Fish Pasta Bake and Lamb Curry Day

Daily, one can find the school lunch options scrawled on a white board inside the dining hall. Due to space shortages, the dining hall doubles as a makeshift classroom during the morning so frequently the menu has the remnants of the morning’s Maths lessons still lingering on the edges of the same board. Walking in at noon today my heart sunk. There under a 9 year old’s semi-erased explanation of the chunking method, the freshly scrawled menu read

LAMB CURRY

FISH PASTA BAKE

BEAN WRAPS

APPLE PIE WITH CUSTARD.

Before I go on, let me state for the record that I value children immensely as human beings. I wouldn’t be doing the job I do if I didn’t believe with all my soul that (despite being an aging crack head) Whitney Houston’s syrupy song The Greatest Love does have an element of truth; “I believe that children are the future, lead them well and let them lead the way.”  Children don’t hide behind masks, what you see is what you get.

But children don’t hide behind social niceties either.

When I saw the menu I knew we were in for a rough afternoon.

Take a deep breath in ANY primary school about half an hour after lunch and you will know what I mean. A first you might think that the sewer running under the playground is blocked. Maybe the local beef jerky factory has just had a delivery of raw materials. But no. It is a massive release of, let’s say, natural methane from children all across the school. It is especially evident in schools like ours which are basically 70% sealed windows. Windows let the light in, but are not especially efficient in creating fresh air currents. Add to that an unusually warm mid-May day and basically you have a green house.

For those of us concerned with global warming, forget mass cattle farming. The largest methane output on the planet between the hours of 1pm and 3pm must surely be your local primary school. Children sit cross-legged on the carpet, listening to the teacher explain the reasons for World War I and suddenly you notice it. A smell that equates only to rotten eggs stuffed inside a dead rat and dropped in a vat of World War standard mustard gas.

Couple this with bean wraps, curry and fish-bake day and you get the sense. Suddenly the problem becomes exponentially worse; exponentially worse in a way that would have a school-bus-full of Cambridge PhDs scribbling away on the dining hall board. Old Whitney never meant this when she sang “Show them all the beauty they possess inside.” Trust me- what was inside it escaping out, and it respects no social graces.

But sleep well readers. If children are indeed the future then in 20, 30, 40 years time they will gather together all the class carpets from all the primary schools across the world. The residual methane will burn for 1000 years and our energy crisis will be solved with the light of one match. Good news indeed. Queue up calmly and quietly for seconds on Fish Pasta Bake, boys and girls.  

Keep the Faith,

The Head