hurrengoa
pic-nic uxeta labrit   I  koldo cortes When one ponders on what's behind a picnic, one conjours up something undoubedtly typically English, but the people who actually dreamt up the whole thing were the French. The 16th Century book, Origines de la Langue François de Menage, explains how customers in taverns used to bring food with them and how they would all settle down and share their tit-bits and victuals with one and other, thus inventing the "piquenique". This word comes from the words "piquer" and "nique". Tasty morsels in English if you like. The English word picnic appeared around the year 1700 and comes from its French predecessor or from the German word "Picknick".
The 1955 film Pic Nic, starring William Holden and Kim Novack, clearly showsthe unifying and social spirit character of the picnic of that time. Freetime has very much become a business over the last few years and this has almost been the undoing of the spirit of the picnic. That said, the picnic has managed to adopt to the characteristics, oddities and traditions of different places to a certain extent and hasn't entirely disappeared just yet.
We would like to pay hommage to those elderly retired French couples who set up their picnic tables on traffic islands as they while away any given Sunday... or to the taxi driver who, having spent the entire working week shunting people from A to B, bundles the whole family into the car andheads off to some closeby riverbank with hundreds of other Sunday drivers... or to those who participate in the huge wheeled Pyrenean picnic every time the Tour comes to town... or to the tracksuited, fags-handy-in-pocket Sunday walkers who mass invade your nearest hill or mountain... Yep. Just as we don't need candles and silk sheets to shag, we believe you don't need to climb to the highest mountain-top, nor venture into the deepest sand dunes, nor search for the lonliest desert island in order to have a picnic.
We don't know how to prepare backpacks properly; we don't wear proper mountaineering clothing.... but we do like anchovy-stuffed alives and martinis mixed in with the smell of petrol. And there's one more scientifically proven fact we'd like to share with you all: picnicers are better in bed!