International Incident at BBQ

So much irrelevant stuff goes through my head that it becomes difficult to decide what to put in to my blog. As a result next to nothing goes into my blog. I read some blogs and I wonder what the hell people were thinking. Does anyone else really care about your cactus collection. Surely not others amongst the cactus fraternity. They would look upon your cactus photos and quaint anecdotes with either contempt or scorn. Contempt, because your cactus collection was woefully inadequate compared to theirs and quite frankly your unapologetic gushing is embarrassing. Scorn, because your cactus collection is better than theirs and not being able to compete with your ‘hilarious cactus growing out of the clown pot like a spiky penis’ means they degenerate into personal attacks. And lets face facts here. Anyone with a cactus blog site is going to be way open to critique. Unless it’s peyote. Then you’re not going to give a damn. In fact, you will probably let them live because you are a benevolent god.

So, I’m not going to write about cacti.

Went down to the Perth foreshore for a family get to together for my sister law and husband who are soon to travel to Geneva. Recently acquired husband actually, but that’s not really something worth going into because only two of the four people that read this will know who Leah is. So Leah got married. Ian, Leah got married. Linc… you knew that. Moving on. Actually Ian… you probably knew that as well. Well we were having a BBQ.

Stop.

No, see that’s the thing. We turn up, my wife, two kids and it dawns on me that others were privy (for there was a considerable gathering of family and friends) to an important piece of information. Reason I thought something was up was everyone bought cold food. Only a couple of us bought sausages. Turns out the Perth foreshore has two (2) BBQs. So I walk over to the BBQs. One is occupied by a lovely couple of girls cooking the entire Asian contents of what they could muster up out of their kitchen. Fine. Weird…. and fine. What was not fine was the British chap that had obviously been here a very brief period and had no idea about BBQ etiquette.

No…. idea.

I don’t usually mind the British, I work with one and my ancestors were British… but I can understand why a few of them got speared in the early days. It is highly likely they didn’t know how to share BBQs. So I’m standing there as this guy cleans the BBQ. He’s got it into his head that he can clean burnt grease with water. So he’s putting water on and then scraping, scraping, scraping. He repeats this process three times all the time growing increasingly anxious about the fact that I’m quietly standing there looking into the distance feeling really stupid, waiting to find out WHAT THE HELL THIS LOON WAS DOING. In Australia, what you are meant to do is walk up to BBQ, crank it up, have a vague go at cleaning the damn thing while all the time hoping it’s hot enough to kill off the bacteria from the urine that has caked up on the plate over the course of the night… although anyone stupid enough to have a BBQ breakfast will have dealt with that problem. But after the essentially symbolic process of cleaning you throw your meat on, and so does everyone else who is standing around and you use every last inch on the hot plate so that you end up balancing your sausages on end. In fact it is a never ending process of people coming and going. No one ever gets a hotplate to themselves so that this sort of incident can occur. That is what I was waiting for, the invitation. For the guy to stop cleaning like a deranged lab mouse. All the time standing in awkward silence.

Actually, actually no. I remember.

I walked up and said “Hey, how you going?” The man looked at me in horror. Like, the sort of horror you get when you stand too close to a person and make a salubrious comment about his wife, or worse, him. That’s what tipped me off that we were all in for some sort of cultural misunderstanding. So yeah, then we had silence that went on until he asked if I was right. Yes, I was fine. “Where are you sitting?” I outlined as clearly as I could where we were. Then he told me he would be twenty minutes and then he would come and get me. He told me to go away. He… the British tourist… told me…. A 7^th generation Australian…. To go the hell away…. For twenty minutes… and that he….. the tourist…. Would come and get me. I stood there… gob smacked. He was getting testy. Angry even…. Protective of his new found hot plate. Hot, clean…… his. Me being me wanted just a little bit more time to find out if he was indeed… mad. I wanted to see what he was actually going to put on the hotplate. Because then I could put the six (6) sausages I had down. Ian (new brother in law) came across to see what was going on. He is use to dealing with foreigners. He peers into what the girls are doing – now a seething primordial marvel of noodles, alfoil and whatever else they decided to utilize in their insatiable quest to cook every fowl known to the human race, and politely engages in light conversation by telling them that he hopes they enjoy cooking on the BBQs that he has preheated. People produce firearms and a gun fight ensues. Food is inevitably wasted as nobody wants to really eat after they’ve taken human life. Plus a lot of blood got on the chicken. No… the truth is I obligingly went and waited as our conquering hero cooked his three course meal. Got to say I did want to ceremonially pitch his big British bald head into the sizzling delicacies and bury a spear in his kidney for good measure. Hoping as he fell, it was onto a clown with a cactus for it’s penis.