James Griffin: New season in Man World

James Griffin. Photo / Dean Purcell

The sun is in the sky and, with the arrival of warmth, there comes a stirring in Man World. Like a bear, emerging from hibernation, He stands on his deck and surveys all that is His. There are many things He could do right here, right now, in this backyard, with the sun on His back. Now that spring is well and truly upon the land, the land craves His attention. He could mow the lawn; He could weed the garden; or He could even trim the hedge.

But no, there is a higher calling calling Him; the Call of Fire. There is a primal need that is rising within Him. A sacred duty that must be performed so that He may claim his rightful place in the world, wielding the tongs of power, manning the flames that give sustenance to the tribe.

Yes, it is time, in Man World, for Him to man up and clean the barbecue.

The barbecue has lain under its tarpaulin cover for many moons now, through the seemingly endless rains of the Auckland late-summer/autumn/winter/and a fair bit of the early spring. So what horror lies underneath is something unimaginable that cannot be imagined but which will, hopefully, be not as bad as it was last year.

In part of His primitive brain, as He stands poised to whip off the cover, He seems to remember cleaning the barbecue as the last rite of last summer, before stowing it away for the winter. But in the actual part of His brain that remembers stuff, He knows this is a forlorn hope. And in His heart He knows that whatever lies under this cover, it will not be pretty.

A deep breath and He pulls the cover from the barbecue, in a cloud of dust, leaves and the other detritus of seasonal neglect. If He is lucky there isn't a scattering of cockroaches, rudely evicted from their comfortable home. If He is really lucky, the only wildlife lurking under the cover is the usual collection of snails and spiders, which He can summarily dismiss with the hearthbrush He wields, like some kind of biblical cleansing sort of thing.

When the scourge of the external animal threat has been ruthlessly purged, He must steel Himself to face an even worse horror, the one that lies under the stainless steel lid covering the grill: the science experiment that is the remains of the last barbecue of last summer. He tries to recall this meal - was it steak or chops or the ubiquitous sausages? Please, dear god of the barbecue, don't let it have been chicken.

He takes another deep breath and removes the grill cover. Involuntarily, He steps back a pace. The answer to the last meal question is no clearer, for whatever this is, growing on the hotplate, bears no relation to any known food group. No actual food, not even the most demented pizza imaginable, could ever be this fiendish array of colours - red, white, green, purple, orange, brown and black. It is like whatever was left on the grill from last summer has tried to evolve into some foul creature that would then crawl out from under the cover and take over the planet.

So He bravely (and liberally) douses the mouldering hotplate with an entire spray-can of some barbecue cleaning foamy substance. He cares not that the foamy substance may actually be more toxic to humanity than the mould He is trying to kill, for the need to eat barbecued meat is growing strong in Him now.

After a brief pause for a cleansing ale, just to settle the nerves, He returns, armed with water and a brush made of industrial-strength wire - plus a paint-scraper for the most stubborn pockets of resistance. He attacks the grill and the hotplate with a man-sized determination. By the tongs of Thor, there will be outdoor cooking tonight.

And He scrubs and He scrubs, until the cooking surface is fit for cooking. Well, relatively fit for cooking, if you don't mind the rust that is impossible to shift. Luckily for that He has the cleansing power of flame.

So He retrieves the gas bottle from the garage, where it has wintered in relative comfort. And, with thoughts of corn wrapped in tinfoil and sausages wrapped in bread dancing in His head, He connects the fuel source to the fireplace. He opens the valve, clicks the clicking thing that ignites the first burner, then the second burner, the third and the fourth.

And He stands back, another cleansing ale in his hand, to watch the flickering flames and celebrate the arrival of summer in Man World.

And then the flames go out and He realises the gas bottle is empty.

Bugger. Now He'll have to go to the garage.