March 25, 2010

Consummation Day Picnic

When you go out and picnic,

you must build a fire,

so you can see your teenage brother do all kinds of stupid stuff, which is then copied by 3 year-old cousins, who burn themselves, and although we had everything in our picnic basket, including band-aid, we did not have the burn reliever. He survived, and won’t be doing that any time soon again. We call that a hands-on experience. As for the teenager; well, what can we say? Beirut is too much of an attraction to drop that (and your friends) and go out in the sticks and have a picnic with your family. We should be thankful for the fact that he wanted to grace our picnic with his presence. That doesn’t happen very often anymore. Today was a day off. It’s a rather odd holiday, tagged by my colleagues as ‘consummation day’. It is the day that Maria was told by Gabriel (if I am correct) that she was pregnant. I wasn’t quite sure about the reason why this day is apparently so important that we’ve turned it into a national holiday this year by ministerial decree, until someone told me that the muslims and christians now have equal holidays again. But I checked, and the christians are at 8, against the muslims 4, but maybe some of their days are two instead of one. I don’t know. Not that I am against an extra day off, but with a mind-set like that, it is clear that this country is not heading into, into what exactly I don’t know, but whatever it is, we’re not heading there.

The weather was lovely though. And so was the surrounding, somewhere on the banks of the Beirut river, which is just a little stream at that point.

3 comments:

picnic wine totes said...

Spring time is the perfect time for picnics. I really enjoy looking at pictures of picnics. Never fail to make me smile. Quality time to friends and families.

Laura said...

Lovely environment.

Miss Footloose said...

Whatever the religious holidays, you've go wonderful places in neutral nature for your picnics.