Share the load

Something to celebrate?

Decide on the date, send out invitations, prepare the menu, shop, clean your house in readiness and spend all day cooking. Host your guests and then, once they’ve departed, spend another hour or two cleaning up.

Or invite everyone to join you at a park or beach. Everyone brings food to share, their own rugs and cushions and maybe a cricket set to keep the kids entertained. Many public places have picnic tables and some have barbecues with fuel, even. You can get organised about what people bring so that not everyone turns up with potato salad, but once that’s done, you get to enjoy the company and location as much as everyone else.

You’re not responsible for any of it. Special diets are managed by whoever has those special needs; even issues of time schedules are sorted, as the relaxed nature of the pot-luck picnic means people can come and go as they need to.

You share a beautiful day in the shade of a blossoming pohutukawa tree with people you want to share it with, then go home with happy memories and only your dishes to wash. Easy.

Reported for our AA Directions Summer 2017 issue