the school lunch dilemma

It seems a uni­ver­sal­ly accept­ed truth: lunch at school does not count as food. OK, it’s ham­pered from the get-go by the sad fact that the street where the school is locat­ed, has some arcane pro­hi­bi­tion against food prepa­ra­tion in
com­mer­cial, non-res­i­den­tial spaces. So Avery’s poor school gets its food from its big sis­ter senior school in Harley Street. I already think it’s tempt­ing fate to cook in the great med­ical street of Lon­don (you know how in sto­ries some­one’s always
say­ing lugubri­ous­ly, “I’ll go up to town and see if some­one in Harley Street can do any­thing to help me”). So the “food” is placed in a van, although I like to exag­ger­ate and say it’s wheeled along on a white enam­el trol­ley along­side ster­ilised med­ical instru­ments, and tak­en all the way around the cor­ner to Avery’s school, which does not have even reheat­ing capac­i­ty. You can imagine.

Mon­day is gen­er­al­ly what Avery calls “bendy chick­en,” point­ing out that chick­en in its usu­al forms does not bend. Then Tues­day could be shep­herd’s pie, that won­der­ful con­coc­tion, when done prop­er­ly, of a sort of bolog­nese sauce cov­ered with mashed pota­toes and baked. At school it’s appar­ent­ly not quite of that descrip­tion. “There’s some­thing slimy and red all over it and it MOVES,” Avery asserts. Then Wednes­day might be pas­ta, just penne, with no salt or sauce or any­thing else. Thurs­day could be lamb, Avery says sliced super thin and it’s grey. Oh, speak­ing of slic­ing, I read the fun­ni­est joke in one of the tabloids yes­ter­day. “How many men does it take to wall­pa­per a house? Four, but they must be sliced very, very thin.” Mmmm.

Fri­day is fish, of course, being a nice Church of Eng­land school. Then there’s alleged­ly only warm, dirty water to drink, with a fly float­ing in it once, and nev­er for­got­ten. Appar­ent­ly ear­ly on in the school’s his­to­ry my friend Emi­ly app­proached Mrs D about, er, um, the food, and the fact that no one at ALL eats any­thing for lunch. Mrs D was com­plete­ly tak­en aback and said, “But my dear, the food is deli­cious!” We have a problem.

So yes­ter­day over a con­sol­ing slice of apple pie after school, Avery was telling me all about the three times a day they pray. She demon­strat­ed her pose with her lit­tle hands clasped in front of her and an unbe­liev­ably inno­cent look on her face. “First we pray at assem­bly, then before lunch, then after lunch. Before lunch we say, ‘for what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly
thank­ful.” “But Avery,” I said, “don’t you feel a bit odd, hop­ing to be thank­ful for such awful food that you nev­er eat?” “You know, I DO! But I have to say it. It’s just a white lie.” “Well, maybe you could say, ‘for what Lily is about to receive, may the Lord make us tru­ly thank­ful,’ because you say Lily actu­al­ly likes the food.”

“Yes,” she said, warm­ing to the theme, “or I could say, sort of under my breath, ‘for what I’m about to put in my mouth because Miss Clarke makes me, but then I’ll spit it in my nap­kin, may the Lord make us tru­ly thank­ful.” We final­ly decid­ed she can be thank­ful for hav­ing been offered food. That works.

Ful­ly half the teach­ers were ill this week (maybe they ate lunch one day). So appar­ent­ly some con­trolled chaos reigned. I went to read with my kinder­garten­ers and the Upper Kinder­garten assis­tant teacher was clear­ly not in her ele­ment with­out trusty col­league by her side. “I’m fly­ing solo today, so I’m AWFUL­LY glad you’re here!”

Well! I just got off the phone with my friend Becky, and Avery is hav­ing her first Lon­don sleep­over! It was half day today for the start of the win­ter break, and Becky and I took the girls to Vil­landry for some ruinous­ly expen­sive far­falle bolog­nese (have to say it was real­ly good, though), and then Avery went home with Anna to play. Becky says they’re hav­ing the time of their lives, laugh­ing their heads off (it real­ly reminds me of the way Avery plays with Cici, total­ly goofy and out of con­trol), and could she stay. So she’ll stop by here on her way to pick her youngest at a play­date and get Avery’s beloved Bumper with­out whom she’d rather not sleep, and per­haps Abby Bear and Chest­nut the Pony. And John and I can final­ly have my birth­day din­ner by our­selves! Peking duck with­out hav­ing to feed Avery ahead of time, since she is a con­sci­en­tious objec­tor to duck, on
cute­ness prin­ci­ples. What a nice surprise!

Just to keep things con­sis­tent here, the wash­er had an adven­ture today. I saw that the cycle had stopped and there was an error mes­sage flash­ing, so I looked it up in the main­te­nance man­u­al and the
instruc­tions said, “The drain pump has become blocked. Place a shal­low dish under the pump, open the lid and drain the water out, tak­ing care to mop up any extra water with a tow­el prompt­ly.” This last phrase should have clued me in. Maybe if the shal­low dish had the square footage of Water­loo, Iowa, I could have tak­en care of the
sit­u­a­tion, but as it was I held a dish under the pump, opened the lid, and let me tell you, Nia­gara Falls was no rival. Hon­est­ly, gal­l­lons and gal­lons onto the laun­dry floor where it slid sly­ly under the boil­er, who’s already been through enough. I shoved the lid shut and mopped fran­ti­cal­ly with all the dirty laun­dry on top of the wash­er, but to no avail. I began to have visions of elec­tro­cut­ing myself on the boil­er, so I just shut the door and left. When I got back from cof­fee, I decid­ed that since the boil­er was stand­ing on lit­tle feet, maybe it would be OK, and most of the water seemed to have got­ten soaked in one thing or anoth­er. Urrrrggh. The prob­lem, though, seems to have right­ed itself with­out any fur­ther inter­ven­tion (prob­a­bly the thing block­ing the pump is now under the boil­er), so dis­as­ter averted.

I’ll let you know how the sleep­over goes!