Barbecue time again. As Andrew pointed out last Friday, the long hot summer of 2018 was due to come to a (hopefully temporary) end on Monday so perhaps we ought to make the most of it while we had the chance.

Unfortunately, Linda and Barney were away and, as Linda pointed out, the barbecue grill, the crockery, and the key to unlock the table and chairs were all at their house. Undaunted, we set about overcoming the series of challenges thus posed. We have a portable barbecue, Andrew and Kirsty have a spare grill, a picnic table and a picnic set. As to the allotment table, Andrew noted that the chain is longer than it absolutely needs to be and that if we just snipped a link out we could put another padlock on after we had finished (it turned out later that he has form in this regard due to a previous contract with United Utilities which involved repeated cutting of chains to gain access to sites in order to do the thing UU were paying him to do!)

Linda objected to that plan, however, for reasons unspecified, claiming she had to go to the cricket in five minutes and didn’t have time to explain over e-mail so we reluctantly decided that we would go with plan B and use the picnic table, which turned out to be perfectly fine.

The absence of Linda did, however, mean the absence of peanut sauce (see previous barbecue-related post) but there was still Halloumi (not great with peanut sauce anyway, but good with honey it turns out), lamb in a Spanish marinade, chicken with lemon and pepper, sausages, veggie kebabs, salad, etc, so we managed. And when the wine ran out we packed up and went to the pub, but that’s another story…