Picnics of the past fraught with folly
We had a picnic yesterday. Or least some of us intended to have a picnic. Being the country uncle, I provided the target location. The city folk had packed, you know, the stuff of a modern picnic: falafel, smoked salmon, crusty bread, prosciutto … food from about six countries, and beer from two.
As country host, the writer offered bread after the Turkish style, olives from Coriole, which is a few hills over there, and wines from right here: one Roussanne; one Grenache.
The visitors had brought their dog. Everything looked pretty good. But their suggestion that we find a sylvan glade by a babbling brook triggered something surprising from me. I found my throat issuing a disclaimer. The air is so full of abrasive dusts and pollens, I suggested, that I should be rather more comfortable staying close to the home, the huffer and the medicine chest. The creeks and vineyards are crawling with red-bellied black snakes, I explained, which is, as far as a snake goes, a reasonably well-tempered bastard with a venom less lethal than some, but they’re everywhere, and there are lambs in several creekline paddocks, which will be as tempting to the power-freak city dog as that horde of vipers.
And besides, if we sit here beneath the patio we shall have access to the coffee pot, the water closet, and real plates and cutlery, and look: there’s a lawn with a few shady spots right there.
So we went outside, sat at a table beneath a roof, and had lunch in a rather civilised way.
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Nobody over-indulged, and there were no incidents worth mention other than the city dog’s strenuous efforts to keep visitors away from the tasting and sales cellar of the winery next door.
Which reminded me of the picnics of my youth. Without alcohol, they were invariably more danger-fraught than anything I had to offer yesterday. Our ’50s or ’60s repast was rarely more complex than a tartan Willow cooler jammed with fritz, Vienna sliced bread, iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, tomato sauce, salt, Coon cheese, a Thermos of hot white tea and a one-gallon Hibitane udder-wash bottle full of raspberry cordial. They came in handy, those udder wash bottles. Quite reasonably, they were what the White family milk came in.
"If it involved a beach, a White family picnic always included sunburn of a deadly degree; if we went inland, it seemed even more fraught."
When I recall those teetotal affairs, I am grimly reminded of the casualty rate of our good Christian picnics. We always took some collateral. Whether it was Unca Don poking his head up out of the river, to get clocked by a skimming rock somebody’d thrown, or Reggie Davis coming up out of the murky water just as somebody leapt in from the high board, breaking Reggie’s neck, we were effective at wreaking havoc at water picnics. I shall never forget the sound of that neck impact. Sort of makes you balk on your fritz and sauce sanger. If it involved a beach, a White family picnic always included sunburn of a deadly degree; if we went inland, it seemed even more fraught.
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We once went right out to Rockleigh for a five-family picnic by a creek which was dry when we got there, an unforseen condition which assisted the parents in their failure to realise that they’d left son number five of the six at home, where the poor paranoid panicking four-year-old exorcised his rage demolishing every single one of my mother’s potplants before we got back to rescue the poor little bugger. The wrecked Hoya seemed to bring Mum the most grief. Short, that was, of the destruction of her dying father’s collection of maidenhair ferns, which she’d brought all the way over from Melbourne in the Peugeot 403 station wagon with six kids and two adults; pram wheels tied to the roof. To much shrieking on the occasion of sharp turns or sudden braking, the terra-cotta pots slid well on the corrugated steel floor in the back of that wagon and, being, summer the hair ferns drank all the cool water in the Hibitane udder-wash bottle, leaving us kids to settle for the raggy contents of the canvas waterbag hanging off the front bumper. We hated those maidenhair ferns.
Which leads to the sort of impromptu picnics of the ’70s, which were more along the lines of a log of mettwurst, a bottle of Jack or Jim and another of Seaview Shiraz, and maybe even an example of that new bread thing, the French stick. Most of the physical damage came via falling off the motorbikes on the way home or from eating the wrong mushrooms in the sylvan glade or both.
Then came the more pretentious age of the wicker picnic hamper, the Opinel knife, and the sorts of prosciutto and whatnot we spread across the safe table yesterday. By the late ’70s/early ’80s, the G&T, even the Campari and Ricard seemed to have become standard hamper items, and there were far fewer casualties. I knew the age of the deadly picnic had gone when I attended one at which wine was served from a decanter.
I’m sure there are brains greater than these ready to write a PhD on the negative influence of the higher-alcohol reds of the ’90s on the picnics of those days, which would leave mine content to ponder the marvels of a crunchy modern bone-dry rosé, or a sensual marvel like yesterday’s Roussanne. A baguette, plenty of Paris Creek butter, some watercress and a bottle of something more fun than fortitude.
Before the summer blitzes in – it’s beginning to feel like it may be a blitz – and while there’s still some green about the hills and vales, why not reclaim some past and some pleasantry by packing that hamper, counting the kids (before and after), bunging some dry rosé in the icebag with some beers and, dammit, even taking the damn dog somewhere crazy and, well, picnicking.
I have one stern suggestion. Even if you live in the country, don’t do it at home. As my guests seemed to show yesterday, by taking a thorough cross-country walk after our safely-safely luncheon at a table under the patio, other people’s red-bellied black snakes are much more thrilling than your own.
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