The Dullest Blog: comedy ramblings to inspire the most tedious minute of your week
I have a dream: a dream of the perfect picnic. The romantic notion of gathering one’s friends (or teddy bears) together on a blanket by a tranquil riverbank and feasting on dainty sandwiches, pretty cup cakes and perfectly chilled cava. In reality, however, picnics are never perfect.
In my student days I regularly picnicked with my sister. We didn’t let a little thing like the Irish Sea come between us, we picnicked by phone. This was back in the day when mobile phones were not for the masses and pay phones were plentiful. I would call her from a pay phone and she would call the pay phone back. My sister would be sat at home in the relatively serene surroundings of a terrace house back garden. I would be standing in a phone box eating a cold sausage roll and a box of raisins. My sister would be talking nonsense and I - well, I would be feeling slightly destitute, looking slightly vagrant and wishing I could sit down.
That’s why I consider the picnic bench to be a very useful piece of furniture which can make the whole thing much less of a pain in the arse. Yet many benches are placed in sites likely to make you so stressed that you can’t even operate a cheesestring. For example, I can see the sense in having picnic benches in parks, beside swings and slides, you can keep an eye on your Pimms and your little ‘uns at the same time. But I’ve also seen picnic benches placed in cemeteries, hospital grounds and supermarket car parks. I’m not sure if this makes sense, or what to think about it. I reckon there must be even more ridiculously placed benches out there. Let’s go find them. Yes, while you’re out and about, go bench spotting. If you find a strangely located bench send me the details or a picture. Eventually, I’ll go and visit them all on a big, mad, crazy road trip. I’ll take a humorously large and unnecessary item with me (perhaps another picnic bench), I’ll travel only by tram and I’ll do the whole thing dressed head to toe in gingham. I’ll write a blog, there’ll be a book and a documentary. Lets call it “Benchmarking”, or something funny.
In the meantime, I shall continue to dream of the perfect picnic but make do with a drive-through in a car park with the windows down. May your picnics never be short of a sandwich.