I have been all three of these in the past 4 days.

The thursday works BBQ went fine; at the drop of a hat it got moved back two hours, so I went to the supermarket and blew 200 quid on ingredients; got home, whizzed up a cherry-tomato and caper salad, baked spuds, green salad, marinated lamb in fig balsamic for kebabs and further marinade lamb chops in gooseberry sauce, plus trout baked in foil with rosemary.

Oh, and a dozen other dishes. And booze. Lots of booze.

Everyone turned up later than expected, so perhaps the mindless rush was not as necessary as I’d thought. A good deal of satisfaction was had by my proving to myself that I can adequately cater for a party of 20 people at the drop of a hat and three hours notice – plus a healthy does of adrenaline.

It is hard to say about what topic there was the most conversation: security, high-speed networking, or motorcycles. No joke. Nearly half of the attendees are bikers of one degree or another, and Lance had ridden over on his ZZR600 (iirc).

Much kudos goes to Anthony for initially taking over the actual BBQ cooking leaving me to get on with food prep; it was all slightly too much for one person to do, but the pitch in mentality of the evening helped everything along.

I need hardly add that I was grateful and honoured for the gift of some rather fine single malts that David got for me after a whip-round, as a vote of thanks. I’ve not opened them yet, but then I still feel a little fragile.

The best part of the evening was probably teaching the Europeans how to toast and/or microwave marshmallows – I shall remember the sight of Matthias fighting with hyper-elastic nuked marshmallow goop for some time to come.

Friday was the wrap-up of the training course, and passed without event, except for the crash of the air-traffic control computer which set everyone’s flights back; I had a hastily arranged test drive of a Volkswagen Polo in the afternoon, and found that after fighting through the disinterestedness of the sales people, the cancelled bookings, and so forth, it wasn’t really worth it.

Saturday was shopping in the morning, and was meant to include friends visiting in the afternoon, but they cancelled as their young son was feeling ill; I made what I could of the time, visited a very pleasant Skoda dealer and booked a test drive, cleaned up the garden and somehow pulled a muscle in my back which left me aching for the rest of the weekend, and even unto now.

I was determined that sunday would be better, and resolved to go into my local hellhole of a town – Reading – to shop; dosed on ibuprofen, the shops I wanted to visit were not open, and the films I wanted to see were booked out. Bother.

I got home and started a small bonfire, burning the last remains of shrub cuttings and dried, rotten wodd that was dug out of the garden. It was quite primal, as the evening light faded, watching the flames licking away at the wood, and occasionally flashing lurid green as they hit a piece of copper wire. This bonfire was more “woody” than my last, so there was less smoke, but my clothes still reeked of it in the morning.

I was going to be up late anyway – minding the fire – so I decided to do some cooking; whilst experimenting with a new recipe (caramel banana crumble), I dug up my pen-sized, pen-shaped butane powered blowtorch, turned the knob to switch it on, and applied it to the smallest ring of my gas stove in order to light it.

A gout of flame shot backwards up my arm, singed all the hair from the back of my hand and halfway up my forearm, and took-out some of the fringe off my head and one or two eyebrow hairs, too. I bullwhipped the burner out of my hand, stomped it out on the ground, and extinguished all flames.

Basically it looks like the collar/seal forming the torch’s on/off switch leaked when I turned it on, and it shot gas under pressure in all directions, notably up the handle. I was fortunate not to be wearing anything flammable, to be wearing glasses, and to be lighting the torch at arm’s length. No permanent damage has ensued, although my armhair looks a bit crispy-fried and I’ve hacked a few hairs off my head. My forearm felt like it had been dipped in a hot bath for a few hours afterwards, but is fine.

Anyway – I am gonna ask around what to do about this. Could be interesting.