The 13 things that will likely happen at your next picnic

Telegraph

3 days ago

Dog owners can often assume, very much like some mothers walking onto a plane with a screaming child, that the behaviour of their beloved is adorable, despite all evidence to the contrary. Hence, you should be wary of a dog (usually a Jack Russell) bounding over to your picnic spread and beginning to trough at the cold sausages while their owner chuckles indulgently in the middle distance.
Your only recourse in a civilised world would be to issue the dog owner with an itemised bill for the comestibles consumed. In reality, however, you'll probably have to make do with simply hoping against hope that the owner returns home to find his fridge has been raided by hungry burglars and he's now entirely out of frozen ready meals and Spam.
Women will wee behind a tree in pairs
While men will consider a miniature banzai plant to be a perfectly satisfactory modesty concealer when it comes to urinating in a public park, women tend to set off in pairs with a view to finding a landscape redolent of the Guyanese jungle. Noting that the park's official public toilet closed down in 1998, the pair will settle on going behind a beech tree while the other keeps 'look out'.
It's really not necessary; everyone can see everything. We just choose to utilise the unique, British-hewn skill of swerving our heads at the sight of a picnicker squatting down and instead showing a newly messianic level of interest in the seagull picking at a Gregg's wrapper next to the dog poo bin.
A gazebo will become untethered
Flimsy gazebos are all the rage at city picnics these days, though they always look strangely like the Samaritans tents at a minor festival. Glance inside however and you will not find a tearful goth who has drunk too much rosé through a straw and can't find her friends. There will instead be a posse of twentysomethings who believe that a self-assembled, prison-cell-sized cube of polycarbonate somehow lends a 'boutique VIP' vibe to their picnic.
Wait around for around half an hour and you can be sure that the damn thing will become untethered if impacted with a wind velocity equal to an asthmatic chinchilla's breath exhalation. Cue a phalanx of girls in wedges chasing it across the park, last seen blowing, with gathering speed, towards an electricity substation.
Someone will bring (inedible) homemade quiche in a Tupperware container
One of the great myths of the picnic is that we'll be more than happy with appalling-quality food as long as we're eating it outside. Pubs with beer gardens have been using this loophole in our gastro-sanity for years. But this misconception has also infected the picnic. Using a 'picnic' as an opportunity to dole out that quiche that didn't even find any takers when you put the crust on the bird table last weekend isn't going to cut it.
Pack cold pheasant, pack smoked salmon, pack truffle paté. Pack your hamper like you're visiting Henley Royal Regatta, not HMP Pentonville. Just because there are no chairs it doesn't mean you have to eat like you're back at Scout or Girl Guides camp. And speaking of which…
Only one person will have brought a folding chair
There needs to be a more democratic approach here. If one person brings a chair, then everyone must bring a chair. Otherwise you are faced with the socially uncomfortable (and slightly Tsarist) situation of one person sitting, throne-like, on their collapsible seat while everyone else crouches on the floor with the food, literally offering up comestibles to the 'king of the picnic' with their bare hands. The person with the chair will naturally never relinquish their exalted position, having conveniently had their bladder lining replaced with titanium at a discreet Dutch clinic before they arrived.
Someone will sit on your sunglasses
Save your designer shades for the Caribbean cruise. Picnics are a time to bring out the cheapest sunglasses you possess. When you or a friend invariably sit on them you can at least laugh and jovially claim 'they were only a fiver from TK Maxx', while calculating exactly what you can 'accidentally' sit on and break of an equivalent value next time you're at their house.
Nobody will have brought water
Thirty-degree heat plus excessive Sav Blanc means that some H2O may be appealing at some point during your picnic. But nobody ever brings water to a picnic. Instead, you will drink warm, flat tonic water or convince yourself that a can of lager and a satsuma segment will be 'good enough' for now.
Two people will argue over who does a 'booze run' to Sainsbury's Local
It's getting late and the combination of sun, wine and starch has given everyone a headache. Yet the more committed picnickers will be determined to stretch out the fun until the 'parkie' locks the wrought-iron gates at 9pm. Two hardy volunteers will be found to go and buy more wine. Unfortunately, they're drunk and don't know the area. They will fail to locate a Waitrose or Sainsbury's and will instead resort to a malodorous-looking newsagents for supplies.
The remaining picnickers will then be presented with three blue plastic bags full of warm Mateus Rose and three bags of Nobby's Nuts as their 'dinner'. Ideally, you'll have long gone home by then, only to be regaled the following morning with the story of how Linda impaled her foot on a spike trying to leave the (locked) park and spent an entire night in an A&E waiting room. Still, at least she had the left over Wotsits to keep her strength up.