Amuse bouche... The picnic prep

Suzanne bumps her head taking the cooler bags out from under the stairs. Dermot is freaking out about leaving for the picnic. “We should be gone by now,” he says. “It’s noon. There will be no point unless we go in the next 20 minutes.”

Suzanne has a lot of cooler bags, but not one big enough to hold everything. She really should commit to being an adult and buy a proper picnic receptacle instead of this hotchpotch of free summerdeal ones from supermarkets. A recent German-supermarket flyer had a cooler box you plug in to your computer to charge up. Amazing.

Today, though, Suzanne will make do with what she has: one with an ice-cream-brand logo, one advertising a yogurt, and one from a Portuguese supermarket that is just the right size for four bottles of beer. Not that they’re bringing any beer today, but still — happy memories. That’s what picnics are about, Dermot keeps telling her — when he’s not telling her they should have made the sandwiches last night and that the day will be gone by the time they get to the beach. Picnics are about making memories, he says.

Or making me have a panic attack, Suzanne thinks.

“Where are the sausage rolls?” asks Dermot, packing up the madeto-each-child’s-order sandwiches.

Jesus, the sausage rolls. Suzanne had committed to making her own, with supermarket puff pastry and sausage meat.

“Give me 20 minutes,” she says, her blood pressure rising.

“Estimated time of departure was 10 minutes ago,” says Dermot, though he’s not exactly discouraging her. Dermot loves sausage rolls.

By the time the sausage rolls are out of the oven, Dermot and the kids have filled another cooler bag with biscuits, jellies and crisps. It’s like they’re prepping for a nuclear bunker. The youngest is bawling because she’s not allowed to bring ice cream. “We’ll buy an ice cream — if the shops are still open,” says Dermot.

“I’m hungry,” says the middle child. Dermot stares past Suzanne and out the kitchen window. “It’s raining,” he says. “Oh,” says Suzanne, opening the steam-filled box of sausage rolls.

“Lovely,” says Dermot, taking a bite of one. “They would have got soggy on the journey anyway.”