The Risks Of Confidence On The Basis Of Fleeting Variables Makes Fools Of Even The Most August Bodies Of Experts. But Gives The Rest Of Us A Laugh

It does look to have been (fingers crossed, let’s not tempt fate) a “barbeque summer” this year so far. It’s a superb phrase, created by someone in the Met Office media team but alas due to the seasonal forecast it was illustrating, it will naturally be associated with pouring rain and freezing winds ruining the holiday period in The United Kingdom.

It was one of those fantastic examples of something well intentioned which turns to disaster almost at once like the famously wobbly Millennium Bridge in London, the Ford Edsel, casting Dick Van Dyke as a chimney sweep in Mary Poppins or Gordon Brown as Prime Minister.

But this year, so far we have had ample chances to get the bbq out and get the meat seared. In fact, as soon as the first decent weekend forecast was given in April, we went off to get a new gas barbecue to upgrade the old worn out charcoal bbq we’d used for many years.

There is also the matter of the historical argument – is a gas barbecue up to or better than a charcoal bbq, and it’s a hard one to call. Naturally with a charcoal bbq you do get the authentic smoky flavour in the food, but it’s also all too easy to get a trace of firelighters, meths or other combustible material necessary to get the charcoal bbq