Communal Living at Kersaliou

At Kersaliou the days were glued together by the timing of the meals. Breakfast was at 08.30, lunch at 12.30 and supper at seven.

When meals for the children were nearly over, a child would be sent to the staff dining room to find out what they should do. There would be a knock on the staff room door.

“Come.”

“Monsieur Short demande qu’est-ce que vous voulez que les enfants a faire?”

“Very good, Sophie. What did you have for your starter?”

“Beetroot.”

“Beetroot. Did you like it?”

“No, I don’t like beetroot.”

“Have you tried it at home?”

“No.”

“And the main course?”

“Chicken and roast potatoes.”

“Good?”

“Yes. And there was some liquid stuff with it.”

“Did you try it?”

“No, I only like brown gravy.”

“And for dessert?”

“Ice cream. It was delicious.”

Introducing children to communal living could be hard work. In the children’s dining room there were rectangular tables for six people. No reserved seats were allowed so what if your friend was at a full table of six? Well you might try and get a chair from an empty table and then place it at the end. All very well except that the food was served for six people on a table.

Now if you had six pieces of chicken on a serving plate and there were six children on a table that meant each child had one piece of chicken. Wrong. Once the serving plate was put at one end of the table that meant that the child there could take what he or she wanted. Perhaps one piece, sometimes two, and I had seen three. As you can imagine, the children at the other end of the table were not overly impressed. Some, of course, left their seats with their plates to try and get their share.

Now can you picture the scene when a plateful of chips for six was put at one end or six tubs of ice cream?

Of course, once it was pointed out to the children how they should go about things then everything improved dramatically. However, taking a sixth share of chips was always beyond the mathematical understanding of the born greedy.

The children also had to be told to keep their first course plates and cutlery for the second course. The delicate found this difficult.

Once the meal was over the children had to be taught to stack their plates, put any leftover food on one serving plate and put their dirty cutlery in the rack provided. Any spillages had to be cleared up.

At the end of the first meal I would ring the bell and that was the signal that everyone had to be silent. Why did they become silent? Easy. They knew that after lunch and supper, free time was on the cards and if I, or the teacher on duty, didn’t get silence they would have to remain in the dining room and watch the teacher finish their own first course.

All it took was one meal, or two at the most, to train them.

Did I mention chicken? One year at the château a highly intelligent boy asked me what they had had for supper.

“Chicken,” I replied.

“Sir,” he said, “the bone structure wasn’t that of a chicken.”

I smiled. He smiled. I knew and he knew. Lovely taste though.