Story Time: Why Barbecues Smell

Barbecues taint one's clothing with the smell of burnt coal. No matter the distance between one and the barbecue, the barbecue will always win the battle of the tainting because of the strength of the partnerships it holds with things around it.

The official clothes tainting seals one as lucky, though. It presents to the world the fact that one will soon be fortunate enough to indulge oneself in a scrumptious meal as soon as the meat is well and truly cooked. One thus becomes too interested in the food itself to care that they now smell as though they were caught in a farmhouse as it was lit aflame, burning every animal in its wake. One is now the living, breathing envy of all those in one's vicinity who are yet to have eaten, or have cooked a meal as decent enough as that cooked on the barbecue.

That of burnt coal is a ghastly smell. It enjoys to enforce its existence upon those close-by, so that when one spends their time cooking their food over the burning coal, the burning coal spreads itself and snuggles into one's clothing. It disperses itself into ones threads and becomes their very essence, their aroma. When this happens, it becomes difficult for one to separate their clothing items from the powerful stench of burnt coal, and one has no other option than to once again crave another barbecued meal - thus it can be stated that burnt coal works with the secret land of food sales and marketing.

The rate that food is sold is determined on the success of the smell of the coal - the deepness in which it instils itself in the clothing of one, the strength of the aroma and the contents of the aroma. If one enjoys consuming barbecued sausages and onions, then the burnt coal has to be sure to immerse itself into that very aroma, and then proceed to sink itself in that particular one's clothing. If the burnt coal fails to do so, then its partnership with the marketing of food does not conclude to be as successful as if it did not fail.

The barbecue, in the same way that the coal is partnered with food marketing, is partnered with the coal. The coal demands its insertion into the barbecue, promising a share if it succeeds in tainting the chef's clothing. The barbecue thus chooses to agree with the partnership, allowing the coal into it and protecting it as it burns. The coal has to then convince the fire-starter to touch it, so that the burnt coal can firstly burn, and then burn even more. The one coal then has to battle the other coals so as to be the one and only successor to keep one coming back for more.

The partnerships of every day objects allow objects to secretly gang up on humans, per se. Humans should be careful not to endorse every day objects that tend to partner up with one another - yet how can a human reject the barbecue?

Romanticism and Ghosts

 Apart from the general excitement that is felt by one as they roam the world in search of paranormal happenings, one, in this case, is inextricably excited if there is some sort of romantic context involving the spirits of these persons before their mostly untimely deaths. It is thus safe to say that romantic deaths and afterlives are more appealing than regular deaths, in some scenarios.

Take for example, and for inspiration of this essay, the romantic dilemma between two in a town close to Melbourne, hundreds of years ago. A maid had fallen in love with the heir to Salisian Manor. She was from Kismet Park, not too far from his Manor. During the night times, they met near Salisian Bridge for alleged courtship, undetected by possible onlookers. Some time after, the young man was to be married. He insisted on marrying the maid, his true love, instead. Once his family found out, they refused to let him ever see her again. Due to this separation, the young heir had allegedly killed himself.

For a while, the maid did not know of her true love’s fate. Every night, she continued to wait for him at the bridge, but with no sign of him and with the knowledge of what had happened to him, she too killed herself. The legend has it that late at night, one can see the maid’s apparition wandering around Salisian Bridge, in search of her lost love.

Knowing of the bridge alone would hardly provoke one in travelling to it, unless they were interested in crossing every bridge around the world as part of some personal goal or challenge or dare or bucket-list checklist achievement. However, when one is notified of the alleged courtship and horrid Romeo and Juliet-esque love story about a wealthy young heir who had fallen in love with a maid and had killed himself after his family’s refusal, to which the news of that had resulted in the maid’s suicide too, and the add the fact that this all had happened at that particular bridge and late at night there have been reports of the viewing of the apparition of the lustful maid, then one’s interest would most likely heighten and force one to visit that place immediately, whether or not they are equipped with adequate paranormal spirit detecting devices.

One must wonder, though, after trailing this love story on the internet and finding nothing else other than a badly written synopsis as such with the word ‘heir’ misspelt as ‘air’ indicating that every site which has this synopsis had just copied it from the original site and had passed it on, so to speak, whether this story is true or not. It would be rather exciting if it were a true story because of the romanticism involved, thus indeed making the trip to this bridge an extremely awesome endeavour. However, one would say that if it was not true, one can pretend it was and have an equally awesome time at the bridge imagining the two in courtship amidst the gum trees and dry Australian shrub.

In the event that it is true, however, who told this story to the person with bad spelling skills? Was it a possible onlooker who allowed this unfortunate couple a few minutes a night to feed their courtship, and could this onlooker have grown old and told a grandson/daughter about this love story? Maybe this grandson/granddaughter had grown a liking to this story and had become the anonymous source, spreading bad grammar on the internet? Perhaps. Even so, the story itself is interesting, and it is upsetting that the bridge no longer exists due to no apparent reason – the only information as to the whereabouts of this bridge is that it was allegedly recently demolished. Its location is where the Sunbury Road from Melbourne crosses Jackson’s Creek, before the divided road is reached.

This historic site is now replaced with a mere Apex Park and an electric barbecue. One wonders what is more saddening – the replacing of this beautiful monument which had a romantic context or the romantic context itself. It is said that now the maid’s apparition is seen nightly, cooking some food in preparation of the possible arrival of her true love’s apparition.