BBQ season can be a bit of a drip.

We aren’t blessed with an abundance of sunshine over here but that’s ok, we’re used to it. We’ve come to accept our fate. We make the most of the sun when we see it and if we see it for more than two days in a row, we call it a heatwave. Then we talk about that heatwave for the rest of the summer while we shelter from the rain and whatever storm Suzy or Walter has to throw at us.

As the summer wears on we come to the conclusion that it’s not going to be a good year after all. This comes as a complete surprise because Tom the Healer had seen snails out of their shells on the second of May and that’s a sure sign of good weather. Mick the Moron saw a dolphin swimming upside down in April and sure isn’t that a banker for a long hot summer.

Anyway by the end of June the summer clothes are being piled back into the wardrobe while the winter clothes appear again. In actual fact they were there all the time and never went anywhere because Tom the Healer and Mick the Moron are not very trustworthy and all these soothsayers are as accurate as the Four Faced Liar on Shandon Street.

One problem with the occasional sunny day is that it brings out the barbeque pits. Because it’s Ireland, that means lots of drunk people eating food that’s burned on the outside and raw on the inside. Fortified with uncooked food and lots of alcohol, it’s time to put on the music and party into the early hours.

Now, I like to cook outdoors as much as the next guy and when the weather permits, I’m one of the first to set fire to some charcoal. It’s nice to have a few people round, have a few drinks and some grub and sit in the fresh air and have a chat. Then when it starts to hit midnight, it’s time to move indoors and confine the noise to the inside of the four walls.

But not everyone sees it that way. The Irish mind set doesn’t allow for moderation as far as alcohol goes. So the Irish BBQ has to go on all night and most importantly, it must be noisy.

There are always those characters at parties who believe that they have to shout at the top of their voices or they won’t be heard by anyone including those standing right next to them. The more they drink the more they believe that deafness is now an epidemic and everyone has been infected.

In sunnier climates barbeques are a normal part of everyday life. The pits are seldom put indoors because bad weather is rare. It’s no problem organising a barbeque in these places when every day is warm and sunny. You just pick a time, notify your pals and off you go. They generally tend to start early and finish early.

In Ireland it’s a little bit more complicated and requires a qualification in logistics to pull it together. The first thing is to pick a date and that’s not as easy as it sounds. It will involve a study of the long range weather forecast to pick a period when decent weather is possible. Then you can give advance notice to the friends that something might be happening around that time subject to the weather.

Then as the time gets closer you can start to think about picking a specific day but you can’t confirm it with anybody until you get up that morning and have a look at the sky. Then, and only then, can you give the green light and go for it.

So when the day finally dawns, it’s an early start. Get the pit out of the garage. Correction, you must find it first and then you haul it out from under a ton of junk. Clean it and get it ready. Pull out the patio seats, get rid of all the dead spiders, dust them down and lay them out. The chairs I mean, not the spiders. Find the charcoal which is so well hidden that it’s just easier to go to the store and get some more. Get the food and the drinks ready and then wait.

When everyone arrives, you make your little charcoal pyramid and set fire to it. It’s not long until you think you feel a few spots of rain but you pretend not to notice. You sneak a look up to the sky and the clouds seem to be multiplying.

The spots have become a little heavier. Now you can no longer call them spots, they’re fully grown drops, adult ones and lots of them. The guests put on jackets and brave it out for a little while but then move inside.

Somebody hands you an umbrella and you’re cooking with one hand while the other keeps the umbrella over the food. The umbrella is trapping the smoke so you’re half blind. Cooking with one hand and the eyes shut is tricky so some of the meat ends up on the ground.

At this stage you are soaked to the skin and you smell like you’ve spent a week sleeping in a chimney. You bring in the food and everyone tucks in and you pretend that it’s all been a breeze.

So maybe that explains the noisy outdoor parties. You go to so much trouble arranging the damn thing that when it does work you want to stay out all night to make the most of it because there probably won’t be an opportunity to do it again during the entire two weeks of summer.