Lunches and Reminiscences of Kid's Behaviour

Lunches
On Friday I invited Steve and Jo to try out a new restaurant in the village for lunch with me. Called Chez Miche, the proprietress and cook is a woman who used to cook the lunches at The Cafe Des Sports in the village and who had evidently come to the same conclusion as we three had: that the village needed a restaurant where you could get a good but unfancy meal for a very reasonable price. Chez Miche turned out to be just that for a more than reasonable price (aperitifs, amuse-bouche, four courses, wine and coffee for around £14 per head). I think it's going to become a regular for me.

My existing standard lunch appointment is with Daniel on Saturdays. Daniel doesn't cook but often gets invited to eat with various friends and so reciprocates by buying paella from the man who sells it in the Saturday morning market and inviting friends around. This has become such a fixture that Daniel and I have decided that it has the nature of a ritual and the Gods will be displeased if the rite is not enacted every week. There could be storms, floods or plagues visited upon the village if the rite is not observed. At the moment we have none of these but the weather is nothing like as good as it should be at this time of year so we probably aren't eating enough paella.

Kids' Behaviour
On Saturday, after seeing a film “La Tête En Friche” in Vaison (a good film by the way, with something of the flavour of 84 Charing Cross Road) Daniel, Michèle, Chantal and I went to the local restaurant La Loupiote to eat. Next to us was a table with an extended family, or family and friends, that included four young girls, three by the look of them aged 11-13 and one some six years younger. On being seated, the three older girls rushed out to play outside and the youngest made to follow. She was held back by her mother to put on her anorak, as it was chilly outside. The four eventually returned to their table, the youngest holding firmly onto the hand of one of the older girls. This behaviour was repeated several times during the meal, the youngest one each time returning holding the hand of the same older girl. The older girl could have been the older sister of the youngest but, anyway, there was clearly a kind of hero worship relationship between the two.

This immediately reminded me of something I had witnessed while a teacher at Summerhill. A girl of 12/13 brought up a boy of 9/10 before the school tribunal for pestering her for attention. She wanted the pestering stopped. The assembled kids debated this and one pointed out that while the girl was undoubtedly pestered by the boy some of the time, at other times, when the girl could not play with the older girls at the school, she encouraged his attention to her. What the kids had noticed was that the girl was virtually alone at her age and between groups of girls aged two years younger and two years older. She wanted to hang out with the older ones, when included in their activities, but when excluded encouraged the hero worship of the younger boy. The kids' debate exposed this relationship and the tribunal's verdict was that they should kiss and make up. At the time, I was astounded at the perspicacity of the other kids and the wisdom of their verdict. I was sure then, and remain so to this day, that no adults would have been able to unravel the dynamic of the relationship as they had done. I was always unconvinced of A S Neill's dictum that adults are not wise enough to tell children what they should do, at least in very many instances, but in this case he was surely right.