A BBQ? In Scotland? Aye, that’d be right Hardeep Singh Kohli

Hardeep Singh Kohli

THESE are the moments in human history that set man against the elements – especially when that man is Scottish and the weather has earlier in the week/day/hour suggested the smoky sublimity of a big BBQ banquet.

Whenever I think of a Bishopbriggs BBQ the James Taylor classic Fire And Rain is on a constant loop. It was 1977 and the summer had promised much. The seven-week long holidays stretched ahead of us, laden with possibility and promise. We had a visiting uncle who was obsessed with food from an al-fresco grill.

He had traded the Punjab for Pretoria and had become something of a tong-manipu- lating expert, a meat-basting past master. He spoke endlessly of the amazing meals they had in South Africa, he banged on relentlessly about bloody basting and how best to create the perfect coal temperature. This almost week-long tirade, this constant crusade, prompted by some loose-lipped weather person suggesting that the July temperature across the west of Scotland might, just might, reach 20oC on Saturday. Clearly, the African uncle was fully au fait with food from a grill but much less familiar with the Scottish subjunctive and the vagaries of the Weegie weather. That Saturday we watched him build his newly-acquired B&Q BBQ – with a sense of disbelief that my dad didn’t already have at least three different styles of coal, wood and