Making a fist of things

A strange notion occurred to me last week, on Saturday to be precise, when the sky was clear, the sun was shining and bank holiday Monday beckoned; I thought, “Should we have a barbecue?”

Technically, it wasn’t really warm, despite the sun and in reality, I hadn’t looked at the barbecue since last September; lamentably, I knew it required a deep clean. And yet it’s amazing what a touch of sunshine will do for a person’s demeanour and sense of well-being. I also caught myself gazing up into the azure and inhaling the vitality of spring in all its budding glory.

Still in two minds as to the barbecue however, I was a-strolling around the garden savouring the new myriad shades of green, when I heard a soft buzz by one of our spindly, unnamed trees.

It took a long moment before I spied its creator, a large, hairy, black and yellow bumblebee who was flitting from catkin to catkin, inspecting, it seemed, for any measures of miniscule manna to behad.

I watched these striped enquiries for a few moments more and then, either content or malcontent, the bee buzzed off to pastures and catkins new.

And then I decided: If the bees were making a fist of things, so would I. A barbecue we would have and evening chills be-damned.

“Foundered!” Cynic Inner Me complained, later that evening as the breeze began tickling cold fingers along the nape of my neck. “These burgers would have been grand fried up in the house.” But I wasn’t listening.

With the sun tripping towards the slowly rotating wind turbines on the hazy horizon and notwithstanding the chill in the air, the clear evening felt like a promise of things to come.

The burgers too were all the better for their sputtering onto hot coals and topped with cheese, mayo and
barbecued bacon and heeled into brioche baps, they were a joy to behold – and later to devour.

When dusk finally drew close and with the touch of the breeze erring from chilled to intense, the sensible
thing would have been to retire to the warmth of the house but, no, that would have been admitting defeat.

Buoyed by burgers and beer, I set about making a fire pit at the edge of the garden out of several large
sandstones and then I gathered enough dry wood to create a wondrous blaze, so enormous, I was fairly sure it could have been seen in space.

The fire cracked and popped, I cracked another beer and popped a cork and then broke out some camping chairs so as to sit in comfort amidst the splendour of outdoor heat.

“You might as well get the marshmallows out,” Cynic Inner Me relented. And so that’s exactly what I did, falling back onto some child labour to locate the goodies, whilst I continued luxuriating.

Even with the fire, the cold persisted and so it became necessary to stand and turn from time to time, backsided towards the flames in order to thaw hindquarters. But we didn’t care.

The thrill of enjoying the year’s first barbecue, fending off the chills with the fire and generally savouring fresh air and that promise of things to come, meant that making a fist of things was entirely the right thing to do even when that fist became, by turns, too cold to hold a beer and too hot to hold a marshmallow on a skewer too close to the brightly, glowing embers.

Had the tent not been in the attic, I might well have pushed the envelop as far as it could’ve been pushed but
then, suddenly burdened by the burgers and beer (and a subsequent, glorious, sticky-soft, toasted marshmallow which burned the roofof my mouth on first bite), I finally admitted to myself and the innercynic, that four walls and a roof might be a better bet for the first week in April. But what a day it had been.

Yes, it could have been warmer but if Hiberno-Caledonian weather has taught me anything it’s that waiting on sunnier times means a helluva lot of waiting.

As Easter Sunday turned (peppered steak with a whisky and cream sauce and thrice-fried chips) and slipped into a still colder Monday (home-made foccacia) and the snow flurries conspired to consign me to the kitchen rather than the garden, I remembered the determined bee and forced myself to clean the barbecue for the second time in a weekend.

Wrapped in my puffiest jacket and with a beanie and a half smile, I cleared out the fire pit too, chopped more wood and cleared up around the garden.

After that, buoyed with the thoughts of future burgers and beer, I ventured into the attic to retrieve the tent, an inflatable mattress and two more camping chairs. These were stored within easy reach under the bed in the spare room.

The snow on Monday gave way to clear skies at times but the cold easterly persisted and the flurries returned once more. The windwhistled around the eves of the house and even had the tenacity to rattle the letter box as if taunting me, like a child knocking and runningaway.

As Saturday night’s realisation suggested: It’s only April. But the long evenings are in and if we’re blessed with even moderate temperatures as the seasons turn, I’ll keep an eye out for those hairy yellow and black bees and once again, if they’re making a fist of things, then so will I.

It’s amazing what a touch of sunshine can do for a person’s demeanour….