Barbecues and Computers

I am, it must be said, not good at many things.

Barbecues, for example. I have a friend, Gerry, who is a master chef; he has the capacity to cook anything anywhere and produce the tastiest meals on God’s Earth.

His barbecues are a revelation. Unless you have had a Big ‘G’ barbecue you have never had a barbecue. That remains a fact irrespective of how Australian you are.

To be frank with you, I dislike barbecues.

There is a valid reason for this.

Thousands of years ago the men went out in small droves to hunt down anything that was hairy and moves. They may, in the course of this hunt, also slaughter furry or feathery things. Things of any size that contained meat.

The prey animal or bird/lizard (whatever it might be) would then be dumped in front of—The Women. They, The Women, would clean it, skin it and cook it. Over an open fire. In the cave. Or hut. Tent. Whatever.

The men may now eat.

Fast forward to the ‘Now’.

The Women are sent out to hunt in the nearest SuperMarket. There they encounter Other Women who are also hunting. They will seize the unsuspecting lumps of meat and drag them home having used their weapons to establish ownership of the meat. The weapons owned by The Women are coins of the realm or pieces of plastic that will notify The Bank electronically to deduct sums in favour of The SuperMarket that coincide with the exchange of ownership of the meat.

These lumps of dead animal are now deposited with the husband. The Man.

He decides that, in spite of having thousands of currency units worth of high technology cooking equipment in The Kitchen (for which he has spent considerable hours at work in order to raise adequate compensation to the Previous Owners of the Equipment – Smeg, for instance), he will cook this meat over an Open Fire!

One of his skills is not cooking. It is something that he rarely does. It is something that is, normally, the province of The Women.

The prey animal hunted down in The SuperMarket is now subjected to a fierce blue-white flame rendering the external portions into charcoal and the inner parts, protected by the carbonised exterior, remain raw, dripping with blood—or, in the case of meat from The SuperMarket, a slightly reddish watery fluid that resembles blood because the meat has not been hung.

The accompanying portions of this meal have been prepared in The Kitchen by The Women. It is acceptable. It is safe to eat.

Unless Big ‘G’ cooks it. Then I will devour it with great pleasure and some relish—perhaps some beans with spices in that only Big ‘G’ knows how to prepare.

I am also completely useless with computers.

Totally and completely useless.

I am able to type this. My typing is, relatively, rapid if not entirely accurate.

This is borne out of years of practice using typewriters both manual and electric. I still have in my possession an electronic ‘Canon’ typewriter that was heavily used in years gone by.

Some simple graphics programmes are also useful to me. I used to like ‘Paint Shop Pro’ but they no longer make that for the iMac so I have to use another simple one.

Other ‘Office’ applications are beyond me. I struggle with ‘Excel’ and can just, barely, get by with ‘Powerpoint’—a programme I need to use professionally as a presenter of information.

Generally, if there is a problem with my computer I have to call out for my wife who is a Computer Scientist.

I tried, valiantly, to introduce graphics into my ‘Blog’. It failed. It appeared perfectly well on my computer but, it seems, everybody else—including my wife, saw only a black column.

So she spent about an hour patiently explaining what I need to do in order to provide graphics on a ‘Blog’. Did I understand? Mostly, no, I did not. But, we shall try.

Things happen on ‘Word’ that are unfathomable. I have no clue. Sometimes BOM (my wife. It is an acronym for ‘Beloved Of Mine’. You cannot call her BOM because she is not your beloved; you may call her ‘Your BOM’; that’s acceptable) will say to me that she is unable to solve a problem with a particular software because she is a ‘Computer Scientist’ and not a ‘Microsoft Word Scientist’. That’s fair enough. She suggests I call a secretary, they will know.

Like most men I am not good at shopping, either. We men will grab the first carton of milk we see, pay and get out of the shop. Arriving home we shall discover that it is the ‘Wrong Brand’ and that we are to return to the shop and exchange it for the ‘Right Brand’.

We go back to the shop and join the queue of men all standing sheepishly in line to exchange the brand of whatever it is that they have, incorrectly, bought.

None of us is perfect.

We all think we know, we all like to think that we never get things wrong—but we do. Constantly.

‘Getting It Wrong’ is what we normally do. It is how we learn. We never learn by the mistakes of other people, it is impossible to gain experience from watching other people lose. Knowledge, yes; experience? No.

“He who makes no mistakes makes nothing” is an old English proverb. If you cannot make a decision, if you will not attempt anything, then you will never master anything.

Barbecues? Never. Computers? Pah.

Best to leave both of them to the experts.

I think I hear BOM calling me for lunch. There’s something I’m good at—eating.

“Coming, Dear!”