A Fairly British BBQ

Exhale, coals burn. Dancing reds twist and turn. Repeat the process. The coals glow brighter, the smoke turns thicker and my eyes are soaked with tears. This is a British BBQ, done the right way.

As my breath brings new life to the charcoal, I become light headed, so I stop. I squint down as several fires break out, jumping from briquette to briquette. The oxygen quickly returns to me, and I hear my wife talking.

“Babes? Want a beer?” she asks.

“Ugh yeah sorry. Yes please. One of those grapefruit beers if we have any." I reply, with exaggerated blinks to clear out my eyes.

“Yeah, think we have one left. You okay?” she asks.

The sun is out, my three year old daughter has suggested we have a BBQ, and British summer is here. It’s the best time of the year, even if it only lasts a week or even a day. So of course I’m okay.

“Yeah all good. Went a bit mad blowing on the coals!”

She smiles quietly, and after a few minutes, returns with my beer, and a plate filled with sausages, burgers, pre-prepared kebabs and some corn on the cob, wrapped in foil. I like corn on the cob, it’s sweet, juicy and is an antidote to this festival of meat. But in the interplay of cooking food on fire, that juicy yellow goodness is a real selfish bastard.

It takes all the heat and offers nothing back. No dripping fat to drive the coals forward. Just a husk, wrapped in foil, only looking after itself.

Sausages however, they’re different.They provide an impetus to proceedings, a fatty fuel that allows the party to continue.

I put them on before I really should, to delight in the satisfying sound of sizzling sausage skin against the barely cleaned grill.

I’ve put them on too early but this is how you do it. This is how I was taught to do it.

Hisses, pops, flashes of flame and puffs of smoke. It’s me, or the coals, but I win the battle, I always win this battle. I move the sausages to the side for some indirect cooking time.

One sausage however, stays rooted to the middle of our story. Right in the heart of the heat.

Burgers, kebabs, that selfish juicy corn, and a few peppers join our little game of culinary dare, to create a tapestry of transforming colours above a carnival of burning carbon. But that single sausage remains in the eye of the maelstrom.

“Looking good!” says my mother in law. And she’s right. It does look good. Cowboys deal in rodeos, I deal in BBQs, and this is not my first. Without me asking, she has got me another beer and now I’m double parked. So I neck the rest of the one I started, thank her, then get back to my work. She peers over and offers a kind and genuine smile.

She doesn’t notice the sausage. It’s not for her anyway.

“Be five minutes.” I shout to no one in particular. “Wanna bring out a tray or something?”

A few moments later, my daughter toddles over holding a disposable silver foil tray. I look at it before I look at her, and think about the plethora of reusable food depositories we have in the house. But when you’re cooking 2kg of meat, arguments on sustainability seem a bit futile.

“Thanks darling!” I say in my Dad voice. “Good job! Great idea to have a BBQ. What are you gonna have first?” I ask. And it really was her idea. This morning the sun came out, and all plans for the traditional Sunday roast were put aside. She began to talk of sausages, burgers and kebabs. So we bought it all.

“Hmmm,” she thinks out loud, “A sausage, a burger and some sweetcorn. But not the kebabs. Can I see?”

“Yep!” I enthusiastically reply.

I give my hands a token wipe then pick her up. Still holding her, I put the tongs down, pick up my beer and gesture for her to have a sip. She laughs and shakes her head. Then she asks, “Can I have a go?”

“Have a go at what sweetie?”

“Cooking. Mummy lets me bake. Can I do the BBQ?”

“Ah sorry darling, but it’s really hot and quite dangerous. I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

She’s heavy now. So I pop her back on her feet, then bend down to give her a kiss, but before I can she’s gone running back to her grandparents. I let the disappointment slide and the hypnotic glow take my mind somewhere else.

I lift up the burgers, twist the kebabs and rearrange the rest. Everything in its right place. Including that sausage, his sausage.

As I play Tetris with the meat one final time, I’m hit by a cocktail of smells. The burning, caramelising, marmalising, ever-changing skin of the meat and vegetables. Familiar smells still fabulous time and time again.

I take it in, and then shout “Ready!”.

The disposable tray is more or less full, the BBQ almost empty. As I bring the food over to the table I’m met with oohs and aahs and the usual comments. It looks great, it smells great, here comes the chef. My daughter is bouncing with excitement. Her plan has come together and her father has made it happen. He’s provided a feast of culinary delights; the one she asked for just a few hours ago.

So I smile, laugh, grab a plate, and then tell them I’m going to get my beer.

I return to the grill, and get that middle sausage. I pop it on my plate and with its burnt outer layer, it makes a ding. Black flakes explode from the charred skin upon contact, and despite its heat, I pick it up with my thumb and finger. I bite through the charred crust and the last globules of fat pathetically ooze into my mouth. I begin to wonder, “So is this how he did it?” and as I do, I’m transported to a different age.

I’m ten again, sitting impatiently on my plastic chair with my brothers, and we’re watching him poke and prod the meat on the grill. It’s already black and burnt to a cinder, but he keeps on cooking and we let him. I nag that I want to have a go, but he says it’s too hot, so I watch instead.

I’m a teenager. He’s finally trusted me to look after the BBQ while he's gone to get himself a beer. When he comes back I say it’s done. There’s a juicy fatness to the sausages, mottled with spots of brown, but he tells me they need longer and takes the tongs back from me. I slowly sip my beer, urging myself to love it as much as he does, and I watch his smiling face focus on the task at hand.

I’m in my twenties and I’m with my girlfriend, and we’ve come to visit. I watch out of the corner of my eye as she cakes her hot dog in ketchup. She never has ketchup. He takes a bite of his, and nods his head to himself in satisfaction. He offers a loving smile, which we both return.

Now I’m thirty, and he’s not here. I’ve done him a sausage his way, his ridiculous way, and he’s not here. Once again my eyes are soaked with tears.

“You alright babes?” A beckoning shout from my wife brings me back to earth.

I close the lid of the BBQ to make it look like I’ve been doing something important, then I collect myself, and go over to the table where the rest are all eating. My wife gives me another quiet smile and places her hand on my arm. I pull my face together, put on a smile, and look down at my feet. In doing so I catch a glance of my daughter’s plate.

No burgers, no sausages, no kebabs, no peppers; nothing I have prepared for her. Nothing that involves sweat or tears, nothing that would lead me to burn my skin or pollute my eyes. Just a partially eaten cucumber sandwich. She hasn't even touched a corn on the cob.

As I go to say something to her, to question why she made me go to all this effort, she speaks.

“Great BBQ Daddy! Best BBQ ever!” She looks at me with a mouth full of food, nods in satisfaction, offers me a loving smile and it’s like he is here after all.

As I start to fill my plate, I begin to smile. It’s a real smile, just like his, just like hers. The sun is out, the BBQ is done, and perhaps I will be okay after all.