Valerie King

Lovely Weather, Dammit

If you see a rather surprised person walking around with a sore head in the near future, do not attempt to stop him and ask what's up. It's my fault. I was loitering by a bank of freezers in a vain attempt to keep cool, when I heard someone say to his partner "Isn't it great the weather's picked up? We can have lots of barbies." I had intended simply to rub a packet of refreshingly cool oven chips over my fevered brow but on hearing this casual remark I found myself picking up my shopping trolley and accidentally fetching him one round the side of the head with it. Could have happened to anyone.

It was the 'B' word that put me on the turn. The trouble with barbecues is that in too many cases the people who insist on producing them can't cook but seem oblivious to the correlation between raw food and cooking skills. There are people milling around who shouldn't be allowed within three feet of a tin of beans and a can opener, but who get a curious glint in their eye the moment the clouds lift and then it's curtains for all of us.

A mostly raw potato on a paper plate with a plastic knife and fork? Oh yes, that's lovely thank you. And perhaps a carbonised lump of something unidentifiable to go with it? Mmm, smashing – do please fill the crevasse in my bent and melted cardboard plate, it's half past two in the morning and I've only been waiting for supper since April.

I don't mean to sound churlish (this is arrant nonsense, obviously, of course I mean to sound churlish, I'm bloody starving hungry, for God's sake...) but why do people who don't know where their own kitchens are think they are Michelin-starred chefs the moment the rain stops?

A knowledge of the food one is cooking is required when barbecuing, just as there is when producing food on a regular cooker, but for some reason people who wouldn't know what to do with a chicken joint and a gas hob are perfectly happy to don a stupid apron and a sillier hat and give people gut-wrenching food poisoning on account of having been let loose with a bag of charcoal and - what's that stuff that helps get a fire going? Oh yes – petrol.

I have been to some magnificent barbies and know loads of people who produce awesomely delicious stuff that causes people to salivate wildly three streets away, with evocative and tantalising scents wafting seductively through a light summer breeze.

I have also been to barbecues where the half-raw economy burgers have tasted solely of the white spirit that was used to help get the thing going in the first place and the only people who have shown the remotest interest in what was going on were members of the fire brigade.

So I have been especially relieved that the weather has been non-conducive to barbecues recently and it's me you have to thank for it. The two hot days of recent memory were enough to strike terror into my heart and I have been dancing in concentric circles round my courtyard garden, waving marmoset bone rattles and chanting tonelessly on an almost hourly basis.

This course of action has had two effects.

The rain has been almost constant and this is good. It is good for the crops, it is good for the garden and it is blinding in its ability to prevent people from reaching for the firelighters and the cheap sausages.

The neighbours, however, have reported me to the police and the local psychiatric services and I am typing with my nose, a straitjacket being less than helpful in matters of correspondence.

So my apologies, chaps, that I can't join you this weekend for your lovely barbecue, but look on the bright side – by the time I'm back in circulation the jacket potatoes should be cooked and I can now eat most things with plastic cutlery.

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