if you go down to the woods today..

Only five days to the wedding! More importantly, only five days to the lake district! I will have the opportunity to play house, and cook and dust and clean to my heart's content. Ideally, Mr C would be out at work thus giving me the opportunity to watch some daytime TV and catch up with similarly leisured pals, and would then return forthwith (IF that's what I mean) to a cup of tea and slippers by the fire (he WAS born in the 70s). However we can't have everything.

Anyway, so I have been pondering for weeks, or is it months, whether to get a picnic basket or a rucksack. Mr C says rucksack, because he can carry it with ease on long hikes, but then he has no poetry in his soul. I prefer a lovely hamper, so I can feel like I'm Ethel in the William books, with her swain, sat beside the river. In the end I bought a hamper which was be-yoo-tiful, all shiny conker brown and woven with two handles to swing it by jauntily. But then, I bought the rucksack because it's insulated and quite Famous Five.

So now that that decision's done with, I'd like to know what people think I should pack for the picnic. All suggestions welcome, the more literary allusions the better! I'll start you off: raspberry cordial as in Anne of Green Gables (she got Diana drunk on it) .