opinion

A relaxed affair?

Franklin Mamo continues to share notes from his diary …on a barbecue experience

Been to one of the many barbecues contributing to that patch of light all along our coast and which is probably visible from outer space. A quintessentially summer institution originally practiced by English and French pirates on some Carribean island in the evening after a hard day pillaging, burning and generally creating mayhem in Spanish towns in South America. It was a relaxed affair: you lie on the sand of a silvery beach while someone cooks meat over an open fire. No frills, no complications and to make sure that there is nothing to labour the mind about, barbecues were held after sunset so that you wouldn’t bother whether the stuff you were eating was overcooked or undercooked. Or pork or Spaniard, for that matter.

Transferred locally, the barbeque had to undergo some fundamental modifications. It had to be adapted to local leisure habits where, it seems, leisure time has to be more stressful than working time. Getting there is already part of the game: you drive through massive traffic jams and then try to find parking space which hopefully is not too far from your destination – that little patch of clear sand where to set up camp. After all you have to take down:

(a) a petrol-fired generator,

(b) neon, gas and electric lights and torches

(c) barbecue set and paraphernalia, chip pan, water cooler, thermos and humungous picnic cooler (preferably canary yellow so that fishermen lost at sea can use it as a landmark to find their way home)

(d) plastic furniture (i.e. chairs, table, etc.) that folds (preferably accompanied by instruction manual showing how something so small it could fit in your pocket can be transformed into a fully fledged dining room minus walls and ceiling)

(e) portable TV, to wind down after a day’s work by keeping up-to-date with the latest conflicts in the Middle East,

(f) inflatables to help keep afloat at sea (e.g. Ninja Turtles, Pokemons, variety of flora and fauna), a ball is also mandatory so that children can irritate people at the neighbouring barbeque,

(g) enough food to feed the Third World, enough meat to rival McDonald’s

(h) hi-fi system with 200W speakers, equalizer, mixer, automatic balancing, CD collection (sing-along reggae tunes)

This list is, of course, not exhaustive. But, in a nutshell, it’s "take the kitchen to the beach". And just as the kitchen is the hub of homely activity the barbecue is no longer meant to be a laid-back affair. Activities (especially the eating part) have to be hurried, just as happens in your kitchen at home.

Recently the Department of Civil Protections issued some safety warnings on taming the flames. Quite appropriately, seeing that the number of incidents from too much haste has been going up, usually resulting from flammable liquids being poured into the barbeque fire. Summertime and the living is easy, but skip the formalities and hurry things up.

("Whaaat?! We have to wait until the fire gets going? We have to wait until the whole thing is aflame? We have to wait until the fire dies down? Just pour in some petrol and put the sausages on")

No wonder the frankfurters tasted of car exhaust fumes.

There were only some two dozen people for the protests when President Zemin of China was in Malta. In other times it could have been different. Long, long, ago when I was still in Secondary School we had a religion teacher who taught us all about the evils of communism. I remember we would be given leaflets published by the "Douglas Hyde Foundation" telling us about the cruelties practiced by the Asian Reds and suggesting that people boycott products from PR China one of them being, for some reason, luncheon meat. I remember I would feel a twinge of guilt seeing yet another can of "Ma Ling" at home.

Whatever happened to those people who were so strongly activist then, I do not know. So now, presumably, I can eat luncheon meat made in PR China without any remorse. Maybe the fact that it is being produced under the conditions of the free market makes it OK. Communism was bad, it seems, because it involved economic centralisation and not because it is politically repressive.