The Season by Sophie Campbell

Author:Sophie Campbell [Campbell, Sophie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781781311400
Publisher: MBI

14

THE PERFECTLY PACKED BASKET

It was halfway through the season and I was picnicked out. Even someone who considers the Scotch egg and the gala pie the ne plus ultra of English cuisine can have enough of pork products. And eating picnics while dressed in your best clothes is uniquely demanding. How, I wondered, on finding a crushed melon ball in one of my Roberto Cavallis, had the formal picnic become as integral to the season as strawberries and champagne?

The dismal phrase ‘cold collation’ means a light meal of cold meats and salad of some sort. It is the only mention of food by Jane Austen in a famous scene in her novel Emma, when a party sets off in carriages from the fictional Surrey village of Highbury to visit the beauty spot of Box Hill. The servants leave them, with the collation, to disport themselves. The word ‘picnic’ is never used, though the concept had existed for a long time and was evolving from an indoor feast when the guests contributed a dish to the outdoor repast we love so much today. Jennifer and Geoffrey’s guests in Number One Car Park were continuing a long and heroic native tradition in believing that food is more special when it’s eaten outside.

The essence of the picnic has always seemed so very English. It has a particular combination of rural beauty and physical discomfort (‘Sand in the sandwiches, wasps in the tea,’ wrote Betjeman, describing a seaside effort) and, in the case of social occasions, a carefully choreographed informality. It demands fortitude in the face of uncertain weather, balancing plates and trying to sit comfortably on a rug without kicking things over, all of which we suspect other nationalities couldn’t or wouldn’t do. Like many things in life, there must be some suffering before happiness can be achieved. Once it is, the picnic is a joyous thing, the sunniest of traditions: the very word sounds upbeat, its crisply balanced syllables like two Tupperware lids snapping shut. It brings to mind English summer foods: raised pies and Scotch eggs, asparagus and cold ham, cucumber sandwiches and potted shrimps and mayonnaise. Or, in the words of Ratty to a salivating Mole in The Wind in the Willows: ‘… coldtonguecoldhamcold beefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscresssandwichespottedmeat gingerbeerlemonadesodawater …’

Of course the idea is not exclusively English. Everyone else in Britain does it. There is a great picnicking tradition in the Arab world. Russians have always loved setting off to the woods armed with samovars, food and containers for the mushrooms and berries they will pick. In Isfahan, in what was once Persia, the great rectangle that used to be the royal polo field is often dotted with groups of black-clad figures eating alfresco. Picnics are not always happy, either. Emma’s Box Hill jaunt is a disaster in every way: everyone behaves oddly, they all view each other with critical eyes, nobody eats and Emma is cruel to another guest and reprimanded by Mr Knightley, the only one to keep his head. It feels untrammelled, like one of those drunken evenings when everything goes off the rails.

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