The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium

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The months of March and April of that year had been unprecedentedly dry and warm for England . The farmers, caught by surprise by the novelty of a situation which did not allow them to plead bankruptcy because of unusually late frost, rallied gamely and started talking about the horrors of drought. People who had, the previous autumn, informed us that the wonderful crop of berries and mushrooms were signs of a hard winter and an even harder summer to follow, now said that a surfeit of berries and mushrooms meant a fine spring the following year. To top it all, those paid Munchausens amongst us, the weather forecasters, predicted an extremely hot spell from April to August. The English, being gullible, got so overexcited at these predictions that many of them went to extreme lengths, like laying in suntan oil and deck chairs. In the whole length and breadth of Bournemouth, on the south coast, where we were living, there was not a pair of bathing trunks nor a sunshade to be had for love or money.

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