Flatlays of picnic spreads are so misleading. They’ve always got, like, homemade hibiscus soda in unlabelled glass bottles, and random baskets of leaves. Everything’s artfully arranged on little wooden boards that don’t have any knife marks on them, so clearly are not household cutting boards grabbed at the last minute from the kitchen (as happens in reality).

I could go on – I mean, I haven’t even started on the food – but I think you know what I’m on about if you’ve ever so much as glanced at #picnicdate (my advice: don’t). My point is that picnics, in my experience, never pan out as idyllically as we’ve all been led to believe. Today has been a case in point, and it all started with a broken car air conditioner. 

Have you ever tried arranging a last-minute air conditioning regas near Adelaide Hills, with patchy phone reception and a family in tow? If you haven’t, then may I suggest not picnicking on a really hot day? If you must do that, then don’t make your destination so far out of town that air con is a non-negotiable necessity. 

Look, if it had been solely up to me I’d have just gone on without it, but hubby insisted it’d be an in-and-out job that we’d thank ourselves for dealing with promptly. Well, so much for that. Between both our phones cutting out and finding a servo that would let us use their wifi, getting in touch with an auto mechanic who was open and available to do the regas took over an hour. By that time, we were still an hour out from our destination and the kids were getting increasingly hangry. 

To make sure the day didn’t go from mildly trying to downright disastrous (as can happen when the kids’ fuses finally blow), we had our picnic right where we were: outside the servo, by the highway. It was not flatlay-worthy, nor especially enjoyable. But we did get the air con going again so… go us.