The Lady Guide to Modern Manners: 20 June
Dear Thomas,
Do you agree that disposable barbecues are a menace when lit in public places? I’m absolutely sick of clearing up after them in my local area.
Bridget Mercer, Tonbridge
Dear Bridget,
Any hint of warm weather and people insist on two ruinous indulgences to spoil it: loud music and barbecues. My neighbours had a barbecue once and the thickets of smoke billowing across our tiny London back gardens and pouring through my windows threatened my furnishings and the whole future of my home. I didn’t dare go out for fear I wouldn’t be there to slam the windows shut in time.
But these dismal disposable barbecues, really just tin trays full of charcoal, are something else. There’s just about everything wrong with them. For whatever reason, they often fail to ignite sufficiently well to cook any food. Disappointed barbecuers therefore abandon half-done sausages and burgers, often bizarrely with many of their clothes, for a communityminded person to clear up later. If they work properly, the smoke is misery for anyone nearby and the barbecue itself burns the grass.
Never, it would seem, can the users wait for the wretched contraption to cool down, so it is just left in situ.
As you say, they despoil many a beauty spot, public park or national park. My mother once wrote to the CEO of Tesco, as a purveyor of these horrors, and received a gracious but unmoving reply, pointing out how popular the items are and that labelling does call for responsible use. At 90, she is still clearing up debris from disposable barbecues along the riverbank where she lives.
I had always thought that lighting fires in public places was forbidden. But barbecues don’t count, or have to be kowtowed to. Dartmoor National Park has responded by providing stones on which to rest the fires and so prevent the ground from being scorched. Many local authorities permit barbecuing at certain times in certain places. It is even allowed on some beaches. In Wandsworth it is banned, although public pressure has led the council to provide four offcial barbecuing stations.
If you’re anti-barbie, you’re in a minority. It is difficult to complain if you find yourself sitting next to one at your favourite beauty spot because once lit, the thing is more or less a fait accompli. You have to leap in before they’ve started and get them to go elsewhere. It’s perfectly justified to protest about the threat of smoke, which is always acrid and horrid in the initial stages.
In places where disposable barbecues are a persistent problem, keep a careful record of incidents with date, time and place, plus photographic evidence if possible. Then lobby your local councillor. Otherwise, become prime minister and legislate.
Please send your questions to Thomas.blaikie@lady.co.uk or write to him at The Lady, 39-40 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ER
A second commentator said that an organisation had ‘tick-boxed’ something. A third, speaking from the City, thought that a famous company was unlikely to ‘get a hostile’. He meant ‘hostile takeover bid’. The omission was deliberate, intending to give a yobby, insider feeling and weight to his utterance. But ‘honey-pot’ as a verb is just clumsy, ugly and ridiculous.
I know it has been the privilege of old codgers through the generations to rail against verbal innovation of any kind so I must point out that I’m behind some of the nouns that have been converted into verbs: ‘handbag’ for instance works well, as when Tony Blair got ‘handbagged’ by the WI. But a raised eyebrow and humorous challenge when you come across a new coinage is no bad thing. People ought to think about the words they use.
Do you agree that disposable barbecues are a menace when lit in public places? I’m absolutely sick of clearing up after them in my local area.
Bridget Mercer, Tonbridge
Dear Bridget,
Any hint of warm weather and people insist on two ruinous indulgences to spoil it: loud music and barbecues. My neighbours had a barbecue once and the thickets of smoke billowing across our tiny London back gardens and pouring through my windows threatened my furnishings and the whole future of my home. I didn’t dare go out for fear I wouldn’t be there to slam the windows shut in time.
But these dismal disposable barbecues, really just tin trays full of charcoal, are something else. There’s just about everything wrong with them. For whatever reason, they often fail to ignite sufficiently well to cook any food. Disappointed barbecuers therefore abandon half-done sausages and burgers, often bizarrely with many of their clothes, for a communityminded person to clear up later. If they work properly, the smoke is misery for anyone nearby and the barbecue itself burns the grass.
Never, it would seem, can the users wait for the wretched contraption to cool down, so it is just left in situ.
As you say, they despoil many a beauty spot, public park or national park. My mother once wrote to the CEO of Tesco, as a purveyor of these horrors, and received a gracious but unmoving reply, pointing out how popular the items are and that labelling does call for responsible use. At 90, she is still clearing up debris from disposable barbecues along the riverbank where she lives.
I had always thought that lighting fires in public places was forbidden. But barbecues don’t count, or have to be kowtowed to. Dartmoor National Park has responded by providing stones on which to rest the fires and so prevent the ground from being scorched. Many local authorities permit barbecuing at certain times in certain places. It is even allowed on some beaches. In Wandsworth it is banned, although public pressure has led the council to provide four offcial barbecuing stations.
If you’re anti-barbie, you’re in a minority. It is difficult to complain if you find yourself sitting next to one at your favourite beauty spot because once lit, the thing is more or less a fait accompli. You have to leap in before they’ve started and get them to go elsewhere. It’s perfectly justified to protest about the threat of smoke, which is always acrid and horrid in the initial stages.
In places where disposable barbecues are a persistent problem, keep a careful record of incidents with date, time and place, plus photographic evidence if possible. Then lobby your local councillor. Otherwise, become prime minister and legislate.
Please send your questions to Thomas.blaikie@lady.co.uk or write to him at The Lady, 39-40 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9ER
WHAT TO DO ABOUT… BAD LANGUAGE
Within the space of a few hours the other morning, I heard the following phrases on the radio: an authority on the seashore said there was a tendency for people ‘to honey-pot around certain beaches’, leaving others empty.A second commentator said that an organisation had ‘tick-boxed’ something. A third, speaking from the City, thought that a famous company was unlikely to ‘get a hostile’. He meant ‘hostile takeover bid’. The omission was deliberate, intending to give a yobby, insider feeling and weight to his utterance. But ‘honey-pot’ as a verb is just clumsy, ugly and ridiculous.
I know it has been the privilege of old codgers through the generations to rail against verbal innovation of any kind so I must point out that I’m behind some of the nouns that have been converted into verbs: ‘handbag’ for instance works well, as when Tony Blair got ‘handbagged’ by the WI. But a raised eyebrow and humorous challenge when you come across a new coinage is no bad thing. People ought to think about the words they use.