Picnic fun

13 December 2006

Two Sundays ago it was my turn to play host to our indoor picnic. We used to be refined ladies who sat at tables, used cutlery and paid other people to cook our food and wait on us. Somehow we’ve become not-so-refined ladies who sit on rugs in living rooms, stuffing (often homemade) food into our faces – quite possibly with both hands, if we’ve happened to put down our cameras for a moment.

As I live with my parents they were background attendees at the picnic, occasionally begging for scraps. Suzy and Lauren were naturally in attendance, though Helen was unfortunately unable to join us this time. She’s studying at university to become a teacher and had to write piles of case studies and rationales and other grownup-sounding things that weekend. In her email to the three of us she asked us to document the event well on Flickr so she could catch up – assuming she ever finished her uni work.

Picnic day arrived and I got up in good time to get my picnic bread made. Suzy turned up early and then Lauren and entertainment was found in the form of Flickr and … I don’t know what else because it was a long time ago now and I’m old and forgetful. Gradually we got our food ready, each pinching one of Lauren’s Indian nibbly things to tide us over until the picnic bread was cooked.

The rug was spread out on the floor in the dining room and we started to take things through from the kitchen.

“Oh, I haven’t taken any photos for Helen yet!”, I said as Lauren came back into the room.

“Who’s Helen?” she asked.

—

Later, having eaten our fill – and probably your fill too – we settled on the sofa to play with Meg. Meg is someone to whom you have not been properly introduced. She’s my new MacBook. Like Nelly the iMac she has an inbuilt iSight camera, so I did what anyone else would do: I set her recording and dumped her in Lauren’s lap.

The star of the show is Lauren, but watch/listen out for:
* Suzy being cross-eyed in the background
* The near-constant click of my shutter
* Dad’s own photos of the picnic
* and Mum being the unexpected solver of the technical conundrum

Incidentally, now that I’ve set Lauren up with a blog of her own, she is free to take any blogging revenge she may deem necessary. Although I do have the access information to her admin area, so I could scupper any attempt she makes pretty quickly.