I thought it'd be interesting, as we get near the end of the series discussion, for people to predict what they picture the triplets and a few others doing with their life - career, location, marriage, kids, lifestyle.

So list your favourites, and a one or two line description of how they see their lives progressing.

I find I have very clear pictures for some characters, and none at all for others.

Len: finishes at Oxford, but not as brilliantly as expected. Moves back to the Platz, marries Reg and has a batch of children. Is vaguely unhappy, but doesn't understand why (not what I'd *like* her to do, but what I think she *would* do).

Con: Blossoms at Oxford. Goes into investigative journalism, dates around, marries in her 30s at the earliest, and if she does, keeps her career and has at most one or two kids, if any. Goes through a mild hippie phase before adopting a more polished look. Doesn't talk a lot about the details of her life at home.

Margot: gets frustrated with church policies regarding nuns and doesn't join an order, but sticks with overseas medical work. Doesn't marry.

Mary-Lou: has a rough first year at Oxford, learning how not to be OOAOML, but graduates with honours. Goes into archaeology. Marries eventually, either to a fellow academic (no kids) or a laid-back guy who is willing to be a house-husband (and has kids).

Charles: academic career - gets a PhD and goes into research and teaching, maybe literature or biology.

Erica: turns into a good-natured but somewhat ditzy teenager, who loves fashion and pop music and giggling over cute boys, to the bafflement of the Maynards. Moves to London immediately after finishing her exams, wants nothing to do with university, but does a business course or something similar.

Verity: marries a nice, sensible man who thinks she's wonderful and assume's she's a competent human being. Settles happily into housekeeping, raises a couple of kids, keeps up with her singing, and provides a stable home base for her various relatives.

Clem: marries a fellow artist, reproduces her parents bohemian lifestyle, but rather more practically organized and sensible. They cart their kids around with them on artist trips until they are old enough for the CS, but make sure to be there for them in holidays.

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Ring the bells that still can ring; Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything; That's how the light gets in
Anthem: Leonard Cohen

Someone once wrote a brilliant drabble about Margot working for Medecins Sans Frontieres. I think that would suit her much better than the restrictions of being a nun, which I don't think someone with her personality would be suited to.

I also see Con as being a career woman, maybe combining a career with marriage and two children.

I think life on the Platz would start to drive everyone mad eventually! I see Daisy and Laurie returning to England, and Daisy going back to work, at least part-time, once their children were at school. I think Len would end up stuck on the Platz, though: I think she'd feel obliged to marry Reg once the engagement ring was on her finger, and he'd feel that sticking to the place where his father-in-law was the boss was his best chance of success.

David and Rix, who are both Of The MBR Blood and doctors (and David's the heir to a baronetcy as well), were both still single at the end of the series. I should imagine both of them would run a mile from Madge or Joey's attempts to fix them up with Chalet School girls, but you never know - and I always liked Mia's drabbles in which Mary-Lou married Rix but continued to pursue a career as well.

I was never keen on the suggestion that Joan would marry someone she met at secretarial college at 18. I think she had a lot of ambition, and I like the idea of her getting a very good secretarial job, using her languages, marrying the boss, and becoming involved in the business. I haven't got a clear idea for Ros, though ... I think she'd end up stuck between two worlds, and I don't know how that would work.

Tom definitely has to be one of the C of E's first women vicars.

Hilda and Nell surprise everyone by taking early retirement, and go off to travel the world in luxury .

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We really must stop eating like this ...

Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.

http://setinthepast.wordpress.com/

Felicity - is unable to pursue her dream of ballet due to not starting early enough. She studies jazz and modern dance, and becomes a performer and later choreographer for several hit musicals. She lives in a tiny apartment in Soho, and never marries, but has a long term female friend who lives with her.

Len - gets her degree and teaches at Carnbach for a year or two, by which point Reg has moved back to the UK to work at the Welsh branch of the San. She marries him and has two or three children fairly close together, then goes back into teaching in her thirties at a High School in Armiford, making it to Head of Languages before retiring. Does a Madge in her free time and gets involved in CS events, the WI, running a summer school for languages, etc.

Con - gets her degree, lives on the breadline for a few years writing penny dreadfuls for magazines while she tries to get one of her historical novels published. Gets her big break eventually and becomes a big cheese in the field, living in a posh house with beautiful gardens somewhere in the Home Counties. Either never marries, or marries someone much older than she is, no children.

Margot - becomes a nun, but after a few years finds her path lies elsewhere and joins Medicins Sans Frontières.

