Component parts

Nos amis Francais are frugal types with their cuisine and loath wasting anything remotely edible – occasionally resulting in some peculiar stuff ending up on your plate. In order to render the more obscure dishes palatable, they’ve also become adept at masking the taste and texture of amphibians, garden wildlife and the internal workings of anything foolish enough to wander into the path of a shotgun. And given that you’re destined to spend your adult life digesting much of this, where better to find how it all works than at primary school.

So don’t be surprised when your petit darlings arrive home full of the joys of dissection. Hopefully this will have been a carefully controlled exercise, rather than an ad hoc disemboweling of the cook’s cat or the least popular kid in the class. More likely it will have been a rabbit, previously dispatched to gambol around the big hutch in the sky, its earthly remains now offering the class an opportunity to explore the working parts. Intestines are, apparently, fun (especially when removed and unwound to their full length), as is squidging up all the other major organs. Absolutely best though is ramming a straw into mr bunny’s lungs and blowing them up to busting point.

Naturally, all this leads to interesting conversations about les oiseaux et les abeilles – previously covered, but not in too much anatomical detail. And with some of the older children googling stuff they shouldn’t on the school computers (followed by a lengthy spell sur le step naughty), there’s no hiding place. Just try to avoid questions about the brightly lit balloon vending machine outside the pharmacy. And why they only come in packs of three.