ACERTAIN well-known bread firm has recently announced the Best Picnic Spots in the UK. Apparently thousands of their customers voted online and by post to nominate their favourite locations. Although, given that none of the spots is a lay-by, I'm none too certain how accurate a reflection of the nation's picnic areas this list is.
I don't really get the idea of picnics. Or rather, I get the idea – it's the reality I find hard to handle. Everyone has a perfect notion of what a picnic should be. A lazy stroll through a summer meadow, wicker basket swinging at your side befor
e settling down on your travel rug, lounging back on a cushion and gazing up at a solitary, fluffy cloud dancing across a brilliant blue sky, as you eat your peeled grapes and sip a glass of perfectly chilled rosé.
If picnics were like this, then I'd be out every week. But they're not, are they? You know it, I know it – so let's halt the madness now and not kid ourselves a moment longer.
Any picnic I've ever been on has generally involved carrying my own body weight in Tupperware across field after field before it's deemed that we have reached a suitable spot, among cowpats and sheep droppings, for the travel rug. There's always something that's been forgotten or left behind in the car – sometimes it's as simple as the salt, sometimes it's as serious as the corkscrew. Have you ever tried to get a cork out with just a plastic butter knife and your teeth? It's surprising just how inventive you can be when you come up against it.
Of course, by now it's warm wine that you're drinking. But given that the sandwiches have curled up at the edges and no-one wants to touch the Scotch eggs anyway, all that's left to do really is drink. Which then means that you end the day hot, sweaty, irritable and half-cut. And that's before you have to make a run for the car as the rain closes in. What fun. Why don't we do this more often?
Perhaps I am scarred from the picnics of my childhood. We would all head eagerly down to the beach, only to find that we were expected to sing for our supper. Or rather, pick for our picnic. Mother would hand us each a bin liner which we were expected to fill before we would be given any food. Before you get the wrong idea, this was not for the benefit of the greater community or to teach us lessons in civic responsibility. This was no altruistic collecting of rubbish that we were set upon. No, Mother was an avid home brewer (The Good Life has a lot to answer for) and we were dispatched to gather the various raw materials for her home-made wine. We stripped oak trees of all their leaves, we left the hedgerows bare of clover. We denuded rowan trees of all their berries (only the once though – the wine was pretty foul). We even ripped nettles from the roadside (we were actually given gloves for that one). And not until we had returned with our bin liners bulging were we given any food. Of course, how long you took to fill your bin liner would determine just how much food was left anyway.
So, forgive me if I don't join in the headlong rush for the Cath Kidston picnic hampers. I think I'll just stay indoors with my chilled wine and refrigerated strawberries. No-one will need to help me up – well, not until the wine's finished. And the bin liners can stay safely under the sink.
