It’s a bank holiday weekend – yay!!!!! Now everyone knows that bank holiday weekends are the perfect opportunity for the British weather to play its usual tricks and be absolutely appallingly rubbish. It is one of those unalienable facts.
Traditionally, the August bank holiday weekend is a chance for us all to make plans for doing outdoorsy things, but then for the plans to be in tatters as the rain and floods begin, and we have to struggle through three hour traffic jams to get to somewhere that is normally only twenty minutes down the road.
So, why oh why have I chosen this weekend to have a barbecue?? I am basically just asking for trouble. We have recently moved into a new house, and our friend James asked us what we would like as a moving in present. My husband immediately seized on the idea of a barbecue. Bless him, the optimistic fool! So, on Thursday, James came round bearing a very lovely gift of a new barbecue. We then decided that this weekend would be the perfect opportunity to test drive this new cooking appliance, and arranged it.
Yesterday, I went to the supermarket. I picked up various types of barbecue-able meat, and whilst doing so, I realised that the clever chaps at the store had obviously got the measure of the British weather, as the barbecue meat section had diminished to a single fridge, and the “seasonal” aisle which is usually stocked high with outdoor eating paraphernalia from February onwards, had been scrapped altogether and the charcoal put on the end of an aisle, in a slightly embarrassed attempt to ignore that summer had been here at all.
However, in spite of this, I bravely soldiered on in my quest for chargrillable cuisine. My fridge is now stocked with meat, veggies, marinades, salad, rolls and coleslaw. The lady on the checkout gave me a sympathetic, and slightly knowing look, and said (without must conviction I may add) that she’d keep her fingers crossed for the weather. Hmmmm…
Well, so far so good. I am (very) quietly optimistic. I am currently sat in my conservatory, pecking away at my laptop keyboard. And the sun is currently shining! Blue skies, barely a cloud to be seen, and actual real live sunshine. Fingers, toes, arms, legs and eyes crossed that this weather continues into this evening. I know the weather in this country. If you don’t like it, just wait five minutes and it will have changed. So, wish me luck for this evening! I am now off to build a barbecue that is currently flat-packed. This could well be an odyssey in itself!!
