The warm weather is encouraging locals to forego their shopping expeditions and spend the day down by the river instead, where tiny waves lap invitingly against the pebble beach. There's an impromptu festival of belly buttons, as teenage girls compete to see who can wear the skimpiest outfit. Little kids paddle in the shallows, scattering shoals of silvery minnows. A startled moorhen skitters across the water and into the reeds. A heron takes off, laboriously, like a broken umbrella. A kingfisher flashes past. The colour of its wings - an electric blue - seems to burn itself into your retina, leaving a neon trail as it disappears downstream.
Picnic blankets are spread out, giving the grassy riverbank the appearance of a threadbare quilt. Picnics are enjoyable, in an abstract kind of way, right up to the moment that you actually open the hamper. They’re better experienced in the past (“Remember the day we had the picnic?”), or some unspecified time in the future (“wouldn’t it be great to have a picnic?”), rather than the present. Sharing a meal with insects that bite and sting is only going to end in tears.
In the gardens of Whimsey, makeshift barbecues fill the air with acrid smoke and the beguiling smell of budget burgers being cooked - or, rather, incinerated - by men who would normally baulk at grilling toast. What is it about men and barbecues? Once they've had three sunny days in a row, they’re happy to haul the barbecue out of the shed, fill it with charcoal, pour on half a can of petrol, and, with never a thought for their own safety, casually toss a match in. Then, having beaten back the flames, they can get down to the serious business of feeding the family. Everyone gets their food just the way they like it, assuming they like it charred on the outside and dangerously raw on the inside. Everybody likes to eat outdoors on a summer’s day, and the folly of buying the cheapest meat products in the supermarket freezer won’t become apparent for at least eight hours.
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