CBB Advent Calendar 11th December 2004
The CBB -> Cookies & Drabbles
#1: CBB Advent Calendar 11th December 2004 Author: CBB Triumvirate,  PostPosted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 3:10 pm

Sorry it is so late in the day, weekend business (not that kind, please stop smirking, at 132 you are past that kind of thing!)


When Mary Entwistle described that term in her diary as ‘an unsweetened rice pudding of a time’ she was not being overly descriptive, nor was she using a metaphor, English not being her strong point. She was speaking the plain unvarnished truth. On the first night of term they had been served rice pudding cooked with no sugar and served with no cream or jam. That first night most of the girls had eaten it, too tired after their long journeys across Europe to think much about it. Mary had only come from the Rosleinalpe however and she was unimpressed to say the least.

The following day they had the same desert following Abendessen and this time quite a few grumbles were heard, but that was nothing to the mutinous expressions to be seen on the third day when they discovered that unsweetened rice pudding was on the menu at Mittagessen. This continued for the entire week, and the girls were shocked on the Saturday to find that Matey was suddenly very generous in her doling out of their sweet allowances. The following week saw no improvement to their diet; in fact it got worse as Fruhstuk began to include the unsweetened rice pudding occasionally. It was of course freshly made for each meal, but it was not the usual well-prepared food that the girls at the Chalet School were used to.

The third week saw Kaffee und Kuchen affected occasionally as well. Karen had managed to bake the unsweetened rice pudding into a chewy cake and this was served instead of the usual bread twists. The staff, for once, were present at the meal, Miss Ferrars having passed the kitchen and warned the rest of the staff what was happening. They sat heavily on the riot that almost broke out. The bell for silence was rung more times for that meal than it normally sounded in a whole term. The prefects gathered together quickly after the meal and gave condolences to those who were to take prep that evening. It was on record that none of the prefects taking prep got any of their own work done that evening, although given the circumstances they were lenient in the extreme with sinners.

Unsweetened rice pudding was not the normal food to serve as a main course to a visiting school tennis six, but it was done. It was also served at half term when the girls opened their picnic hampers to find rice pudding sandwiches. The final straw was the day that it was made very runny and served as a drink at morning break. That was when the middles decided something had to be done.


“Rice pudding is awful at the best of times, but to have to eat it unsweetened, and have it so often, is the outside of enough!” declared Mary. “I vote we do something about it before we all end up being dosed by Matey’s caster oil!”
“Well what can we do?” said Wendy Maynard. “Who’s going to take any notice of a bunch of Middles?”
“It depends on exactly what we decide to do,” said Mary. “I’m sure we can think of something. After all, we have a lot to live up to in the way of making an entry in the Legends book, and so far we have failed miserably. Now put your brains in steep all of you. I can’t face rice pudding again any time soon.”
Everyone agreed with that! The problem was to decide what to do about it.
“We could refuse to eat it,” suggested Jan Madeley. “They can’t force us after all.”
“But if we don’t eat it, what else is there to eat? When we get rice pudding, that’s ALL we get for that meal, remember?” Mary was fond of her food and certainly didn’t want to starve!
“What about getting up a deputation to the Head?” suggested Susan Marks. “She can’t eat us after all.”
“She might if she’s as tired of rice pudding as we are! In fact, I’m surprised that she hasn’t done something about it before now. I never heard that she was behind hand in coming forward when she was at this place herself!” Wendy Maynard was well up on the legends of the school, being part of the Family. “I wonder if Granny Maynard could help. She was never a ‘good’ girl at school if you believe only half her stories! I’m sure she could come up with something.”
“That’s no use. She’s gone to stay with that friend of hers in Montreux and won’t be back for weeks, said Mary. “Had you forgotten?”
Wendy muttered something in disgust, and tried to think of an idea for herself.
Finally a quiet voice broke through the heavy silence. “I think I may have an idea,” said Sheila Saunders, much to everyone’s surprise. She had been conspicuous by her habit of keeping herself to herself, though it was clear that she wasn’t homesick, and to find her speaking up was a shock in itself. “We always get plenty of it when they serve it don’t we? Well, we eat as little as we can to keep ourselves from going too hungry, and we smuggle the rest out of the Speisesaal.”
“How? We don’t have anything to carry it in!”
“We have to go prepared of course! Every meal, just in case. Take your tooth mugs and sponge bags, anything that will hold the stuff.”
“But what are we going to do with it when we have it outside the Speisesaal?”
“We wait our chance and leave it on the Head’s desk! All of it!
“But our bags have our names on them! She’ll know who did it!”
“Of course she will! But since we’ll have to own up anyway, what difference will that make? At least she’ll have to do something about it.”

In the Staff Room the subject of conversation was the same – what to do about the rice pudding. The staff were naturally as fed up of the stuff as the girls were, but unlike the girls had already tried to do something about it. They had gone to the Head, who had gone to the kitchen to speak to Karen, but had got exactly nowhere. Karen had inherited her post from her mother and had held it for most of her working life. The fact that she was over retirement age was irrelevant to her, for she had no daughter to pass the post onto, but she was now rather elderly, and her age was affecting her thinking. The Head got no joy out of her interview, and was in despair. The school had never sacked a member of staff in the whole of its life, and she was very loath to do so now. It was becoming a distinct possibility however.

