Nothing Matches the Glory of a Bad British Picnic

Until you have watched a family of five eat a sedimentary pile of squashed and gently sweating cheese sandwiches beside a bin in the "picnic area" off a dual carriageway then, my friends, you know nothing of the British picnic.

The Wind and the Willows may have conjured halcyon, if somewhat cannibalistic, picnics of "coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrolls-cresssandwichespottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater," but the truly British picnic is a packet of Doritos, two cornershop Scotch eggs, a bag of cherry tomatoes, and a packet of ten Marlboro Lights, consumed in the watery British sunshine beside a man playing Bob Marley on an out-of-tune guitar.

I love picnics. Even just smacking the word against the back of your teeth is fun. I love the fag butts, the cocktail sausages, the warm white wine, and the imprint of grass stalks across the back of your sunburnt thighs. I love the slow unwrapping of pond-smelling supermarket salad and the three-outings-out-of-date tubs of gently fizzing hummus. I love the brittle brown crust that appears along the edges of tuna mayonnaise and the chunks of carrot sat beading in a click-and-lock Tupperware box beside your upturned bike.

Of course, other countries eat outside too. A friend of mine once watched a family of German tourists sitting around a park bench in the blazing August sun tucking into a packet of raw bacon. God love them. I once ate biryani under a baobab tree with my extended family in India, surrounded by whining dogs and moustachioed lads on mopeds. Vanuatuan apple pickers eat their bread and cheese lunches lounging on trailers as they work along the agricultural coast of New Zealand. But nothing—no oil-drenched ciabatta or pot of pickled herring—can come close to the sheer, baleful glory of a shit British picnic.

I grew up in Oxford where tossers in cream slacks and ill-fitting waistcoats would regularly grind their way along the banks of The Isis, pretending to be in some Evelyn Waugh fantasy of pâté and Champagne. They would produce beautiful straw hampers of strawberries and French bread, fine cheeses, and crisp apples. All ordered straight from the shop, all assembled by my bored and cash-poor friends working Saturday shifts at a delicatessen, all made with about as much love as a goiter. That isn't a picnic. That is an Ocado delivery with paddles.

I was one of those smug Oxbridge picnic people once. Well, nearly. When a group of female friends and I asked our new Canadian acquaintance, Nick if he wanted to come punting and have a picnic he looked shocked, then awed, then thrilled. Punting in Canada, it turns out, was slang for lesbian sex involving dildos.

Sadly for Nick, this wasn't on the menu. But we did produce a fine selection of highlighter-pink German salami, a packet of dough-like white rolls, and a huge bottle of Co-Op red wine; all eaten on a scrappy bit of grass covered in goose shit and overlooked by the Northern Bypass. A better introduction to the noble British art of al fresco eating he couldn't have ordered, let alone bought.

What differentiates a picnic from simply lunch is, of course, a blanket. As a happily-married couple living in the Nissan-Micra-and-swing-dance-classes of your thirties, this blanket will probably be some tartan affair with waterproof backing that folds neatly into a perfect square, replete with straps. To which I say, how lovely for you.

But for the true British picnic, the blanket will be a collection of Man United beach towels, an inside out coat, and an old blanket used to cover the sofa when you repainted the front room. A palpating group of waifs and strays will gather around this patchwork of intertextile discomfort, bringing with them a packet of Bombay mix here, a tub of guacamole there; maybe even a pineapple, if they've been to one of the greengrocers beside the mosque.

Of course nobody will have brought a knife. So you'll spend much of the day opening packets of ham with your house keys and spreading taramasalata with a debit card.

Talking of utensils, you will also forget a corkscrew or bottle opener, meaning that one person will be tasked with opening bottles of San Miguel using a lighter slammed against a fence post and pushing corks into two-for-a-tenner bottles of wine. And there will only be four plates, so you'll be eating off a library book or the flattest bit of your leg.

Jane Austen did it in Box Hill, Jerome K. Jerome did it in a boat, and D.H. Lawrence did it by a lake. But as long as there is breath in my body and ants in my gusset I shall have my picnics surrounded by dog-chewed tennis balls and rusting bottle tops, feasting on half-crushed Twiglets and semi-circles of waxen cheese, beneath a dusty British sun as some unfathomable twat in flip flops tries to throttle herself with poi on the horizon, and the acrid smoke of B&H Silver wafts across our curled-up white bread crusts.

Summer is coming. Thank God.