Minim and I were chatting and I found myself saying 'I love EBDisms because it allows for easier drabble writing- there is some flexibility for people to write fill-ins and bits for fun.

It also amuses me when things change within one book- changes of class, age etc. I find it an amusing quirk and when I spot one I smile.

Does anyone else feel this way- or do the EBDisms annoy you?

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Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a librarian can bring you back the right one. Neil Gaiman

Drive me mad, actually, I cannot help but try and get them straight in my head....it's the age anomalies that are the worst. I should get out more.....

They fly straight over the top of my head and I don't even notice them! I can never understand why people worry so much about them in the first place as they have little or no impact on an individual book and only have minor importance with the continuity of the series.

My natural mental state is 'suspension of disbelief', so I generally don't notice them till they're pointed out to me...

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"And I'm sure there was blood in the gutter from somebody's head, or else it was the sunset in a puddle."

So This is School! - The Sexiest Mistresses at the Chalet School

They drive me crazy until I realize (either through process of elimination or this site) that it's an EBD-ism and not just me being stupid or misreading. The only thing that has irritation-staying-power for me is the consistent misspelling of Onkel Riese.

They jerk me out of the story when I do notice them. One that really bothers me is Clem's dad is both Adrian and Miles. I mean, the names are nothing alike.

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"I -- I didn't think!" -- Carola Johnstone

It can actually be quite frustrating for drabble writers! For example, Sybil stays 14 for 3 years, and then reverts to her proper age after leaving school when she jumps from 20 to 23. It doesn't matter that much in the books because she's never the major character you might expect Madge's eldest daughter to be, but it's hard going working round it in a drabble .

The one that really gets me is when we're told in Problem that Herr Mensch has recently died but then in Coming of Age, a year later, he's alive and well!

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We really must stop eating like this ...

Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.

Some of them irritate me and there are others I haven't noticed until they've been pointed out to me on here. Generally, I find them annoying because they're so careless and, as someone who's very organised, I wish EBD had kept better notes (although this would obviously be much easier now with computers).

I don't mind the changing names so much but the way characters age and de-age incorrectly is particularly irritating, like poor Peggy Burnett who starts off as a friend of the Robin and then loses a few years.

I never noticed any of them until I read "Elinor M Brent-Dyer's Chalet School" companion book and it was pointed out in there how many EBD-isms there were. But even now they never bother me, neither does the timeline. I always think that the Chalet School has its own time, like Narnia

I missed some of them but others used to get me confused. Random name or age changes had me diving into earlier books trying to work out what was going on. I also didn't have some of the books so I just though I had missed something. It wasn't until I found the board that I realised it wasn't me just missing something.

They drive me nuts! I'm a picky pedant anyway but with EBDisms I just have to remind myself to take them in my stride. I'm used to them anyway, because Mrs George de Horne Vaizey (much loved and 'borrowed from' by EBD) is almost as bad. The worst I've come across though, is Angela Thirkell who admits at the start of one of her later books that 'young friends' have tried to make timelines and given up in despair on finding that at least one character turns up in books before he was born!

I accept them because I love the books but I do wonder what their editors were thinking of, to allow the errors. Particularly AT who was a massive best-seller; her publisher owed her decent editing in view of the pots of money she made for him!

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http://nicolaslade.wordpress.com/

she must have been a leap year baby, then decided that it was stupid sticking to one age for 4 years when she grew up

I never, ever noticed them until I found the board - I still don't spot them on read-throughs and I much prefer it that way

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"His distinguished air, his handsome dark face, his composed attitude - for he stood perfectly still with one hand at his side - gave singular effect to the circumstance of his being without a hat." - 'Tales of Angria'

I find them amusing, although sometimes they can be frustrating! But because I love the books, I accept them!After all,no-ones perfect, and we would never have the interesting discussions we do have if we had no EBDisms.

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Wishes the land of Merlin and magic was real

I hardly ever notice them - but then when someone points them out, it makes me giggle. There are the same things in other series - I can remember quite a few "explanations" about why Klingons suddenly got bumpy foreheads, for example (when the real reason was that they couldn't afford to have them in the beginning!) Sometimes the explanations are funnier than the mistake was in the first place

They drive me dotty as I feel there must be an explanation; it's just that I can't quite put my finger on it, a bit like Sudoku! Why is Jack C of E in Rivals but has a Rosary he has used since he was a boy in Highland Twins? Who is the elder, Suzanne or Yvette Mercier and who on earth is in The Gang? Eight at the beginning of Barbara not including Clare and Ghislaine and 11 by the end possibly including them and possibly including Maeve and Josette and definitely Barbara by then but the numbers don't work- may be membership is on a kind of time share basis. I blame a lot on cuts and dodgy editors but not my beloved EBD.

Does anyone know if, when EBD was writing her books, they would be edited as stringently as we would expect now? I've often wondered this.

And , Cesca, at the timeshare Gang membership.

I was a High Anglican in my teens and I had a rosary and used it.....

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Cestina's dolls houses - Where has the week gone?

I suspect that Jack's change of religion was deliberate - in the very early days, all the British characters are Anglican, but I think that EBD then decided she wanted Joey to marry a Catholic and, as she'd already earmarked Jack as Joey's future husband, decided it was easier just to forget he'd ever been a Protestant! Some of the changes of age may be deliberate too, to fit in with storylines or get different characters in the same form. I can understand those, but a lot of the others, like the changes of name of Mr Barras and Cdr Carey, are obviously just forgetfulness/carelessness and they can be quite annoying.

Oh well - as Emma said, no-one's perfect .

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We really must stop eating like this ...

Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.

I'm not sure if this fits here, or whether I can clearly express my idea....when EBD was writing, especially in the early years, she would surely not have expected people to carry on reading beyond the intended age range. So maybe she felt at liberty to alter Jack's religious past, thinking that she was writing for a new set of girls who would be coming new to the characters? Would many readers have just dipped in and out of the series and never noticed anomalies? This would account for some of the discrepancies in the Tyrol years. And whils she obviously must have known that later on girls would want to read the earlier books as well, surely she wouldn't have envisaged stringent academic analysis from a bunch of (in my case) middle-aged women!