The Dullest Blog: comedy ramblings to inspire the most tedious minute of your week

The text message of ‘Let’s go for a picnic’ is clearly met with confusion by those I have invited. Lot’s of replies of ‘what?’ and ‘I’m busy’ and ‘Are you six?’.

“Six am I? …..so’s your Mum!” Ha that’ll teach you to mess with my scathing 6 year old wit…I want my picnic damn it.

 

It’s a gorgeous sunny day, I sit in Kilmarnock’s Dean Park, waiting for the first of my I picnicking partners to arrive.  The ground is covered with more than a smattering of dog poo, and a toy bear sits in a nearby hedge with a syringe in its face, but still I sit cheerfully waiting, fending off wasps from my Red Cola filled Evil Dead thermos.

 

I hate wasps because people always say the same thing, ‘It’ll only sting you if you annoy it’.  Sound advice, if only I knew what wasps found annoying.  How do you annoy a wasp? Change the channel when it’s watching its favourite TV programme?

 

When the snack buddies arrive, supplies are plentiful; my picnicking colleagues have gone delightfully old school. There are Jam Sandwiches (always a must in the cash strapped days of the Kirkwood’s 80s household), Jammie Dodgers, Wagon Wheels, Apples, Mr Men biscuits and enough diluted orange squash to drown a family of pandas. In fact the only real foul committed is when one of the picnickers brings sun blushed tomatoes, and some couscous.  Thankfully, an impromptu water balloon fight helps them see the error of their Nigella influenced ways.
 

Rules are set out very simply; all talk of mortgages, comedy, marriage, cars and telly is banished, unless it is reference to CITV or the Broom cupboard Circa 1989.  Smiles wide, we sit in a now overcast Ayrshire summer day, playing marry, shag, throw off a cliff, making fun of Seonaid’s hairy toes, and laughing at what appears to be a park attendant trying to have sex with a bin.  The chuckles only come to an end when we sadly feel the very first patter of rain, and have to make a mad dash for the bus stop.

 

Picnics aren’t just for kids. They represent something else; a state of mind, a break from the norm, a bubble of silliness in a world of scowling monkeys.  You’re not having lunch ‘al fresco’ you’re having a piece n jam with your pal…..and he brought cake.