Róisín Ingle on barbecue rage
What is it? At the first sight of a few rays of sunshine everyone's grabbing that rusty grill from the attic and coming over all Nigel Slater. There are no proper dinner parties any more, you grumble. The ones where you can sit down on a chair that won't collapse and eat dishes other than the burnt offerings people expect you to consume at these hooleys. It's always the same. The hosts get in to a tizzy because they can't get the thing lit and end up using a gallon and a half of lighter fluid, which adds an interesting tang to the marmalade marinade on the overstuffed sun-blushed-tomato sausages. What would have been so wrong with a pound of Denny's? Anyway, the food is never served until midnight, by which time you've drunk so much cardboard-box wine you'll eat anything. That's the only explanation for wolfing down three charred-on-the-outside-yet- pink-on-the-inside chicken drumsticks. You expect to see your hosts with blurred faces on a food-safety ad any day now. Good enough for them.
The symptoms? Consumed with barbecue rage, you are unable to have breezy chats over the burgers any more, so you have become one of those men hovering around the range like lions around a carcass. While there you nearly get your eye taken out by one of your apron-clad host's gleaming grilling instruments, some of which wouldn't look out of place in Braveheart. You have to stand over the grill anyway, to make sure the steaks you brought aren't snaffled in the feeding frenzy. The back of your Hawaiian shirt - you hate themed barbecues even more than regular ones - catches fire when you stand too close to a garden flare. Everybody laughs.
The cure? Turn vegetarian (charred meat is murder) or develop a severe case of hay fever when the inevitable invites to the annual barbies arrive. If all else fails be like a glowing lump of charcoal and lighten up a little. Jokes are good. Why don't Mexicans have barbecues? Because the beans keep falling through the grill. Ah, don't leave now we're just getting started.
