I wrote about The Picnic Papers almost four years ago. Confined to barracks I remember wistfully childhood picnics.
Uncle Henty was my mentor. We went to Clogher Head for picnics and rock climbing but it wasn’t until I was a teenager that his picnics became more ambitious. On the Fourth of June he eschewed competitive picnicking on Agar’s Plough and found a secluded spot on the river. Usually there was potted shrimps, coronation chicken and strawberries and cream. He took us to Cambridge and hired two punts, sometimes one and a canoe, and we dawdled upstream to Grantchester stopping for a riparian repast. How Wind in the Willows!
‘Hold hard a minute, then!’ said the Rat. He looped the painter through a ring in his landing-stage, climbed up into his hole above, and after a short interval reappeared staggering under a fat, wicker luncheon-basket.
‘Shove that under your feet,’ he observed to the Mole, as he passed it down into the boat. Then he untied the painter and took the sculls again.
‘What’s inside it?’ asked the Mole, wriggling with curiosity.
‘There’s cold chicken inside it,’ replied the Rat briefly;
‘coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscresssandwiches
pottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater—-‘
‘O stop, stop,’ cried the Mole in ecstacies: ‘This is too much!’
‘Do you really think so?’ enquired the Rat seriously. ‘It’s only what I always take on these little excursions; and the other animals are always telling me that I’m a mean beast and cut it VERY fine!’
(The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame)
Colin Clark’s memoir, Younger Brother, Younger Son, recalls a picnic that apparently had no food and more to drink than even Kingsley Amis could cope with.
“I moved into a house in Cheyne Walk with my old Oxford friend Reginald Bosanquet, who had recently separated from his incredibly seductive wife. Reggie was reading the News at Ten on ITN, and was a much-loved public figure. The trouble was that he was also a serious boozer. He used to judge his intake of alcohol very carefully, so that he was just sober enough to read the nightly news bulletins, and would then get plastered immediately afterwards. One Sunday we went on a picnic, and I brought along a bottle of gin, two bottles of white wine and two bottles of champagne. Reggie polished them off without turning a hair. He then went and bought a bottle of port and a bottle of brandy from a pub, both of which he emptied before passing out, peacefully, on the grass.”