There is much that is great about the English summer. You know the kind of things - long shadows cast by tall cricketers on endless summer evenings, the crack of leather on willow, strawberry sandwiches, cucumber and cream and the evocative sizzle of raindrops falling on a hot barbecue.
But there is one aspect of summer that I dread every year - it's the picnic. It's strange really because two of my favourite things are having lunch and being outside. I can't get enough of the great outdoors (within the M25 obviously), but eating there just doesn't work for me. At home there is a cooker, a fridge, tables, chairs, crockery and cutlery. When you have a picnic, you willingly sacrifice all of the above.
A picnic means sitting uncomfortably on a rug or on slightly damp grass, balancing a paper plate on your knee while simultaneously trying to prevent a paper napkin from flying away in the breeze and attempting to balance a plastic cup on slightly uneven ground so that the contents won't spill - and failing.
Then there's the food. Any items that are meant to be cold tend to be slightly warm, and any items that are meant to be hot are stone cold.
You have to consider the weather too. You can guarantee it is either too sunny or freezing or raining or windy. And then even on the rare occasions when the weather conditions are perfect, there are always uninvited guests - wasps, flies, ants, you name it - they all love a picnic. As far as I'm concerned they are welcome to it.
I can just about see the point of a picnic lunch if you happen to be out on a day trip to a place where there is no ready supply of food or, if you are strictly kosher, where there is no ready supply of supervised produce.
But there are plenty of lunatics out there who go to the park with the express purpose of having a picnic. Do yourselves a favour, eat your sandwiches and then go to the park - you'll have a lovely walk, there will be no mess and you won't have to shlep your freezer bags, thermos and rug all the way home again.
By far the worst place for a picnic is the beach. Anyone who has bitten into a cheese and pickle sarnie on the front at Westcliff-on-Sea or Bournemouth will have experienced that characteristically crunchy texture that comestibles acquire at the seaside. And of course there is that sandy frosting on your hummus and other dips.
However, I do make a distinction between a sandwich and a packed lunch.
Although I hate picnics, I love packed lunches, which, after all can be eaten in or outdoors. There is nothing better when, for example, you are sitting at the cricket on a gloriously sunny summer's day, than whipping out some foil-rapped (unsandy) cheese and pickle sandwiches and a packet of crisps - ideally plain, ready-salted ones.
This is the antithesis of the picnic - there's no fuss, no smelly rug required and, miraculously, the food always tastes much better than it does at home.
Then you get to wash it down with a nice pint of something from the bar and snooze through the afternoon session.
And the best thing is at the end of the day you can go home, cook some dinner in the kitchen and eat it at the table, without a grain of sand or an insect in sight - it's summer dining at its very best.