ALFRESCO
By Tim Hitchcock
The word may have Italian origins but there is something very British about ‘alfresco.’ It encapsulates the frantic activity that is triggered when the rare summer sun requests the pleasure of our company outside. Once the year’s first ripe native strawberry has been swallowed, all eyes are on the weather.
The moment the British spot a blue sky, they dash outdoors with a baggage train of doings and devices necessary for enjoying alfresco life to the full. Whether they voyage to the beach, the countryside or just into the garden, out come blankets, chairs, tables and umbrellas. Once comfortably installed, the first thing to do is eat a picnic.
What were Noel Coward’s mad dogs and Englishmen doing out in the midday sun if not looking for a superior picnic spot? That hunt carried the flag across the globe in the first place. The mad dogs just tagged along hoping to snaffle a sandwich and a quail’s egg or two. Dogs are perpetual optimists where picnicking is concerned. If you buy a hamper, eating outside is like an unseasonal Christmas with the goodies wrapped in a wicker basket, not gaudy paper. All manner of delights come tumbling out. Best of all, you don’t need to send a thank you letter.
On the other hand, you may wish to put something together yourself. Cold meats and runny cheese should be accompanied by smoked salmon but not that prosthetic pink variety from supermarkets. Spoil yourself with something properly cured. If you feel you deserve a special treat and your bank manager agrees, add a pot of caviar.
Alternatively, you can light up a barbecue. The average British male loves barbecues because they are big on two things he misguidedly believes have been men’s preserve since caveman days: fire and raw meat.
On the hottest days of the year, the air is so thick with smoke, flame and the reek of burning flesh you would be forgiven for thinking some vast remake of “Apocalypse Now” was being shot across the country. Men in chinos and military sunglasses bayonet defeated sausages with forks and subject V-C (veal cutlets) to a grilling.
Lunch consumed, the challenge is to think of something to do until tea. There are several schools of thought on this. One of them, namely that you should just have a snooze and leave anything more strenuous such as cutting the lawn to others, should be shunned. Celebrate the sun’s visit with some mild exercise.
There’s swimming of course and tennis if you must but nothing beats the emperor of summer games, croquet. It should have been our gift to the world rather than the death by interminable boredom that is cricket.
With all that lovely whacking opponents’ balls beyond the horizon, croquet requires you to do horrible things to friends while being faultlessly polite, like diplomacy in miniature. It also affords unparalleled opportunities to cheat. Let he who has never nudged his ball nearer the hoop cast the first stone, I say.
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