A Scandal at School and a Couscous for Kings

Shock! Horror! Disaster! In a tight knit community in the suburbs of Orléans, where families have to ask other families for news because they don’t speak french, rumours travel fast. The rumour mill was hard at work last week, spinning out a story about a terrifying new change in the school curriculum – gender theory.

This ‘theory’, according to the rumour, was that genders are unchangeable. If you are born a boy, you will grow up to be a soldier or a firefighter, marry a pretty woman, and spend your life dashing around being masculine and heroic. If you are born a girl, you will spend your teenaged years worrying about your makeup rather than your school results before marrying quickly and popping out children on a biannual basis. These are your only options. According to the rumour, this idea was about to make its way onto the school curriculum and be forced down the throats of all the impressionable six year olds there. And this, of course, will not do.

It seemed to take a lot of persuasion before the schools could convince the parents that this was categorically untrue. The first I heard of it was when large signs started to appear at the school gates, begging the parents not to listen to too many rumours. But whispers kept following us down the corridors, shuffling under the conversations at lunch time, and stalking the gates when I left. The signs were not successful.

I don’t know how they achieved it, but when I arrived at school on Thursday the atmosphere was unbelievably different. I puzzled through my lessons trying to work out what had changed, but it was only in my third lesson of the day that one of the teachers took me aside and explained things. Somehow, the gender theory rumour had been put to bed, and the parents had apologised. The pupils were being encouraged to be whoever they wanted to be, and the adults were talking to each other again. To top it off, the teacher explained, some of the parents wanted to make lunch for all of the staff, to show how sorry they were, and would I like to join in?

No word of a lie, it was the best school dinner I’d ever eaten. When I wandered down to the staff room, I accidentally joined a parade of huge plates, pots and pans, all mysteriously shrouded in tinfoil. We set the table, gathered everyone up, and then I sat down and waited for the great unveiling.

The mums had made a couscous fit for a king. A massive plate was topped with a pyramid of vegetables, criss-crossing over fluffy grains of couscous. Another plate had meat, a pan had a spicy sauce, and there was even a kettle full of mint tea. I piled my plate and tucked in.

It was lovely to really feel like a part of the school. The mums had made food for me, even though I only come in one day a week, and the teachers had made sure that the meal was for when I was there too. People came and talked to me because they wanted to – they wanted to hear about my experiences, or they wanted advice of what to see in London, or to catch up on my plans for the weekend. Good food and good company make for a wonderful lunch time, and I could barely have been happier. And when you think what brought the meal on, all I can say is thank god for rumours.