The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 11, Issue 9 (December 1, 1936)
The Picnicians
The Picnicians.
And, of course, there will be a picnic on Boxing Day. No, no! We said a picnic—IN A TRAIN; not one of those home-away-from-home excursions, in a car, where you take gas-lamps and folding chairs and collapsible tables, and everything except the piano. We mean a PICNIC—a good, old-fashioned, back-to-nature, lunch-with-the-twigs-in, smoke-in-the-tea, free-for-all, smash-and-grab excursion. We mean the sort of picnic where father carries a bag with the blunt end of a lunch-sausage protruding from one end and Winnie's water-wings and Annabelle's striped bathing suit from the other. We mean the sort of picnic where little Sebastian carries the kettle indifferently concealed in newspaper; where Uncle Henry watches, with loving care, a bundle of rugs with something hidden in its core that clinks; where mother carries a biscuit-tin under one arm and the Infant Samuel under the other. Where Aunt Hettie remembers that it was at just such a picnic as this that she met Uncle Henry, and Uncle Henry looks at her as though he would say, “Why remind us of that on such a nice day?”
We mean the type of picnic at which all the things happen which have endeared picnics to us from time immemorial. We expect the Infant Samuel's rusks to be left in the train, and we expect the Infant Samuel to sit up and take vocal notice. We expect father to lead us—even as the Israelites were led—to the “Ideal Spot.” Ten minutes later we expect to be expelled from the “Ideal Spot” by mosquitoes and to be conducted by mother to another spot not nearly so “ideal”—but much pleasanter. We expect father and Uncle Henry to disappear into the scrub with the bundle of rugs that clinks, and to emerge twenty minutes later with four sticks of firewood in their arms and an expression of profound content on their faces.
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“Of course, there will be a picnic.”
And we shan't be disappointed if we do the thing properly and leave all gadgets and thingamybobs at home and boil the billy over the traditional fire. For the fire is the soul of the picnic. Every father has always known where and how the perfect picnic-fire should be lit—and every mother has always advised better places and better methods of lighting it. From a nest of seed-cake and sandwiches she has never failed to broadcast sound advice on ways and means of producing the Ideal Fire. It must have been primitive woman who discovered fire in the first place. But father affects deafness. “Sebastian!” he orders. “Fetch four big stones. No—not those. We're building a fire, not a business block. Norman!” he shouts. “The sticks!” and “Winnie, take your rubber duck out of the kettle at once.”
“I would build it against the log,” pipes mother.
“Who's making this fire?” asks father. “Draught is what I'm after—natural draught. You won't be able to get near it in a moment.”
To cut a long and painful story short, the wood will not burn, the kettle falls into the ruins, Sebastian gets his ear thumped, Winnie is accused of sabotage, and then it is discovered that Uncle Henry has boiled the billy down by the river. But of such stuff are real dyed-in-the-wool picnics made. No picnic is a picnic if father doesn't dive into the river and strike his head on a stone, if Sebastian doesn't sit in the jam, if a bull doesn't look threateningly over a gate, and a bee doesn't sting Auntie. No picnic is worthy of storing in the Museum of Memory unless we return by train with our noses peeled, lumps on our legs—tired, relaxed, languid and lulled on comfortable seats. Yes, siree! That's a picnic.