A Spring Tale

The weather has been great recently and it's allowed me to do two things: tidy up the garden and, my all time favourite, have a BBQ.

I ran into my dead nextdoor neighbours sister from Canada when I moved in many weeks ago - he was recently deceased and she had flown over to sort out the details. A few weeks later I thought I passed her by again outside my house talking to a neighbour down the street, but it turned out it was her twin sister from Lisburn and she was with her husband. She said that I had been talking with her Canadian sister and I passed no my regards about her father. She was there with her husband and explained she was also here to sort out the house and I said I would help her out as best I could. Her husband piped up and said he would do me a deal. He would mow my lawn if I helped him move some furniture. It seemed a great idea at the time because the garden was overgrown and my current landlord had left us nothing but an old push-mower with one handle missing.

However, a week passed and the sunshine came and stayed and the grass was still not cut. As I fancied a BBQ there was no option but to go ahead and do the work myself. I was glad to be able to borrow my brothers modern fly-mower and soon set to the garden. However, since the grass hadn't been cut in a long time, it was around 6 inches long and an absolute beast to navigate a mower around.

It took more than an hour to cut a lawn the size of an average living room and it still wasn't complete. It had to be raked, which, due to the last time it had been cut, involved taking a lot of faux-grass in the form of moss with it and I was left with sporadic bald patches in one area. Nevertheless, the garden was prepped and ready for action. All that remained was to purchase a BBQ.....

We picked one up in Argos and on the way home stopped in a petrol station to pick up charcoal. Nothing. Lou dropped me home to finish working in the garden while she dropped the lawn-mower off at Keiths, pick him up and grab some charcoal. More than 5 petrol stations and shops were visited to no avail. What was wrong with the universe? Is it not written that a sunny day in spring shall the shops sell charcoal to the whores of BBQ's?

With a tear in my eye I had no option but to call off the event. I texted around telling friends that there may be no cooked meats over flames but there will be a party to honour the cloudless day in March. I was in the middle of making a marinade for the chicken drumsticks and mulling over the fact they would have to go into the oven instead of on a metal griddle over hot coals when I recieved a glorious phonecall from Colin telling me he had a disposable BBQ and could bring it over! Praise the Gods of BBQs! It's on!

And so there was much beer and cooking of meats and all were satisfied.

The End.