Who hates picnics?

As a small child, I asked my father to write in my little autograph book. In his distinctive writing he left the words “good taste and design are by no means dependent upon money”. I had no idea what that meant.

Always the discerning tastemaker, aged eight years old David Hicks called the local tailor to his parents’ house and commissioned a dinner jacket. The only drawback being he had nowhere to wear the little dinner jacket.

He was truly an individual. A room with too many small objects was considered restless, and bright blue swimming pools were vulgar (ours, as you now know, was painted black). He ran over the daffodils that grew outside his library window - they were the wrong shade of yellow. He would rearrange the furniture in the guest room of the surprised friends he was staying with.

My father was never ever afraid to speak his mind. “I loathe the color used on modern buildings. Red dogs are hideous. I hate satin, I hate wrought iron, and I hate picnics.”

My mother on the other hand loved them. Picnics, that is. We spent a great deal of time holidaying in the summer between Ireland and Scotland. Not with my father obviously, he would be holidaying somewhere much more glamorous, but with my Aunt, Uncle and herd of cousins. An inordinate amount of time was spent on the edges of rivers, whisking away mosquitoes, in drizzling rain waiting for a salmon to bite. We would each have made up our own little picnic to sustain us through the day, often wrapped in a tea towel, and ever-so-slightly tasting of peat.

My mother is less inclined to sit on the edge of riverbanks now. But recently I was able to lure her out to a table set up in the garden, laid up with my newest napkins and tablecloth carried out in my matching picnic basket. A picnic of sorts.

All my mother was really worried about was whether this meant she would now miss tea at 4.

A few years ago my mother was recovering from a nasty bout of phenomena, slowly, and in her own stylish way. “Yesterday I got dressed,” she told me. “Today I got dressed AND put on lipstick.’’ “The hairdresser called to see if I was dead,” she continued. She had never missed a hair dressing appointment since about 1963.

She also never misses tea. Every afternoon at 4:00pm my mother has tea.

There is a process to it. The teapot needs to be warmed through first before the hot water is added, and she can tell when you skip this step. Always Tea leaves and not tea bags. The leaves are strained by her small tea strainer. She would even strain the leaves for her dachshund “no one wants tea leaves in their tea” she would say placing the saucer of tea on the floor for the dog. Milk, cold, is poured in after, never first, milk in first reveals an awful lot apparently. There is a tray that fits the tea pot, the tea cozzie, the tea strainer, the cup, the saucer, the teaspoon. The ivory handled tea knife, the plate with the hot crumpet and the small, starched tea napkin, which must not be confused with the breakfast napkin or the lunch and dinner napkin. They are quite a different size. These all also fit perfectly into place on the tea tray, which is layered with one of her tray cloths, embroidered with her grandfather’s initials.

Afternoon tea, cream tea, high tea. It can be confusing. Afternoon tea brings the expectation of at least a biscuit or two, with a cup, saucer, pot and cozzie. Cream tea means you can expect scones with clotted cream, if there’s no clotted cream then it’s not quite right. And high tea is something else altogether, it normally involves something hot, like spaghetti hoops on toast and tends to happen in the early evening and during my childhood it took place hidden away in a nursery with a nanny.

Teatime is also a time for trivial conversation or polite pleasantries, or not so polite ones. I had been invited to speak at a charity event in North Carolina. They thought because I was English it would be fun to serve tea for the audience before I spoke. I was seated at a table with several of the committee ladies. A more elderly one leant across to her neighbor and whispered loudly, ‘Who is this, India Hicks?’ There was an awkward silence. I turned to my own neighbor ‘Oh dear’ I said, ‘I do hope she’s not too disappointed.’ ‘Well, we were expecting Martha Stewart’ she told me huffily, just as the blinds came down and the podium lit up.

It reminded me of the time my grandfather as a young chap was invited to tea with a grand English hostess and was seated next to another young chap who only seemed interested in motorcycles. After tea the hostess called my grandfather over, to see if he had been amused by his companion, and my grandfather confessed ‘not much'. “Oh, my dear boy” continued the hostess “how unfortunate, because that was Lawrence of Arabia.”

Any way, back to the original question…do you hate picinics?