Picnic in the Park with George, er, Friends

No. 47: Become a picnic-er

“Do you realize this is probably the last time I’ll be sitting in a park in London?”

“Becky, don’t say such depressing things!” Lauren said from her spot on the grass. She carefully drew a portrait of Big Ben on her corner of Rebecca’s canvas, using a yellow crayon to add contour.

Sitting in the Leyton public park on the warmest day of the year so far (I think the temperature was somewhere around twenty-two degrees Celsius, which certainly didn’t sound like a sunny day, but I went with it) we spread a scanty collection of art supplies around us. Rebecca and I decided to put to use a pair of blank canvases Mr. Mappin gave us back at the castle, telling us to “Make something beautiful.”

We also brought an impromptu picnic with us, as I was skeptical about our ability to create a timeless masterpiece but confident in our ability to eat our way through the better part of an afternoon.

“Well it’s true,” Becky said. “And I’m not the only one.”

What a dour topic of conversation for that sunny day. But it was a fact; the four of us had each finally picked a departure date from the UK. Becky was going home at the end of the month and then Rebecca and Lauren would be leaving in May.

“I can’t believe you all are leaving me to live in a big empty flat in Leyton,” I said with a dramatic sigh. I plopped my thin paint brush into a plastic cup of water, making little splatters on the garden scene I was painting on my canvas.

“You could always leave when we do,” Rebecca said, though I knew I couldn't. Last September I announced to my friends and family, not to mention all of British Jewry and the five readers of my blog, that I would stay there one year. And stay there one year I would.

“No one would think anything of it if you left early Erica,” Rebecca continued as she drew a picture of the four of us huddled around a bath tub.

“I know you’re going to be sad to see us go, but I also think you’ll be fine,” Lauren said, picking at a bit of pita and hummus in a Ziploc bag. “You can do this on your own. And did you just say our flat was big?”

I suppressed a smile as I sipped from a plastic cup of Spumanti. She may have had a point, but I had a suspicion our home was going to seem massive come June. Massive, yet small, quiet and plain.