Notes from the Potting Shed

 📆 National Picnic Day

by Virgil Twobyfour

Well butter my blanket and pass the nettle cordial, for it appears we’ve landed upon National Picnic Day once again. And what a fine excuse that is to lay out your rug, open your hamper, and spend a perfectly good afternoon encouraging wasps to loiter with sinister intent.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about picnics. They sound charming in theory - sandwiches, sunshine, a flask of weak tea, maybe a boiled egg that’s seen better days. But in practice, they tend to involve battling a wind strong enough to redecorate your lunch, sitting on something that is definitely not a rock but probably was a hedgehog, and realising too late that you’ve spread your rug directly over an ant nest with a grudge.

Still, tradition is tradition, and The Little Country takes its picnicking very seriously indeed. I once attended a formal picnic on the village green in the late 70s that included a string quartet, a bread pudding bake-off, and a gentleman named Clive who brought an entire sideboard "for ambience." The event was unfortunately cut short when a rogue kite took out the soup course and a disgruntled shire horse sat on the accordionist. Accidents will happen.

But oh, the picnics of my childhood. Windblown affairs on unwelcoming beaches, all bracing breezes and sand in the egg mayonnaise. It never mattered how tightly the Tupperware was sealed - there would still be grit in the ham. Grit in the ginger beer. Grit in your smalls. And always a beetroot salad that somehow stained everything it came into contact with, including several of my formative years.

My great-aunt Dilys once turned up to one such seaside gathering in a full lace-trimmed tea dress and promptly got caught in a deckchair. She had to be cut free with a butter knife. That was also the day I saw a gull make off with an entire sausage roll and a pair of spectacles, which I still find suspiciously symbolic.

Then there were the more dignified affairs, hosted by the local dignitaries - high tea on the manor lawn, where the grass had been mown within an inch of its life and all the ladies carried parasols that they didn’t know quite what to do with. Everyone was frightfully polite and terribly self-conscious, nibbling at corner-cut cucumber sandwiches and casting nervous glances at the sausage plait. Nobody dared go back for seconds unless someone else did first, which led to a great deal of very British hunger and whispered encouragement. At one event I saw an elderly colonel spend nearly ten minutes pretending to admire the hydrangeas, just to edge a bit closer to the pork pies.

These days I prefer a simpler affair. A flask of something piping, a small wedge of something crumbly, and perhaps a potted meat sandwich with the crusts still attached, thank you very much. I may not eat it - I just like knowing it’s there, like a meaty little guardian. I celebrated today’s picnic with a solo expedition to the allotment, where I laid out a torn bit of deckchair canvas, unwrapped my selection of assorted odds and ends (hard cheese, soft apple, squint-eyed tomato), and shared my pork pie with Brian the pigeon, who appeared in my peripheral vision just as the pie was exposed to air. He’s got a knack for it.

A picnic is not about the food, really. It’s about the pause. The sitting down amid the bother, the choosing to stop and chew instead of dash and worry. The sun warming the backs of your knees. The butter soaking through the paper. The bees. The slightly confused look on your own face as you forget entirely what it was you were fretting about earlier.

So today I wish you an untroubled blanket, sandwiches that haven’t fused with their clingfilm, and company - whether it’s old friends, quiet birds, or a cheese and pickle bap that brings you joy.

And if your picnic was rained out or invaded by ducks, fret not. Every time you eat outdoors, on purpose or by accident, it still counts. Even if you’re just standing in the garden eating a Scotch egg in your slippers. Especially then.

Yours al fresco,
Virgil Twobyfour
(Still picking crumbs out of his cardigan pocket and slightly sunburnt behind the knees)