End of term is coming with a sticky sweltering lurch. It feels like school has only just started again after the Christmas holidays, then two weeks off with le gastro, then easter, then the real easter holiday, then chicken pox and now it’s all going to be over. For two months. That’s two months where the temperature inside will be a ‘cool’ 28 degrees and outside will be a blast-furnace. However, that is all to come, albeit in only a few days. Until then I have the luxury of a few more school days. Meanwhile at school things are clearly cooling down for the summer. 

The beginning of the end is marked with La Kermesse, or end of term fete. Even here, there is a great sense of French regimentation of fun. Is there no translation for ‘letting your hair down’? The fete starts just as the school day ends. No luxury of a Saturday afternoon cream tea affair. It’s a neat, brisk, Friday night bash starting at 17h precisely, well as precisely as it gets in the south of France. So, allowing for the quart d’heure de politesse things get going at 17h15. By now the children are crazy for action. They have had the chance to suss out all activities on offer, and work out which ones look fun. Already it’s clear that the magnetic fish are the biggest draw! An eager, impatient queue forms, overwhelming the beleaguered mother who had offered to run this game. Five minutes in, and she looked in dire need of some help, some pastis or both. 

Work, kermesse-style is the order of the day. Each child is issued with a sheet marked with a 6-square grid. They have to earn 6 crosses – for some reason a tick isn’t popular here – one for each of the activities they have completed. Not tried, but completed. These are 3 year olds at the end of an 8 hour school day. The system is unrelenting. No wonder they are highly strung, competitive individuals. I console myself with the thought that the salary this training is preparing daughter#1 for should pay my pension and several weeks in a thalasso.  

Fishing for those magnetic fish, throwing beanbags into the mouth of a gaping clown (wooden, not real I think!), guessing the contents of bags in l’atelier des sensations….all the favourites. I was tickled by the parcours du serveur – life training for café staff. Imagine a 3 year old carrying a tray filled with water, covered cups also filled with water. Add a walk-the-plank type of layout and you have the game. This was seriously funny to watch until my child came up. Then no matter how hard I tried to repress it the pushy-parent gene scratched its way to the surface. How very un-English of me, but here there is no shame in some hardcore child cajoling. Short of grabbing the tray myself I had to resort to whispering instructions in English, as if this was my secret weapon. Out loud came the friendly ‘Vas-y mon chou’ faux franco-support, but then the quiet hissing ‘I’ll give you chocolate if you don’t fall off’. 

On top of that were the mountains of homemade goodies. At a fete this isn’t unusual I hear you cry, except here it is. At the beginning of term we were strictly instructed only to send industrielle cakes to school. Food hygiene regulations had finally come to the school and now all labels and ingredients are kept and noted. Never mind the discussion about punishment; it was this that sent the shock wave through parents. So, at the Kermesse, we were allowed freedom to poison all and sundry with non-industrial cakes. Quelle liberté   

I sent flapjacks - a pile of sticky brown amongst the fruity tarts. Oddly enough someone else had too. Oats have come to the Lotissement and I have some comfort-food baking competition. Just like #1 and her games, the gentle world of Kermesse thinly veils the rivalry between children, parents and teachers. It’s a chien eat chien world, even in the dog-days of summer.