NOT manly? What do these Cypriots know about manliness? Were you there when we trekked through Boulder Canyon in Colorado, just Abe, Rocco ‘The Rock’ and me.
Why, we’d knock down a couple of buffaloes before breakfast, skin ’em with the old Bowie and we’d be spitting steaks the size of old Seth Ironside’s shovel before you could say ‘gimme some souvla’.
In them days, up at the logging camps, a man didn’t have to prove nuthin’. We’d get paid on a Friday, get into town and get laid. They was good days, a time when we didn’t need no fancy barbecues, just an old-fashioned wood fire with a couple of cedar trees, plenty of meat, some tack and a keg or two of the hard stuff we packed on mules down from Charity Gilligan’s place up in the hills. Jeez, that stuff was like rocket fuel.
You guys accusing me of not being manly? Were you there when me and the boys slogged together hundreds of feet below ground in the Welsh valleys? Me, Rhys Ifan and Mog ‘Man Mountain’ Meredith, we’d load more trucks on our shift than half the colliers at Penydarren put together. And we’d be first in the Miners Arms when the hooter blew.
Not manly? Who was it that toppled Mighty Mog when he tried it on with Bethan Price after he’d sunk twelve pints of Brains Skull Attack at the Sheep and Wellies Inn? He was watching my right but I got him with the left. And who took on the Pontypool front row single-handed that night in Crumlin after Llanelli beat the All Blacks?
Were you guys Down Under when Matt, Greg, Craig, Brett and me went fishing for the Big One off Wooraburra Point? The blokes in the bar said we were mad to go out in that weather, but we did it… and we came back with a giant barramundi they still talk about in Perth. I say ‘we’ came back but Craig never made it… not that he’d have been much use to his missus after that fish had a go at him.
Why drag all this up now? Because I bought a gas barbecue in Limassol a few weeks ago and this guy in the office said it wasn’t ‘manly’. You had to fire up a load of charcoal the old-fashioned way, he reckons, and he ranted on about a barbie he’d gone to where the host wheeled out one of these ‘girly’ machines. Nope, he’s just plain wrong, like a lot of old folk – this gas barbecue is the best money I’ve spent since I paid $25 to enter the Winchester Bear Hunt and won meself a go on Ellie May.
While you’re all humping sacks of charcoal and pouring on petrol to start a blaze big enough to fuel the Great Fire of Nicosia, I’m pressing a little button that makes a little spark to light my shiny gas burners. While you’re hauling blackened chunks of pork away from the flames, I’m saving my sausages by turning a little knob, with a natty visual aid alongside indicating up or down.
While you’re choking on smoke and serving up charred but underdone chicken legs, I’m impressing the girls with my free recipe book. And if I fancy being a bit macho with my barbie I can always rearrange the little coal briquettes to rough ’em up a bit. Not manly? While you’re still desperately fanning the dying embers I’m planning my next trip – whitewater rafting down Everest.
No worries about big steaks either, there’s plenty of room on the grill – although I have to say I prefer slightly toasted marshmallows these days.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
