Is it just ME?

Or are pretentious picnics the pits?

SOMETHING odd is happening. It’s not enough that we ruined football with prawn sandwiches and that the mundane act of ordering a coffee has become a graduate-level examination in single-estate biodynamic coffee beans.

Now it seems that we’re determined to ruin the picnic, too.

For those of us who grew up on The Famous Five, what could be more redolent of summer freedom than the picnic?

Julian, Dick, Anne and George tucked into ham sandwiches, Aunt Fanny’s fruit cake, boiled eggs, plums from George’s garden, and ginger beer, of course. Who could ask for anything more? Well, it seems lots of us. Today’s picnics have become so full of themselves, they even have their own official ‘week’ (June 1625), which is surely the kiss of death.

These days it’s barely a picnic unless it’s marked with bunting (that wretched These new fancy-pants picnics have all the spontaneity of a state visit cloth embodiment of ‘Are we having fun yet?’), chairs, awnings, coolers — and that’s before we even get started on the food.

This will invariably include things that are far better hot, or show-off creations such as a lavish Eton mess served in jam jars.

Did we all watch Downton Abbey and lose our minds? All that wicker and so many pillows for lounging.

These new fancy-pants picnics have all the spontaneity of a state visit.

I’d like to issue a cry for the traditional picnic, one that can be hastily assembled at the first glimmer of sunshine from food you already have in your kitchen — cheese, cold meats, fruit — and other things that come in their own packaging.

Add a blanket, and a cushion if you’re being fancy, and you’re doing summer right.