“What can I tell you about the next ten years? Odysseus sailed away to Troy. I stayed in Ithaca. The sun rose, traveled across the sky, set. Only sometimes did I think of it as the flaming chariot of Helios. The moon did the same, changing from phase to phase. Only sometimes did I think of it as the silver boat of Artemis. Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter followed one another in their appointed rounds. Quite often the wind blew. Telemachus grew from year to year, eating a lot of meat, indulged by all.” Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad

“Uh-oh, Mummy.” 

A three-year-old Small One was out of sight on the patio but her bright little voice carried easily into the house. This pronouncement had been preceded by sounds of plastic hitting concrete and the unmistakeable tinkling of breaking glass so I already knew the news would not be good.

Sure enough, a short moment later she appeared at the back door holding the handle of the flask she had insisted on carrying outside where we were going to have a picnic on the lawn. Unfortunately the rest of the flask was not attached to it. Instead it was where she had left it, lying shattered on the yard outside. It was an inconsequential unintentional accident. She was not hurt. It didn’t matter a jot. Yet a little tear escaped from the side of my eye as I swept up the remains of the familiar blue plastic Thermos. 

Around twelve years previously, whilst still a student at University of Dundee, my aunt had come to visit. She had flown over from Belfast to Edinburgh for the weekend and I wanted to be the perfect host, so I had hired a little car and driven down to pick her up. We spent the day hitting the shops on Princes Street, visiting the Castle and generally seeing the sights of one of my favourite cities. Before we headed back to the car to drive back to Dundee we visited John Lewis Department Store (also one of my favourite haunts) and whilst in the homeware section my eye fell upon a very natty bright blue plastic flask – the kind that you take on picnics for coffee or soup. My aunt kindly offered to buy it for me and as a penniless student I readily and gratefully accepted. 

The rest of the weekend was spent roaring around the beautiful country roads of Perthshire and Angus, visiting gardens and castles and other beauty spots with periodic stops for sandwiches and scones, accompanied by cups of tea courtesy of my shiny new gift. 

The call of the open road and the freedom of – however briefly at that point – having my own car to explore it in, and the joy of knowing we could never be caught bereft of a cuppa regardless of what glen or lough we found ourselves lost around, was intoxicating. I am aware that these are not the pursuits that one is meant to aspire to at the ripe old age of 21 and 3/4.  But I had never had any delusions of being hip. In my teens, whilst everyone else was climbing the slippery ladder of underage admission to dodgy nightclubs, in ascending order of coolness, I was reading books whilst sitting on the rope swing in our back garden. Besides, The Spice Girls had already split up the previous year, so that had taken the heavy burden of a potential pop career off my shoulders. I was free to pootle my way round Scotland like a pensioner to my heart’s content. 

I realised then, quite a few years after the event, as is so often the case, that my parents, and their parents before them, had had the right idea when they went for all those drives all over the country, flask in tow. In the days before coffee shops on every corner, bringing lunch, and perhaps afternoon tea too, on a day trip was a necessity as well as a luxury. How well I was taught in those early days! To chase every meandering side road just to ‘see where it went’ as per my mother and her father before her. And in terms of packing a picnic, to make no compromises on the fare just because it had to fit in a basket. My mother stills fondly tells the tale of a road trip through Scotland with my Dad, and her parents-in-law. Granny had brought homemade scones and butter (because of course) and Mum had brought the teapot (because of course) but Mum recounts how, whilst clinging to a blustery verge on the edge of the long windswept road to Arbroath, the women struggling to serve the afternoon snack from the boot with a gale blowing in their faces, my Grandfather had piped up from the front, “Any jam to go with that?”   

A few short months after I became the proud owner of a flask of my very own, me and my bestie hired a 1 litre red Nissan Micra during the Easter holidays with the vague notion that we would see a bit more of the country. Being now 22 and 23 respectively, full of adventure, and with precious little grasp of how far a square of the map can take to drive when you’re in the middle of the Highlands on a single track road, off we set. Once we took into account the cost of hiring the car (from a very dodgy hire company off the ring road who didn’t even ask for ID when we went to pick it up), petrol and accommodation, our food and beverage budget was meagre. Undaunted and feeling excessively grown up and responsible, we packed the trusty flask. And, I do not jest, we actually brought a washing up bowl and fairy liquid too.

We covered around 250 miles per day. I drove. She followed our progress precisely on the map, announcing with jubilation and great excitement every time she finally got to turn the page. No Sat Nav required here. The little car valiantly gasped up hills, and triumphantly zoomed down valleys, all day long. When we were too exhausted to continue we simply stopped driving for the day and looked for a B&B closest to whatever carpark in which we had landed. 