Mary-Lou - enjoys herself thoroughly going to archaeological digs all over the world and marries a fellow archaeologist, possibly a widower who already has children. Maintains close contact with Con, who helps her to publish some travel books about her adventures, and also Richenda, who showcases some of her finds in the museum of which she becomes a curator.

Love the idea of Joan marrying her boss.

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'I'm sorry, I only play for sport.' - Lara Croft

Reg discovers he can't father children, due to mumps as a young adult, but Len decides to marry him anyway. They marry at the end of her second year at Oxford, and she continues her studies while he retrains as a GP. After this, they move to Birmingham and he takes up a post in a general practice, while she works in a grammar school, later a comprehensive.

Con leaves Oxford at the end of her first term, saying that the reality really didn't live up to the expectation. She does an accelerated secretarial course, and then gets a job on a magazine, starting as a dogsbody and working her way up, eventually, to a post as the British editor of a prestigious girls' magazine. She never marries, but is far from celibate.

Margot does become a nun, although it was not as easy as she'd half expected. She is posted to Africa, and, sadly, killed in one of the uprisings there.

You can read the triplet's stories here.

These stories also include glimpses of the rest of the siblings' lives - Charles becomes a monk at the Grande Chartreuse in France and lives in extreme seclusion; Cecil and Felicity both marry and live in Germany and Switzerland, respectively. Phil stays at home with her parents, but Geoff lives near Len in Birmingham. Don't know what happened to the others, they haven't told me yet! Except that Jack and Joey retire to Die Blumen, and Joey and Phil are involved in some way with youth work there.

I wrote my version of the triplets' future a while ago:
http://sallydennylibrary.co.uk/viewstory.php?sid=335

Although I did leave one major element up to readers' imaginations.

I see ML remaining single, although whether EBD would have allowed her to be so is doubtful.

I think EBD intended Charles for the church, but I'd rather see him as an academic, as jennifer suggests. I think natural history was his subject, as suggested by EBD. Although perhaps he could be like Elizabeth Edmondson's Father Leo and combine the church and academia?

I think Steve would have a moderately successful career in engineering, but never reach the very top because he prefers the hands-on stuff to management and company politics. I think he'd marry and have children, but not too many of them, and have a happy family life rather like his Uncle Dick.

How we picture the future for our favourite CS charcters is certainly different from how EBD imagined it!

I'm not going to add my own ideas here as I've already been influenced by all the wonderful future universe drabbles that some of you have written!

One of these days I will get on with the drabble about Mike joining the Royal Marines. This also involves Hilda and Nell retiring to travel the world and I think Felix wanted to be a jockey

Are the twins small and delicately built then?

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Cestina's dolls houses - Bear with me...

Well I've always imagined so, given Felicity's ballet ambition. I may well be wrong though.

Given Jo's constant boasting about having "no monotony" in her family, and the fact that the triplets were all tall, I would think that Felicity, Cecil and Phil were bound to be small . Stephen was probably a strapping six-footer, and Felix, just to provide a contrast, not much over five foot.

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We really must stop eating like this ...

Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.

http://setinthepast.wordpress.com/

Len meets a nice young man at Oxford. She regrets rushing into an engagement with Reg, but feels obligated to see it through and marries him the summer after graduating. Although she would rather stay in England for a while, she moves back to Switzerland to be near her family and so Reg can keep working at the San. She has her first daughter within a year and names her Constance Margaret. Her son comes a scant 11 months later and is Reginald John after his father and grandfather. She happily stops teaching to be a stay-at-home mum and finds genuine joy and fulfillment in raising her family. She also assumes some of her mother's role in helping new Chalet School girls and having them over for tea. She grows to appreciate Reg as a stable partner and loving father to their children, though occasionally she thinks of the nice young man at Oxford and wonders what might have been.

Con lives alone in London after graduating. At first she struggles as a freelancer, but eventually lands a job feature-writing for a women's magazine. She remains in the industry, moving among different magazines, but always climbing the ladder until she is publisher of a New Yorker-style publication. Her historical fiction novel is rejected and, despite her mother's urging, her heart isn't in writing children's books. However, eventually she publishes two novels that explore 1970s societal changes and finds minor acclaim. She's in her mid-30s when she marries a university professor of political science who is 10 years her senior. They have one son whose middle name is Leonard to honor sister Len. She struggles to give up smoking later in life.

