We have had our garden picnic, and it was every bit as splendid as lunch on the terrace of a nice hotel.
Admittedly it involved a bit of flapping about first. This made Number Two Daughter roll her eyes and suggest that perhaps I should just sit in the garden and get drunk and let them get on with it, but of course I didn’t do this. I could not possibly have left them in charge because they do things wrong if they are not properly supervised.
Also even going to a nice hotel involves some flapping about, like making sure that Mark has remembered a handkerchief, and not wearing the scruffy flip-flops, and then you have got to keep giving the staff a fiver, so that they don’t spit in your drinks.
We hung our never-ever used Indian hammock in the garden, because it is sunny enough for the first time in the twelve years since we bought it. In the end we had got to hook it out of the way because there was so much food that were needed to bring out the kitchen table as well as Mark’s home-made table. So we had the picnic table, and the real table, and the garden chairs, all under our tablecloth-and-washing-line tent, which was just splendid. Number Two Daughter and Mrs. Number Two Daughter mixed Pimms with cucumber and tiny wild strawberries out of the front garden, and we cooked the garlic chicken and filled the chocolate cake with butter cream and whipped cream.
Number Two Daughter was just having a last minute hoover when my parents rang to announce their imminent arrival.
They had brought us some birthday presents, which was rather splendid. This was because it was Mark’s birthday last week, and it will be mine tomorrow, or probably today, by the time you are reading this. I had forgotten all about this until my parents rang to suggest a birthday visit.
Conveniently, our birthdays are just a couple of weeks apart. Mark’s is on Midsummer eve, and mine is on the middle day of the year, so if you are reading this on Monday, then we are exactly halfway through 2018. If you had made a New Year Resolution to achieve anything this year then you had better get on with it, because time is running out.
We don’t bother with birthday presents, because if there is anything that we would like, we just buy it, and also it is too much organisation for people who are rubbish at remembering dates. Hence the birthday presents were a rather splendid surprise bonus.
My father had come up with the brilliant idea of a magnetic thing for Mark to wear on his wrist. The idea of this is that when you are making things you don’t need to fill your pockets with screws to be saved for the washing machine later, just stick them to your wrist. He was very pleased with this, and spent some time later sticking himself to things.
I had a beautifully painted tile with a picture of a caravan, which I am going to stick to the camper van wall, and some tiny tea tins with pictures of London things on them. I liked these very much, and will use the tea in a hurry so that I can fill them with other things, like pine nuts or ground garlic, and then put them in the camper van as well.
There were also some chocolate biscuits, for both of us. These are always an inspired birthday present, and not something that we ever buy, because I look at them in the shop and then think that I could make them, and then forget.
We sat and talked happily under our tablecloth awning for the whole afternoon. It was one of the best sort of afternoons, with interesting conversation and all of my favourite things to eat, and it helped that I knew what they all were.
I was wearing a lovely tent-shaped dress, which Number Two Daughter says makes me look like a Moomin, and which gives no hint at all of what shape I might be underneath it. This saved me from absolutely any hint of waistband discomfort as a nasty consequence of overeating. I can recommend this. Vanity is an uncomfortable quality, and best abandoned during youth.
Of course, in the end we all had to go our separate ways, reluctantly because we had had such a nice afternoon. We said our goodbyes to my parents, and filled the dishwasher, and went to work, but it had been a very happy day, and had chocolate cake in it.
The picture is Mrs. Number Two Daughter, who was persuaded by Roger Poopy that she would like some company in the hammock.
She is too nice for her own good. If I wanted company in a hammock it would not be Roger Poopy.
