Glorious joys of a picnic
As Scots enjoy the sunshine and our thoughts turn to eating in the great outdoors, nothing can pull the tartan rug from under the world’s most glorious way of dining al fresco
It was 1975, I was nine years old, we were on Lewis on holiday with my grandparents, the house was seething with relatives, and it was, like yesterday in most parts, the most glorious summer day.
My mother, with great guile, prevailed on me to enjoy my lunch outside, all on my grown-up own, there being barely enough space at the table for the adults – and shortly presented me with a ‘hot-dog’, as she put it.
It was nothing like that American atrocity; but two crisply fried beef sausages from W J MacDonald the butcher (which Stornoway concern prospers still) in a crusty, buttered roll from J & E MacLeod’s the bakers (which, sadly, does not).
I remember how blue was Broad Bay and sparkling the Minch; the distant, lilac peaks of torridon and Assynt across the sea. I remember the heat of the sun and the softness of the lawn and the bees drowsing in my grandmother’s honeysuckle – but, mostly, I remember the taste of the sandwich: the perfect blend of flavour and texture, and all the better for being devoured out of doors.
there is something very British about the picnic. the Americans have their fastfood malls and the French their pavement cafés but we like to head out somewhere bucolic with a hamper and chomp away, reclining on a rug amidst green meadow.
Sandwiches of ham and tomato, egg and cress or honest cheddar; some cold chicken legs; crisps – perhaps a thermos of tea, or bottles of pleasant fizzy stuff chilled in the babbling burn. In Scotland, of course, outwith the major towns, you may be limited by what is available in the local Spar.
Picnics are far more glamorous when holidaying, say, in France – some good local sausage, a crisp baguette, perhaps a bottle of wine and a few sun-kissed figs, all savoured on the banks of the radiant Loire…
BUt there has been more to our picnicking than the faintly 1950s idyll of bland sandwiches and ginger beer. In the Hebrides, cutting the peats has always been a communal affair and, until general car ownership, everyone paused for a bit of food on the hill at high noon.
tea was always made, on a fire of broken baby peats left over from last year, and in an unwritten rule one’s host made a particular effort with the food – things people would not normally taste or children frequently enjoy: jam, cold meats, fancy cakes and biscuits.
And those of my vintage fondly recall the annual Sunday School outings every June – the hired bus, the streamers merry from the windows, the brief run to Dumbarton or Balloch or Kilmacolm… the gorgeous scent, something between vanilla and hot coconut, of broom in flaming blossom; the embarrassing-dads football kickabout as the ladies of the congregation prepared sumptuous repast on long tables… all, at last, brought to reluctant end by the singing of the Lord’s My Shepherd…
Even the Queen enjoys good, if elaborate, picnics – usually somewhere high in the glens around Balmoral and with a special trailer, designed by Prince Philip himself, towed thence by sturdy Land Rover.
this trailer has all manner of drawers and compartments and, of course, abundant provender from the Balmoral kitchens; and Prince Philip always does the cooking and the Queen always does the washing-up, sometimes to the acute unease of her guests. (‘Oh, somebody get that woman to sit down,’ she once snapped, when Margaret thatcher kept jumping up to interfere.)
there are admittedly trials with which on this island we picnickers must contend.
One, of course, is the weather. Our Sunday School outings, back in the 1970s, always had a prudent Plan B, and on at least two occasions we ended up in some dusty church hall as rain fell in diagonal rods on west Renfrewshire.
though – being Scottish – we are no less thrown by protracted and unwonted heatwaves, or the astonishing sunshine in which the Hebrides and west Highlands have now basked for weeks. We are notoriously prone to ‘taps aff!’, baring pallid limbs and (worse still) bellies in anything above 60f, or to loll and doze in city parks on such a scale it looks like the aftermath of some terrible disaster.
An additional hazard is the wildlife. In a very Scottish practical joke, bright blowy sunny days bring out evil cleggs – biting flies with mandibles like tree-saws; dull, still days, by contrast, bring forth midges.
Not a few picnics have come to appalled end when it turns out you casually draped the tartan travelling rug over an ants’ nest; the last blaze of summer – those weeks of windfall plums and doleful return to school – coincide with delinquent wasps, and in many parts of Scotland aggressive gulls are a menace. And there has been marked cultural change since the days when middle-class masses bowled out to Highland Perthshire in the Morris Minor traveller. Most of us are better off these days and are as apt to hit a gastropub in Fife as spend the morning buttering sandwiches and juggling tins of salmon.
THEN there is the most modern cult of the barbecue – dad in his vile novelty apron wrestling with tongs and spatulas amid billowing acrid smoke, serving up meat that is simultaneously charred and raw.
Barbecues are really best kept for crisp winter evenings – Bonfire Night and so on – and best restricted to the simplest fare. Capricious charcoal and searing metal will never match the serenity of a simple picnic.
there are basic picnic rules though, as Elizabeth David outlined decades ago in her 1955 classic Summer Cooking. If you must have plates and glasses, then have proper plates and glasses, not horrid plastic things that make the tea taste funny.
Certain delicious summer foods – terrines and pâtés, anything jellied – are dubious for protracted transport on a hot day, whereas cold sausages, meats, pies, cheeses and pickles come to life, especially with good bread.
We would not perhaps follow Mrs David’s recommendation of ‘stout red wine such as a Macon or a Chianti… vin rosé (particularly delicious by the sea); cider, lager, shandy, black velvet; iced sherry and bitters…’ But we can warm to the grand countryhouse picnics she recalled from her Roaring twenties youth.
‘A large party of children and grown-ups would be assembled in the hall. Led by our host and hostess we proceeded through the exquisite formal Dutch garden, across the lane and over the fence into a coppice.’
And who would help to make such a splendid outing possible? Mrs David explains: ‘Close on our heels followed the butler, the chauffeur and the footman, bearing fine china plates, the silver and tablecloths, and a number of vast dishes...’