For the most part, this system worked extremely well. Sometimes we cut it slightly fine with regards where our next tank of petrol might be procured. Or our evening meal. When we reached Durness we realised we were about to fall off the edge of the world. Beautiful it might be but finding a commodious place to lay our head was easier said than done. We eventually found a house in a tiny hamlet (by this time it was quite, quite dark). The taciturn lady of the house (she made the silent one from Penn and Teller seem verbose) agreed to at least affirming that she did indeed have “rooms” and showed us to a suite containing twin beds. It also had more competing floral patterns than I have seen in a single space before or since. Everything had a crochet cover and was edged with lace. The cushions. The lamps. The cushions on the lamps. We tried extremely hard to seem serious and responsible. Like finding somewhere to stay in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere was something we did every day of the week. But it was a mission fated to fail. We had giggled our way over 500 miles already and were not going to stop there. Unfortunately our joie de vivre left her completely unmoved. After pointing us to the ‘facilities’ she left us, giggling yet again, to settle in, and stomped off down the hall. Presumably to crochet more padded, lace-edged lamp covers. 

Earlier that evening we had had an amazing meal in an artist’s retreat whilst watching the sun set over the north-western tip of Scotland. The sky was apricot and purple, the clear spring air felt bewitched. Before getting back into the car, we stole down to the beach. We were the only ones there. It was a deserted ribbon of perfect ivory glowing in the moonlight. We were full of wonder that such beauty could have existed long before our eyes had beheld it. 

Another evening we had left eating rather late and, it has to be said, were getting decidedly hangry when we fell upon a little wayside pub. Inside it had a cosy lounge bar with a blazing fire. We both surveyed the menu with ravenous enthusiasm and ordered the Chicken Maryland, feeling ludicrously grown up and sophisticated. Not to mention hungry. Extremely hungry. When it came, we could not see the waitress over the food she was carrying. Puffing slightly, she deposited our plates in front of us. Our eyes lit up at the munros of meat and carbs tottering in front of us. At the very least a pack of crispy bacon each, assorted potatoes, including but not limited to, chips and roasties, and a selection of deep fried and battered fruits – bananas and pineapple mostly. And the pièce de la résistance, balanced balletically on the top of each mounded plate was half of a whole roasted chicken. I wish I could say that that meal had us beaten. But we practically licked our plates. And had sticky toffee pudding for dessert.

In the mornings our goal was to eat as much as we possibly could (you will note a developing theme here) from the cooked breakfast on offer in the various establishments in which we found ourselves. We had arrived at most of them after dark, so in the morning we would stagger downstairs to the breakfast room and behold the locale properly for the first time. On the Isle of Skye we stayed in the harbour town of Portree. That morning we ate our bacon and sausages and eggs and toast and porridge (and whatever else we were offered) and drank our orange juice and tea and looked with wonder and delight out of the window at the beautiful little horseshoe harbour clustered with cottages painted in every colour of the rainbow. Our B&B was high on the hill rising up out of the water and it was spread at our feet like the fishing village from a fairytale.

We usually managed to liberate a few bread rolls from the breakfast buffet and adding these to a carrier bag full of cuppa soups, pot noodles, tray bakes, and perhaps a single piece of fruit, if we were feeling virtuous, we were free to explore at will until it next got dark and it was time to find somewhere new to pass the night. 

Thus we found ourselves picnicking in some of the most beautiful and breathtaking scenery spots that Scotland has to offer. The Black Isle, Dornoch, John O’Groats, Durness, Kinlochbervie, Ullapool, Fort William, Kyle of Lochalsh, Glen Coe, Lough Ness, Fort Augustus. 

But what on earth did we use the washing up bowl for? I hear you ask. For washing our dishes of course! This task was completed in situ whenever we were finished our picnic and caused many passing car to slow down as its driver watched in openmouthed surprise as we calmly washed our spoons and forks in a lay-by. 

Through it all the blue flask was our talisman. It had two neat plastic cups that clipped on top of one another and then attached to the lid. How could anyone be unhappy with the open road ahead, a flask with two cups attached to it, tucked in beside, and some great company to share it with? 

When Beloved and I got together the flask accompanied us as we too drove around Scotland and Ireland, finding deserted beaches, drinking soup in carparks. Beloved was impressed by the low budget lunch it unlocked. I loved it for the fact that it untethered us completely. The day was ours to go wherever we wished. To stop whenever we liked. We were free! This was what it meant to be an adult at last! 

