Rites of Passage

When the mercury in the thermometer touches 17 degrees Celsius a familiar smell begins to drift across the hissing lawns of summer and over the larch lap fences - barbecues!

For previous generations it was the first drink at the pub, or the first driving lesson, now the first sign that you are a man is a trip to the Texaco Station for a bag of charcoal bricks or to Homebase for a refill of that gas bottle. You aren't a man until you've pushed around a pink piece of meat for an hour and then offered it, in the obligatory sesame bun, to one of your guests. Of course there's a good chance that your guest will be seen later on running to the loo. After all for a generation of men where the cooking time of the meat has depended upon the ping! from the microwave, the concept of rare, medium rare, medium and well done is a bit beyond their grasp.

And the so-called lifestyle magazines don't help either do they, outdoor cooking is the 21st Century equivalent of 1980's porn - suddenly everybody is as familiar with rib-eye steaks, Dublin bay prawns and chicken dippers as their Dads were with Marilyn Chambers, double penetration and al fresco sex. Olive Oil, once known only for being Popeye's girlfriend, can be found at the right hand of more men during the summer than the television remote.

Of course barbecues aren't meant to have anything as girly as salad, despite the magazine images, this is man food, the sort of stuff that puts hairs on your arse and clogs up your lower intestines. Barbecue man's only concession to an alternative to meat is to throw a couple of tomatoes on the grill, thereby giving some credence to the five portions a day mantra whilst sticking closely to the idea of an outdoor version of the all day breakfast.

My own experiences of barbecues are merely as consumer, the thought of actually standing some twenty feet away from my own kitchen simply to cook something inedible seems pointless. But some people love them and the smell of charcoal is soon accompanied by the sound of empty lager cans being dropped in the recycling bin, cheesy pop music blaring out and small children crying from the realisation that the small burning sensation on their necks won't go away.

Barbecues are a way for men to prove to their women that they can cook and for women they are proof that men can't. When men finally realised that women were never ever going to be able to read a map they invented GPS, quite what women will do to overturn the creeping invasion of barbecue man remains to be seen.