Summer's best: seafood picnic

Picnics are my passion. Strangely, I hardly know any people who are also into this sort of food exhibitionism.

Perhaps, because good picnics take lots preparations and logistics. Carrying crystal glasses in a bicycle bag is, pardon the pun, no picnic.

Seafood is another passion of mine. I arrange assiette de fruits de mer myself: oysters, crayfish, Greenland shrimp, scallops, prawns, bulots, amandes, bigourneaux. I have no idea what one calls the last three in any other language but French. Probably nothing or something Latin as it must be only the French who eat them.

You only need good baguette, mayonnaise, vinegar with chopped shallots to go with it and some dry cider to wash it all down. There scarcely be enough room for raw milk Camembert (the only real one!) at the end of this feast.

You won't believe it but it takes up to three hours to finish this platter as the sun goes down and the city gets engulfed by the purple twilight, the most beautiful light ever. By the time we are done, the table is a mess of cracked shells, shrimp heads and squeezed lemons and we smell fishy.