You’re spending your school holidays (the school isn’t named, but, as we keep being told that it’s near Brighton, it’s presumably Roedean) in the Bernese Oberland, where, having sorted out your sister’s love life (after her estranged boyfriend just happened to show up in the same place) and some random woman’s marriage, you climb a glacier – wearing your Guide uniform, as you never wear anything else. You and your friend get lost in the fog, and take shelter in one of those huts which are always so conveniently placed in Switzerland and Austria, but two lads are in there already. Are they Swiss? No. They’re two Etonians on holiday, and the uncle of one of them is mates with your sister’s new fiance. Of course. Luckily, you and your friend are carrying a huge picnic basket, so you share all the food. Then, when the fog clears, you carry on climbing. That’s just one part of the book, but you get the general idea.
I think that we’re *meant* to find the “irrepressible” Pippa irritating, with her constant minding of other people’s business, her complete failure to see her faults as pointed out by other people and her bizarre insistence on wearing her Guide uniform wherever she goes, but the book was actually very entertaining in a totally OTT jolly spiffing sort of way! And it only cost me £1, and it was certainly worth £1.
setinthepast 