So there I am burning stuff in the garage, yes indoors, stoking a raging fire holding a smouldering stick and smoking a fag whilst swearing loudly in Punjabi before I’m interrupted in mid “pehn cho…” by a well dressed toffish looking neighbour who looked at me as if I’d murdered his first born and then ate him in front of his eyes whilst using the wrong cutlery.
He’d come to pick up some stuff that had mistakenly been delivered to our house a few days ago.
I straightened myself up and tried making myself look more presentable by tipping the fag ash from my ciggie onto my shoes and cussing some more. If it wasn’t for my chequered apron and Pakistan cricket team cap I think I’d look altogether more distressing.
I told him his wife had already been around earlier and he left with a strange smile and a lasting impression.
So we’ve just moved into this neighbourhood not so long ago, nice house and area I suppose, big garden was the main pull.
So anyway earlier leading up to this chance meeting I’d lit up the mobile BBQ on the behest of the misses and was just waiting for the flames to die down when it started pissing it down…I knew it would rain”! So I had to move it to the garage ..just until it passed …I’d started so I finish!
Not much gets between me and meat especially when fire is concerned. Anyway I’d just got through the tricky procedure of carrying 5 kg of molten coals in a little metal drum to the garage when I got a phone call from work asking me to come in for ‘something urgent’. Well as you can imagine it’s not what you want on a Saturday afternoon, especially with meat on the fire and my stoking stick all ready and all and to say I was a little upset would be like saying Madhanee has a little moustache, so I was swearing and lit up the first cigarette of the day to take the edge off the moment, when all of a sudden some prick turns up out of the rain to catch me in the middle of it all.
Prick where’s he get off helping himself into my garden, and what, doesn’t he talk to his wife?!
So anyway seen as there’s no other pakis around here for 20 miles in all directions I’ve single handedly created the impression that we all burn stuff indoors and speak a language called ‘pehn cho’…and oh yes our national dress is a chequered apron- like garment topped off with a green hat…very ethnic.
I can’t wait for the next Aspen Gardens suburbian get-together, my wife and I will turn up wearing matching chequered aprons and cricket team hats and we’ll take the little one naked and tell ‘em it’s what we do in the month of May when the labour party gets in for a historic third term. I’ll say the fire in the garage was an ancient fertility rite to the fire goddess aag in order to bring rains for the harvest…well it worked didn’t it!
Anyway my first impression of him could have been better, he wore his trousers way too high!
Back to work.