Felix Desmarais: Why I’m calling for a moratorium on picnics

Is the picnic over? Photo / Thinkstock

Happy New Year, welcome to 2023, it’s time for picnics to end.

So far, summer seems to be going rather well. I’m a big fan of the heat, compared to the cold, and usually I expect it to rain on Christmas Day, just as it does on my birthday in the middle of July. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised this year.

Summer, so far, seems to be behaving like summer. I appreciate that. Good work summer, we’ll keep you on.

Picnics are something of a summer staple. There’s something very nostalgic about them, so sweet and simple. Even the word is whimsical (it’s etymology is unclear: it comes from the French pique-nique, which to be honest is one of those French words that looks like it was made up by an Anglophone pretending to speak French).

It was with this gorgeous summer heat and that sense of fancy I went on a picnic.

But first I must talk about camping. Camping is a ridiculous, nonsensical pastime. This is how camping works: You take the concept of shelter, famously refined, perfected even, by what we call a “house”. Then you take that concept and make it worse, but try to make it resemble, as close as possible ... a house.

Some people spend thousands trying to make this bad-version-of-a-house slightly more similar to a house.

Here’s how to make camping better: don’t. Stay in a house (or hotel/motel, whatever). Trust me, it’s the best tent there is.

So, to picnics. Picnics are to a cafe what camping is to a hotel. You take everything that is great about a cafe (or lunch at home), and make it worse, but then try to make it more similar to the cafe.

You lay out a blanket to protect yourself from the grass. That was the first clue. You’re immediately acknowledging it’s not an ideal environment. Then you sit and awkwardly claw at food (which you’ve had to, unnecessarily, lug there) on the ground in front of you, right where a table could have been.

You know, the thing deliberately invented and designed to help us avoid sitting around like luddites on the ground. Because someone was sat on the ground once and thought, “you know what? We can do one better”, and built a damn table.

Don’t besmirch their good name (Table, I presume) by sitting your plump end on the ground and getting pins and needles in your hairy hobbit-feet.

Because I am fantastic company at all times, I mused on all of this to my companions.

One said, “But picnics are outdoors.” Indeed, outdoors, in summer, is most magnificent.

But my friend, I said, you can sit outside at a cafe. There’s even a fancy Italian word for it - al fresco. None of this pique-nique French nonsense. A bit like a name like Desmarais that sounds opulent but actually just means “of the marshes” - that is, “swamp-dweller”.

For some reason my companions then suddenly remembered various appointments they’d forgotten and the picnic came to a swift end. I, gratefully, returned to my swamp-dwelling, which of course was far superior to a tent.

It’s now 2023, and it’s an election year, so it’s my plea this is put on the political plate. That metaphorical plate, of course, should be on a metaphorical table in a metaphorical house.

Now is the time to end picnics, camping - and let’s not forget - hokey bloody pokey.

• Felix Desmarais is a journalist and mostly-former stand-up comedian.