With Emma andJennaay for the dayat Flamingo Land, Emma's prize for the Lifestyle project last year, me and Thomas found ourselves alone and at a loose end.
Plans for a walk or a bike ride were shelved due to the overcast skies, the threat of rain and a sharp drop in temperature. So what to do on a dismall day? Well afer a morning tidying the shed, building some new shelves and generally doing Dad and Lad stuff with bits of wood, string, some old bike spares and a Landrover we realised that it was in fact perfect British Barbeque weather.
The garden has been suffering in the prolonged dry spell, and one of life's greatest certainties is that if you light a barbeque it will rain. If you were to translate the lyrics of an Indian rain dance, you'd probably find they were singing, "The sun has got his hat on, lets bake a buffalo." So, to be sure of a good crop of vegetables later in the year, a Barbeque was essentail.
My barbeque is shiny and new and has opnly been used twice before since I bought it last back end* in the sales. I've had a few false starts with it, first with the wrong type of regulator fitted for my gas bottle (some might say I had the wrong gas bottle for the regulator) then with a human interface error, when I didn;t realise that the new regulators had a double lock and tap mechanism. But I am now completely familiar witht he operation and can light my gas barbeque in a flash (quite literally) without all that tedious mucking about with charcoal.
A comic moment ensued when I asked Thomas to fetch a knife to curt the sausages for his butty* Perhaps I should have been more specific, because as an eight year old he has some rather Tackleberry views on knives. It was like Crocodile Dundee in reverse - "Jesus, that's not a knife!" This knife is around 16" long, with a thick and heavy blade and has no place in any kitchen. An abbatoir possibly, but not a kitchen. I'm not sure where it came from, I didn't buy it. I suspect it was passed down through the family on Jeny's side, possibly from mother to daughter, although the weight would suggest father to son is more likely. There is probably a matching shield stuck in the loft somewhere. The blade has been folded or at least bent many times, it is battle scarred and well used, with so many notches in the blade it could be used as a saw. It is the least suitable implement in the house for cutting sausages. I dare not think what Jenny would have said if she had seen him wielding it.
Having sucessfully barbequed a selection of sausages and chicken fillets we sat down to eat, in that brave British fashion we have - extra sweaters with the windchill dropping temperatures down to around 6 degrees, and sure enough the rain started. I expect you were expecting a saga about cremated food, but I'm pleased to report that everything cooked and tasted brilliant.
So how do you top a barbeque in the rain? Easy - we went swimming afterwards. In an indoor pool obviously - I mean, we wouldn't want to get wet would we?
*back end - a Yorkshire expression, meaning late autmn, or fall if you are reading this in American.
*butty - a Yorkshire word for a sandwich,, a proper sandwich with thick bread and a thumbprint in it.
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