The head was, fortunately for the middles not in her study when they came to deposit their rice pudding. The left their spongebags on her desk and retired to the common room, anxiously awaiting the call to judgement. The staff had had a similar idea, but on finding that someone had beaten them to it decided to leave their offerings in the Head’s flat instead. Braving the pink of her bedroom they left their bags in the middle of her lime green bedspread, runny cold unsweetened rice pudding oozed out and made a sticky mess all over the head’s treasured counterpane.
“That will put the cat among the pigeons,” remarked Jack Lambert, the staff baby and physics teacher.
“You’re telling me, worse than powdering a staff bather, at least that wasn’t the head was it Jack?” said her friend Jose Helston.
“Len would take a joke normally, but she has been rather strange about that bedspread, I suddenly feel 13 again looking at the mess.”
The staff agreed and tracks back to the staff room rather quickly, looking slightly shamefaced.

The prefects had also decided that some direct action was required.
“Granny Maynard would help if she was here, but as she isn’t we need to do something,” said the head Girl, Jack Maynard (her parents deciding that Jack was going to the school boy or not, and everyone kept up the polite fiction that Jack was a short for Jacynth.)
“Yes, but what? I know my granny would cry about it, but I can’t see that is any use here.” Added Renee. As her grandmother was Simone Lecoutier there was a general agreement with this. In the end the prefects decided to save all their rice pudding and deposit it in a neat pile in the school office. This plan carried out, they never opened the connecting door to the study and thus never saw the middles bags on the desk.

All these people would have had justice meted out to them in the usual course of events. This term however was not going according to the usual pattern. None of them had to face the Head. The balance of probability was that they would have preferred Len Entwistle’s justice to what actually happened, but that will never be known as none of them survived to tell the tale. The end came swiftly, or as swift as a rising tide of unsweetened rice pudding can do. Overnight the level of rice pudding flowed out of the industrial sized vats in the recently enlarged kitchen and slowly began to engulf the stoves, the floor, the kitchen, and the entire school along with all its occupants. Unsweetened rice pudding rose relentlessly through the dormitories, covering the sleeping girls, middles, prefects and staff alike. The only clue to what had happened lay in Mary Entwistle’s diary which she had coated early in the term in a patent rice pudding proof coating, pity she had never thought to cover herself in it as well.

#2:  Author: LizB, Location: Oxon, England PostPosted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 3:22 pm

Laughing

Simone Lecoutier
unsweetened rice pudding of a time
"deputation to the head"

Liz

#3:  Author: Kate, Location: Ireland PostPosted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 3:26 pm

Jack Lambert
castor oil
"an unsweetened rice pudding of a time!"

#4:  Author: Dawn, Location: Leeds, West Yorks PostPosted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 3:44 pm

Karen
bread twists
'an unsweetened rice pudding of a time’

#5:  Author: Mihiri, Location: surrey england PostPosted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 4:12 pm

Karen
rice pudding
they sat heavily on the riot that almost broke out

#6:  Author: Kathy_S, Location: midwestern US PostPosted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 4:14 pm

Len Entwhistle
rice pudding
“That will put the cat among the pigeons”

Shall I assume Mary Entwhistle’s middle name is (was) Jane?
*gives new meaning to the poem*
What a horrible way to go!

ROFL “Jacynth”

#7:  Author: ellend, Location: Bow, London PostPosted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 4:59 pm

Very good

Karen

Matey's castor oil

"plain unvarnished truth"


Ellen

#8:  Author: patmac, Location: Yorkshire England PostPosted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 5:11 pm

What a way to go! ROFL ROFL ROFL

#9:  Author: Nina, Location: Peterborough, UK PostPosted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 5:55 pm

Jose Helston
Spongebags
"Put your brains in steep"

#10:  Author: Vikki, Location: Sitting on an iceberg, freezing to death!!! PostPosted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 6:51 pm

Jack Maynard

Lime green bedspread

'an unsweetened rice pudding of a time'


*giggling like a loon at the school drowning in rice pudding!*

#11:  Author: Helen P, Location: Cheshire PostPosted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 8:53 pm

Kathie Ferrars
rice pudding
“That will put the cat among the pigeons,”

#12:  Author: Amanda M, Location: Wakefield PostPosted: Sat Dec 11, 2004 9:58 pm

Jack Lambert
Rice pudding
"plain unvarnished truth"

Star Wars

#13:  Author: Pado, Location: Connecticut, USA PostPosted: Sun Dec 12, 2004 12:01 am

ugh!


Jack Lambert
Rice Pudding
Deputation to the head

#14:  Author: Susan, Location: Carlisle PostPosted: Sun Dec 12, 2004 2:19 am

Nasty way to go!

Miss Ferrars

castor oil

'Unsweetened rice pudding of a time!'

#15:  Author: CBB Triumvirate,  PostPosted: Sun Dec 12, 2004 9:51 am

The phrase on this one was rather obvious wasn't it. Love the Mary Jane reference, it may have been subconscious, but I had forgotten all about that when I named Mary...very apt though.

Jack Lambert

Caster Oil
An unsweetened rice pudding of a time.

 

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