When the family braai gets ‘Spiked’

THE wife’s family from afar is visiting, and while you would’ve rather spent the weekend in Hangzhou giving CPR to pangolin eaters infected with the coronavirus, you promise not to be too obviously miserable.

‘Two days of meaningless small talk will be torture, but hey, I can do it,’ you tell yourself.

But just as you think things cannot get any worse, they do.

The in-laws remember they also have other family in the area, whom they last saw when still living in Secunda, and before you have time to threaten your wife in the bedroom with divorce, a car hoots at the gate.

You don’t recognise the make or model owing to the extensive aftermarket cosmetic modifications, but you do know a Coleman cooler box when you see one.

You were just unaware they make them in chest freezer size too.

‘Nou gaan ons braai,’ is cousin Spike’s only reply to your courteous greetings, dragging the Coleman behind him with one hand while the other waves a glass high.

That’s the moment you realise there’s probably no meat in the super-sized Coleman and it’s going to be a long, exhausting night.

Tequila

Fifteen minutes at your house and Spike has already taken stock of how much ‘mix’ (Coke, Sprite or Oros) you have in the fridge.

He expresses his concern about whether what there is will be enough to get ‘us through the night’, and that an ‘outing’ to the convenience store probably will have to be undertaken at some stage.

This ‘outing’, Spike announces, might or might not involve a detour via the nearest strip joint.

Over his remark, the rowdy man’s wife chuckles, your’s rolls her eyes and her father pulls in his stomach and yells ‘cheers’, lifting the ‘dark-and-stormy’ Spike poured him.

While searching in the Coleman for the little plastic holder containing his three pork chops, Spike discovers half-a-bottle of tequila he didn’t know he had, and jovially orders for the shot glasses to be taken out.

Told that there are no shot glasses in the house, Spike climbs into the Coleman once more and after unpacking about half a bottle store on the stoep, finds 18 – all unwashed and sticky.

He then yells at your dog to ‘move over Rover’ and starts pouring right there on the floor.

Havoc

One o’clock in the morning and your wife and her mother had both gone to bed after they had words.

After three tequilas, the usually timid woman told her daughter she raises her children ‘like they are pets’.

Your father-in-law has keeled over on the lawn.

He’s not dead because he moves when the dog licks his face.

That leaves you and Spike and his wife the only people still standing.

You are standing because you drank very little the whole night, having realised someone will have to stay sober to break up family fights and protect furniture and pets.

Spike is still standing because this is how he lives – one piss-up after the other.

He tells you how many company bakkies he’s wrecked on booze cruises and how he got away with it, while you pretend to be impressed by his drunken endeavours.

We all have a Spike in our families.

Luckily, Spikes leave so much havoc in their wake that the decision to never invite them for a braai again, is always an unanimous one - that’s after the apologies for behaving like him.