Margot applies herself at university and graduates with honors from medical school as a gynecologist. She finds it much harder to apply herself to make it as a nun, but is too proud to give up and thinks the struggle is penance for her sins as a child. Her dream is to go to Africa to aid safe childbirth and reduction of sexually transmitted diseases, but the heads of her order send her to Ireland. Eventually she quits the church to join Medicins Sans Frontières, and later becomes a program administrator. She becomes very close with a MSF colleague, but they both agree a relationship is impractical given the demands of their work. Margot's church attendance dwindles over the years, and although she never renounces Christianity, she comes to believe private prayer and good works are as effective a path to heaven as any other.

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

Len: Marries Reg, teaches at the CS for a short time, has two boys. They move back to England when the elder boy reaches 11 for educational reasons, back to Reg's birthplace where he works as a GP and Len goes back to teaching part time initially.

Con: Gets involved with OUDS and writes some well-received plays and skits. Moves to London after graduation and hangs out in bohemian circles while working as a journalist. Then uses her OUDS contacts to start screenwriting for TV. Is known for "serious" historical novels and popular histories.

Margot: Finds herself in much demand in social circles in Edinburgh due to her good looks and out-going personality. Her lack of self-discipline leads to her neglecting her studies although she struggles on for a couple of years before the missing groundwork means she fails her exams and her course is terminated. Self-centred as ever, she finds the thought of convectual life incresingly less attractive and marries, on impulse, a man with money who is "fun". Fun turns out to be short-lived and, after the divorce, she ends up in advertising.marketing where her combination of charm, intelligence and self-interest make her very successful. Acquires several other husbands but doesn't keep any of them for long.

Stephen: Practical and phlegmatic, he would have made an ideal engineer in Starfleet if only it had existed. As it is, he makes his career building roads, railways and bridges through the wilds of Africa and South America. Marries a woman of a similar nature who is both kind and tactful enough not to reveal that she regards her in-laws with some amusement.

Charles: Not really interested in money or possessions, after university ends up living in rather basic accommodation in the English countryside, at one with nature. Known as an important naturalist, he earns quite enough from his writings and occasional teaching to live the simple life he loves

Mike: Known as "Madcap Mike Maynard", a happy-go-lucky naval officer who ends up with a posthumous VC.

Felicity: Finally persuades her parents to allow her to go to ballet school in England. Too late at 15 to ever make a great dancer, she spends a few years in the back row of the corps de ballet before moving into choreography and stage design. Much in demand, she lives in a loft in New York and is closest, in family terms to Con.

Felix: A slow starter academically, it becomes obvious that university isn't going to be an option. Luckily, all those half-terms spent with the Bettanys show that he has a real vocation for working with the land. Unfortunately, John Bettany is going to manage the Quadrant land so, after agriculture college, he goes to work for the former King of Belsornia and ends up managing the ranch

Cecil: As befits someone who is welcomed by an original work from the Nina Rutherford, is the musical member of the family. Involved in orchestral work before being a long-term member of an internationally famous quartet. Marries a fellow-musician who works for an American University.

Geoffrey and Philippa: Jack is pleased when both the twins go into medicine. Phil is motivated by her own experiences of serious illness (she never loses the limp she acquired as the result of childhood polio) and Geoff, by his experience of seeing someone he loves suffer. Neither is interested in TB or the San, preferring to work with children in Third World countries.

Mike would've been the right age to serve in the Falklands campaign, wouldn't he. Mid-thirties.

I think it's interesting that most people see the triplets' lives going roughly the same way, even if the details vary. Len married with children, even if not to Reg. Con successful in writing/journalism, marrying later, if at all. Margot continuing to struggle, regardless of whether she does or doesn't join an order.


The idea of a Maynard divorcing is interesting. I should think Con and Steve would be accepting, and most of the younger ones wouldn't be bothered, but I should think Len and Jo and Jack would struggle with it. As indeed they'd probably struggle with the idea of Margot marrying on impulse, and for fun, if they knew that was what she'd done.

I love some of your ideas, Victoria.


Mike is always shown as the bad boy, the male equivalent of Margot so I love the idea of the VC - although not the posthumous bit, of course.


This made me laugh. Great idea - although perhaps Roddy might have got there first with his NZ sheep farming experience.

