Eating outdoors? It's no picnic

Love it or loathe it, picnic season is upon us. While Britain’s weather doesn't always lend itself to a perfect al fresco feast, its bounty of booze surely does, says Jonathan Ray

- Jonathan Ray

THE LATE Christopher Hitchens famously declared that the four most overrated things in the world were champagne, lobsters, an intimate activity far too fruity to describe in a family magazine such as this one and picnics. As befits a notorious contrarian, he was as wrong as wrong can be about champagne but bang on the money about picnics, which, in my experience, can be dire occasions that invariably take place in extreme discomfort somewhere too hot, too cold, too wet or too cramped on a moth-eaten, ant-ridden, mosquito-plagued rug or (more usually) in the back of a rain-lashed car in the company of folk you don't like with food you can’t stomach.

And why is it that picnics, like barbecues, are so often prepared by those (generally men) who never darken the kitchen for the rest of the year, thanks to their culinary ineptitude, but are deemed capable enough to cobble together something tasty simply because we're going to be eating whatever it is outdoors? “Do come! Simon/Alec/Ken/Mike (delete where applicable) is doing the picnic” is a phrase I’ve come to dread. Please note, chaps, that picnic fare is not to be bought from petrol stations any more than flowers are.