The Hitch-Hikers Guide to Barbecues
Created | Updated Jun 2, 2013
Far back in the mists of time there was a small blue-green planet circling a yellow sun located at the unfashionable western end of the galaxy. The ape-descended life forms on this planet were sparsely distributed and lived a simple life, mostly spent outdoors. A lot of the time they might have rather been indoors but as they (a) were forced to spend most of their time foraging for food and (b) had not yet invented doors, this choice was not available to them.
The early human diet
Generally their diet consisted of whatever they could find and this was mostly vegetable matter such as seeds and roots with the occasional but welcome addition of meat if they stumbled over the body of a deceased mammal, which had itself stumbled over something else, usually the edge of a high cliff. Often this diet was extremely hard to chew and digest and lacked much variety. The only time they had any interesting food would be during the annual harvest of fruits when for a brief period large amounts of tasty nutrition would be available in various colours, flavours, and stages of ripeness hanging from the trees and shrubs. This was a time of celebration and happiness to the ape descendants and was generally accompanied by the traditional stampede to the toilet trees.
The discovery of fire
The great leap forward in diet occurred when they discovered fire and applied this discovery to the preparation of foodstuffs, boiling, baking and roasting and generally making them tastier and more easily assimilated. The exact time and circumstances of this momentous discovery were recorded on a piece of linen, scrawled in shaky black letters with a piece of charcoal. Unfortunately for later historians, this piece of linen was used some weeks later during the annual stampede and whilst leading to yet more inventive ideas for the ape descendents rendered the information recorded illegible.
Time passes
Time passed, as it had grown into the habit of doing so, and the ape descendants, now fully qualified as humans, became civilised. They multiplied and spread across the globe. They built houses, cities, trains, and roads. They even created cafes, restaurants, and service stations, but deep down in their racial memory there lurked the driving need to eat in the open air. Many and varied were the opportunities for these people to express this innate urge. Fishermen sitting on a rocky headland would repair to the beach at the end of the day, gather driftwood, grill some of the days catch and eat it with bread and wine as they watched the sun setting and the waves gently lapping the shore and regaled the group with ancient and mostly mythical tales of immensely large fish that only just escaped capture, and inordinately friendly and acquiescent ladies who probably also only just escaped.
Presentably attractive young sweetly perfumed and doe eyed female humans would languidly lean back in wooden punts, delicately consuming cucumber sandwiches (with the crusts removed) as ardent young male counterparts propelled the craft slowly along gently flowing rivers with willow fringed banks. A bottle or two of fine wine would trail by the sides of the boat cooling in the stream, with the promise of a slice or two of plum cake to follow. Across the entire world the ancient desire was expressed, even in the empty spaces of the Antipodes, as flocks of small brightly coloured parakeets flew overhead on the way to their roosts and cicadas began to chirrup from the nearby bushes, large pieces of jumbuck, roo, or croc would sizzle on sheets of old iron thrown across wood fires with slabs of damper grilling alongside. A few tinnies would be cooling in the billabong, and the participants would wait until their billy boiled, after which the local tradition required that a formal dance then be organised.
More time passes
More time passed, a habit that now seems entirely natural and unbreakable to most people, and the civilisation, and their accompanying shopping centres, industrial estates, and sewage farms spread across most of the lands designated as developed. As a result, the open air almost disappeared. In the late twentieth century, modern man’s atavistic desire to eat outdoors became limited to a tiny space lying between the outer walls of his dwelling and the six-lane highway racing past his front gate. This, of course, was only the situation in the developed world. In the undeveloped world there was still plenty of open country to eat in. The only problem was that these areas where undeveloped mostly because they were pretty empty of much of anything to eat and the populations spent most of the time either foraging as of old or looking for Bob Geldhof.
At last we come to the point
And so the modern urbanised humans invented the barbecue. Possibly the single most pointless invention since the non-alcoholic version of the pan galactic gargle blaster. A barbecue requires the participants to cook a variety of foodstuffs using the most primitive possible equipment. Generally a heat source which takes hours to get to the right state and which cannot be controlled as to temperature. This is ironically counterpointed in a post modern contrast by siting this primitive cooker no more than five yards from a room containing every appliance for the preparation, cooking, and serving of food, known to man. Blenders, mixers, ovens, spits, grills, lemon squeezers, even electrically powered devices for removing the stones from olives (and any one else’s who requires it) are all available in this place.
Having thus applied a heavy handicap to the person who will provide the sustenance to the gathered tribes, humanity then throws out a careless laugh and proceeds to allocate the tasks to the assembled participants. To whom should they assign the cooking duties? There is almost always one person present who has been tasked with these duties from time immemorial. A person who has been planning, procuring, preparing, and serving three or four meals a day every day for three hundred and sixty four days of every year for as long as anyone can remember. So naturally, humanity assigns this task to another person whose only experience is this one day in the year. If it were just a ceremonial supervisory role this might be understandable. However, it is not and any interference in the actions of this ‘priestly’ office is indignantly opposed. This would be incredible enough but there is another tradition which is dutifully followed on these occasions which is to ensure that the incompetent in charge of the provision of cooked nourishment be rendered almost incapable of speech by the ingestion of large quantities of fermented fruit or vegetable juices.
A reference to many eminent historians
Many eminent historians have researched, recorded, and commented on the Black Death, which swept across Europe in the fourteenth century, wiping out possibly one third of the entire population. But for two significant occurrences, their descendants might at this moment be readying for publication their own sensational accounts of the great twentieth century food poisoning epidemics. What saved the human race (developed world sub species) from possible extinction was firstly that the result of all the handicaps placed for amusement’s sake in the path of the happy incompetents, recognisable at any distance by the traditional regalia of a silly hat and an apron with an amusing motif, invariably resulted in meals which were generally a variety of shades of black and to which the epithet, carbonised, could be truly applied. In these conditions, bacteria had not yet evolved to a state where they remained viable and so their one opportunity to become a major force in the redirection of the planet’s history was lost.
The second major factor was that the millions of barbecues so affected the carbon dioxide mix in the planet’s atmosphere that the climate was affected to the point that even the provisional idea of holding a barbecue was enough to tip the carbon dioxide balance and cause heavy downpours of rain over the surrounding area. Humanity (developed sub species) was saved. As a result, even today some members can still be spied sitting atop mountains happily chewing on an apple or wrapped up against the wintry blasts from the north on seaside piers feasting on fried seafood and roots.
A final word from the others
It was a close thing. Many species in many worlds have become extinct through no fault of their own, aside from a lack of evolutionary foresight, which is often forgivable given the circumstances. Mankind appears to be the only life form so far discovered that is actively engaged in seeking its own demise. Many feel that this is a good thing. A recent poll undertaken by the Hitch-Hikers Guide of the non-human species inhabiting the planet found that virtually all of them were in favour of extinction of the ape descendants, including most of their ape cousins, understandably so when you realise that the humans never bothered to invite them to their barbecues. The only votes in favour of maintaining the human race came, not unsurprisingly, from some of the cat and dog species who regard them as a resource far too valuable to lose.