I see Jack Lambert going on to study Mechanical Engineering at university and being singled out for being the only woman on the course

I see Len enjoying Oxford and getting on well with her fellow students. She has her eyes opened a bit but secure in her own personality doesn't really change; only grows up. Goes back to the Platz and teaches at the CS. Marries Reg after year or so and although marriage is not perfect they are both happy. Len leads the way. After three or so years of marriage they have one child and after 18 months another but that is the lot. Len prefers peace to more children. Eventually they go back to England when children quite young. Reg retrains as GP. They put their money into a practice. Len eventually works part-time in a big state secondary school. She helps out with sport and school activities. Involved in her Church.

Margot does do medicine and also becomes a nun. Eventually gives up the medicine part as she wants to devote her life completely to God through prayer.

Felicity does study ballet and makes this her career. Has a few minor leading roles. Marries one of the ballet company's sponsors, a very wealthy older man, possibly for his money but falls in love with him. No children. Works at being the perfect wife and hostess. Nurses husband through long illness and then devotes herself to philanthropy, setting up ballet scholarships and travel.

Con stays in Oxford after graduating from uni with first class honours. Works part-time for a weekly newspaper and also reviews books and plays. Has some poetry published and a book or two. Has a brief relationship with Dr Iain Hamilton who has gone to the Platz to work temporarily and is at Len and Reg's wedding. However, they soon quite happily split up. He could marry Ruey or maybe not.

Con does have other relationships but none serious and she is still quite shy. Around 30 she meets a divorced playwright (bohemian and longish haired) who is lecturing one evening at Oxford Uni. He and Con fall head over heels in love and are married within three months. They end up in a gorgeous house in London (he is very successful and Con also has some money) very artistically decorated. They have three or four children but a very efficient cook/housekeeper and care for the children. Con is a loving mother but is good at switching off so she can work. She is also though a devoted wife and frequently attends the theatre and entertains with her husband. She is an inventive cook and homemaker and flourishes in her marriage. Her husband encourages her in her work and life in general. Due to her circumstances and nature she is not a prolific writer but is a success in what she does do with a quality output. As the years go by the concenration is more on Con's career as her husband chooses increasingly to set up foundations to encourage younger people.

Stephen does engineering at uni and is very successful. He marries a "nice" girl from much the same background and they have two daughters. However, the confidence and nature that led him to be easily able to control four brothers is not the best to take into a marriage with a compliant wife. He is a bully and when he comes near to hitting his wife they both realise it is curtains on their marriage. His ex wife goes on to marry a good man whom her daughters eventually regard as their father. Stephen goes on to work very successfully abroad. Although he dates other women it is never done seriously. He never lets his guard down and leads a lonely life with a tendency to drink too much.

Felix goes into medicine like his father and sister. Goes on to become a surgeon. Marries another doctor and they lead a very busy life with their small family. Both are inclined to be autocratic but life in a big family has learnt Felix to give and take and at times he finds it easier to switch off rather than argue with his wife.

Mary-Lou eventually learns to blend in at Oxford and she does well academically. She dedicates herself to her career as an archaeologist (sp?). She takes part in several very important digs and makes the biggest contribution to a dig of major historical importance. She also occasionally lectures at universities throughout the world, later on inclining towards British unis. She writes a number of books some of which become the standard for their topics. She is eventually honoured for her work. (OK. She is my favourite character!).

However, due to her lack of family and the nature of her work, she is lonely and this is part of the reason she works so hard. She has grown away from the Maynards and Verity and although still close to Clem and Tony and Vi is frequently in a different country. Mid thirties she collapses from exhaustion on a dig and the leader of the dig, a widower of about 50 is very kind to her and keeps in touch. He is already romantically involved and she becomes likewise. He has two children, at boarding school, in their mid teens who are feeling neglected. M-L helps him to become more involved and to try and at least sometimes be around during their hols. Eventually M-L marries him. She is a friend to her stepchildren; not a substitute mother. The professor stays at home more frequently to write and lecture and see his family. At that stage M-L is still away a lot. She does not have any children of her own.

Oh dear, I wonder how Jo and Jack react to that!

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

They don't know even a quarter of it. Although he pays lip service to his relationship with Jo and Jack and never falls out with them, Stephen is inclined to be a bit bitter because he was shunted off to boarding school, at the age of 7, in a different country to his family. Just because he was responsible, he was then expected to take responsibility for an ever increasing number of younger brothers both at home and at school.

Instead of getting guidance from his parents, he was expected to give guidance to his brothers whilst said parents were occupied with an ever increasing number of children and wards. They were taken up with Margot (especially) and Mike who were difficult, Felix who tried to be like Mike but lacked his originality and Phil who was delicate.

Most of the other boys coped better than Stephen because not so much was expected of them.