on burning issues
I’VE BEEN TRYING to find a way to break it to my brother about the barbecue. He left it with us when he moved to England. He kept threatening to ship it over to his new home, but that never happened.
Then the thing occurred where you forget something you’ve borrowed belongs to someone else. You start to believe it’s yours. My brother’s barbecue became part of the family.
Within weeks I went from being a charcoal fanatic, hugely suspicious of gas-cooking appliances, to a person prone to whipping the cover off the gas barbecue every time I fancied a sausage. “It’s so fast!” I’d exclaim. “So clean! No hassle!” If I had my way, I’d have used it to make breakfast, lunch and dinner – even dessert. I planned to try Flaming Alaska some day. Meanwhile, I eased myself in with tinfoil-wrapped bananas and toasted marshmallows.
That’s all in the past though. Since The Incident I won’t go near the thing, even to dust off the strange green film that spread across the barbecue cover after we began giving it the cold shoulder.
Since The Incident, the appliance sits there unloved. Since The Incident, on balmy days we cook everything in the kitchen, haul the dining table outside, and talk about how much more succulent spare ribs taste when made in an actual oven. We’ve sent the barbecue to Coventry while we wait for it to be shipped over to London.
We don’t speak about The Incident. The silence on the subject was agreed upon without a word ever being spoken. It’s hard to ignore when the thing takes up a 10th of our tiny back yard. But we do. We dance around it, the disgraced elephant in the outdoor room. Where once were fond flames of affection a simmering resentment has grown. It appears to be mutual.
We fired up the barbecue that dare not speak its name the night of The Incident to celebrate the fact that another brother was home – back temporarily from California and India by way of Australia, where he had another of his trademark close brushes with death. To recap: he was out bodyboarding when the tsunami hit south India, escaping by hanging on to a tree and even managing to save his guitar.
He’s had near fatal bouts of malaria and suspected swine flu. He badly crashed his motorbike somewhere in India once and sent the ambulance away so that he could spend time “helping the body to heal itself”, which he did.
More recently, in Australia, he was stung on the legs by the toxic Gympie-Gympie stinging tree. The pain was described by one victim as akin to being burned with hot acid and electrocuted at the same time. The local hospital told him there was no cure, that he could be feeling that way for months.
He rang in agony one morning, sounding uncharacteristically scared. I trawled the internet and found a story about a soldier who shot himself because he couldn’t stand the pain after being stung when he used a leaf for “toilet purposes”. Oddly, this fascinating anecdote didn’t cheer him up.
More hearteningly, after some more trawling I found a suggested cure involving treating the area with diluted hydrochloric acid. It helped a lot, in case you ever find yourself on the wrong end of the Gympie-Gympie.
My indestructible brother hadn’t arrived yet when, watched by my 10-year-old niece Hannah, I turned on the barbecue. “There’s a funny smell,” said Hannah, who has a nose for these things. “Yes, there is,” I said.
The Incident unfolded in slow motion. Flames shot out (slowly) from the gas canister where, moments previously, one of my two-year-olds had been toddling. Hannah and I watched The Incident, detached, as though it was our 67th viewing of 27 Dresses and not the imminent destruction of everything in our eyeline – including ourselves.
Years seemed to pass before I shouted “fire”, followed by the name of the children’s father, not very hopefully, considering I usually have to call him at least seven times before he surfaces. But both suddenly and in slow motion he appeared, reaching his hand into the flames to flick off the gas.
Hannah and I were in shock for the rest of the night. I needed wine to recover. She needed Meanies. When my brother arrived, he made us feel much better by saying we’d had a narrow escape and there could have been body parts everywhere if my boyfriend hadn’t acted quickly (albeit in slow motion).
As I said, we don’t speak of it by unspoken agreement so I don’t know if Hannah is also having recurring nightmares – vivid dreams in smellovision where you’re not sure if it’s sausages you’re smelling or barbecued human flesh. When Take That sang Relight My Fire in Croker the other week, I was forced to relive The Incident once more.
But things have moved on. We contacted a person who is going to come and investigate the offending appliance and I’ve drafted an email to my other brother suggesting that he might want to bring the barbecue over to London sooner rather than later. The fact is, we just don’t have the room.
In other news . . . For some good old-fashioned fun – hopefully in the sun – check out Dublin City Council’s National Play Day tomorrow in Merrion Square Park from 2pm