top two schools will advance to the bracket rounds. The third place winner could possibly advance as well if it gets a large enough number of votes.

hehe, thanks!

1. Who would you rather swap aesthetics/outfits with for a day?

They're all wearing school uniforms, so it's hardly going to make much odds. I'll take the gentian blue edition as that always sounded nice.

2. Who do you team up with in a 2v2 volleyball match? Which side wins?

Con. We can both be hopeless at it together and let the other two win so then we can get on with chatting about writing fantasy or historical fiction.

3. If each of them got one million dollars, who would waste/spend their money the fastest?

Margot. The others would both definitely spend a little, buy gifts for their large family and then put the rest away. If one of them was going to do something wild with it, it'd be Margot. I'm not sure what though, because $1 million in Chalet School terms is a LOT.

Mind you, Len might found a scholarship for the school if she's left it. Maybe that's the most likely way for one of them to use it up sooner.

(Also, Joey would not approve! XD)

4. Who would die first in a horror movie? Who would be the survivor?

Margot would die first. If anyone's going to run off from the group or do the thing that you've been told not to go, or go to the place, it's going to be Margot.

Len surviving with the other two dead would be the most actual horror this scenario can conjure, so she'll have to sacrifice herself to make sure Con gets out.

Con will sleepwalk and writes horror novels ever after in this disturbing AU :-(

5. They're all on the run from the law! What crimes did each commit and who is most likely to get caught?

I don't mean to keep blaming Margot, but I strongly suspect that she's committed the crime and the other two are refusing to say which of them committed the crime and all on the run together to protect their fellow triplet.

And from an outside-the-books perspective, I was also trying to figure out when EBD’s obsession with large families started - in the Tirol years, I don’t remember more than three or four siblings at most generally (three Mensches, three Burnetts, four von Eschenaus I think?). There are plenty of pairs too (like the Maranis and the Stevenses and the Lecoutiers), and only children - a lot of whom are a problem in some way, like Grizel and Eustacia and Corney, but I don’t recall their problem-ness being linked to their being onlies at all like is often done in the later years with people like Emerence (generally by Joey). I think the large-family-madness might start with the Bettanys, perhaps? And then of course it spread to the Russells and Maynards, and other favourite families like the Lucys and Chesters.

book you’ve reread the most times? That's a difficult one to answer, but I'd say probably The School at the Chalet by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer. It's one of my top Comfort Books!!

what is the first book you remember reading yourself? I remember reading a book in J2 where I wrote down all the words that I didn't know the meanings of or couldn't read, but for some reason I wrote down "pole" which I knew damn well I was familiar with. I can't remember the plot of the story but it was a mystery of some sort, and the girl (who was called Polly) tried to give up her seat to an adult on the bus and was mocked for it, so the next time there was an adult who needed a seat she didn't offer it, and then she got into trouble at school.

[side rant: I hope this stupid custom has disappeared bc primary-school children should absolutely be sitting down on buses wtf]

This has been on my mind for the last few days in particular, after some, discourse, but has been something I think about on and off all the time.

By chance I came across a copy of the first Chalet School back when I was eight/nine and I was hooked. Yes, it’s a school story, but you know what? There’s a hell of a lot packed into those books.

They were written at the time they were set - the school starts out in Austria in 1925 - Elinor M. Brent-Dyer reacted to the things that happened there as she was writing them. There is no way that that wasn’t a hell of a wild ride for her (the school moved to Guernsey pre-WWII when it was too dangerous for them to stay in Austria.....and then....YEAH)

I knew from reading these books that people knew/saw the second world war coming. There are Germans who were against the N*zi party in the series, characters you knew died, suffered and did what they could to help people on the ground.

They are SHORT books, but there’s a lot packed in there. They are totally a product of their time, but they are also a lot more liberal than we are taught was acceptable at the time (there are specific things that are out right said, that are counter to opinions of the day - and it still amazes me that they were allowed to be published during WWII with some of the messages in them)

OH and Jack Maynard punched a N*zi before Captain America even existed - and he did it as a non-super hero (there was also A LOT of ‘as much as we would like to, we can not kick up a fuss because it will get people killed’ - the punching happens in a very specific situation - it’s in the book written JUST before/during the start of the war as well)

The Chalet School league is an amazing thing (and is how you find out about aspects of the war, and is why I side eye people who say ‘oh people didn’t know that was going down’ - look folks, if it’s in this school series written as the war was happening, by a lady in england, PEOPLE KNEW) (this article talks about the league: http://www.ju90.co.uk/edu.htm )

They aren’t perfect, but they are fascinating, and a good read for a view point of that era and the events going down. I also feel like reading them has effected how I tend to look at/react to texts that deal with certain issues. We aren’t super heroes, we can just do our best to help others and make things better rather than worse.