I could spend hours watching strangers wrangle slabs of beef under a hot sun. Just don’t ask me to tuck into the results
Are barbecues problematic? There’s the drearily entrenched manliness, the carcinogens released by charring, the campylobacter and salmonella from raw meat juices hitting your halloumi salad, sure. Then, worse, the scourge of disposables, that absolute tinfoil catastrophe. A million a year went to landfill before supermarkets stopped selling them last summer. “Going to landfill” suggests people were patiently waiting for them to cool down then disposing of them carefully, when of course they were mostly left to injure meat-crazed seagulls, or catch fire and cause devastation. They’ve been responsible for destroying homes, damage to a Dorset nature reserve and Saddleworth Moor, among many other blazes. Some retailers have backslid this year, with the British Retail Consortium suggesting users grill “responsibly”, which, yes, is definitely going to happen when you’re five tinned negronis down with moderate sunstroke.
So in that sense, of course barbecues are problematic. But as grilling season sizzles acridly across the backyards of Britain, are they problematic for me, a woman who doesn’t eat meat, whose fake hair retains smoke far more lastingly than real hair, married to a man who managed to snaffle one of those prized Aldi egg barbecues a few years back? Yes and no.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