In time, Small One arrived, and she shared our joy of enjoying a cheese bap in the car, whilst looking over a nice view. When we filled the blue flask with a tin of Campbell’s Condensed Tomato Soup, diluted with milk and heated to volcanic temperatures to account for the inevitable cool-down period before reaching our destination, well, surely that was the repast of kings? 

She sat happily in her car seat in the back of the car, a spoon in one dimpled tiny hand, and a piece of cheese in the other, grinning from one tomatoey ear to the other, while the dog, sitting beside her, watched her every move with fixated concentration, awaiting the inevitable falling scrap of ham. It was a simple pleasure but a very great one indeed. Not to mention practical when a small serious voice would pipe up from the back seat, no matter where we were, “Food NOW, Daddee peese.”

So, twelve years later, when that precious flask fell to the ground and smashed into a million pieces, though it had no monetary value at all, I felt its loss keenly and the memories that went with it. 

Though the fractured remains of the plastic and its glass inner were immediately tipped into the bin following their unfortunate impact with the yard, sentimental as always, I couldn’t bear to throw out the two clippy cups. Even when we moved house a few years later, and I was being ruthless during the packing of the kitchen, I just couldn’t relinquish them and they followed us to our new abode wrapped in newspaper and nestled between cookbooks and tea towels.

In the intervening six years since Flaskgate we have made do with a nondescript and entirely unromantic stainless steel flask from Ikea, and then later a secondhand one that someone was about to throw away. It almost goes without saying that neither even remotely came close to the blue Thermos from John Lewis all those years ago.

This year we have watched spring unfold, not from a scenic lay-by, but from the safety and confinement of Magpie Hill. Each day it has seemed ridiculously incongruous to watch another bright new dawn, filled with birdsong in joyful celebration of life, while the pall of a worldwide pandemic hangs around us in terrible contrast. I have ached for the simple pleasures I love the most. Apart from seeing family and friends, the three that seem to consume my thoughts most often are coffee, plants and scenery. The taste of a steaming hot latte from my favourite coffee shop, the warm green smell of trays upon trays of bedding plants steaming gently under glass at my favourite nursery, the sight of my favourite views seen by foot or by car. These are the things I mourn, inconsequential as they might be.

Indeed it feels as though, as a nation, we are holding our breath, hiding under the bed, waiting. We might try to keep plodding on but it isn’t real. We’re only going through the motions. We have one foot in the moment and one foot straining to step back into life again. “I’ll be back soon. Don’t wait up,” she said as she unexpectedly headed out the door. And we try, but while we’re pretending to carry on, there isn’t much sleeping going on. We’re waiting for her key in the lock. To be able to breathe a sigh of relief. The worst is over. The storm has passed.

Last week we decided to have a picnic once again. We couldn’t take it in the car to one of our favourite spots so we decided to have it in our back garden instead. We ate our simple meal in the fresh air and were thankful to do so, even if it caused us to remember all the places we might have been in other circumstances.

When washing up afterwards, I stupidly poured cold water into the hot flask too quickly, and with a surprising and plosive “pomph”, the internal glass exploded. I tipped it into the bin without too much regret. It was the secondhand one. No great loss. Later that night though, I thought once again about the long lost Thermos, and decided to idly checked t’internet for a replacement. 

And within a few clicks, there it was. I couldn’t believe it. Blue. Resplendent. Complete with two clippy cups attached to the lid. Essential or not, into my basket it went. I was powerless to resist. 

I am now awaiting its arrival with anticipation. I hardly dare hope, but perhaps in some wonderful moment of serendipity, the two existing clippy cups might fit on top! Then six years of biding my time, incomplete without the perfect flask, will be over. Nothing will be able to hold us back. One cup each for soup and an extra one for my tea afterwards. I can think of nothing in this moment that would please me more. 

Because, make no mistake, there will be an afterwards. 

When we won’t be living in a vacuum anymore. When we will have the open road ahead of us once again, full of promise. A picnic basket with a blue flask full of Campbell’s Condensed in the boot. And nowhere we need to be except that deserted beach we’ve always wanted to see.

And when we round that final bend, and see that deserted ribbon of perfect ivory glowing in the sunlight, we will once again be knocked for six. Full of wonder that such beauty could have existed long before our eyes had beheld it. 

For, of course, there was no need to worry. It was there all along.

It was simply waiting too.