Cinque Sexy Lagers, s'il vous plait

Bloke and I had a barbecue on Saturday night. It was his birthday and he had a spanking new barbie that was just begging for a work-out. I should point out here that this barbie is immense. If you added a little motor and a steering wheel, you could hop on the sucker and drive it around the neighbourhood. "Yeah, think you're pretty tough in that Monaro? Well, I think my barbie might have something to say about that! Eat my dust!" When we bought it, I tried to talk Bloke into the smaller one. Not having a bit of it. We ended up with a six burner monster with a wok burner, a roasting hood and a written guarantee that if you buy it, you'll never feel sad, lonely or sexually inadequate again. And wheels. Obviously wheels. If it only had a deep fryer, you could flash fry an ox in this thing.

So, we invited a few mates around. It was a nice night. But the party taught me several things:

1. Sexy Lager is a real beer.

Look, it's true!

Sorry it's blurry - the camera on the Palm Pilot is a bit shite. I found this on Sunday morning when I was emptying out the enormous vats of ice on our back verandah. (This wasn't the only thing in the ice vats - I also dragged out about a slab and a half of Coopers Pale, some Carlsburg, a few cans of Dr Tim's and an arseload of James Boag's. No-one ever leaves our parties because the booze is out. I think this is because Bloke thinks it is unhospitable to start off with anything less than three slabs, four bottles of vodka and various bottles of wine and other spirits, but all our mates still bring booze.) Anyway, Bloke says the Sexy Lager was a birthday present from one of his mates. It's Belgian and apparently, you can scratch the chick's bathers off with a coin, like a scratchie ticket. Ooh, look, I've won some boobs! Yay! I could do with some of those! Can't you just see yourself walking into a nice little bar in Brussels and saying, "Je voudrais un Sexy Lager et des pommes frites, s'il vous plait"? No, me either.

2. The lovely chaps at Cooper's use far better glue on their labels than James Boag does.
Why do I know this? The James Boag labels all soaked off in the water, but the labels stayed put on the Cooper's Pale Ale. Yes, Pale might have chewy stuff at the bottom, but at least you'll know what you're drinking after it's been floating overnight in melted ice.

3. Never, ever drink a Red Bull if you aren't used to it.
I hate Red Bull. It smells and tastes like cough syrup. But by the time the party shopping was done, I was fading fast. Nothing for it but a Red Bull, right? Wrong. That stuff's like speed if you're not used to it (and you're not a speed freak). I spent the next three hours with white showing all around my irises. Under its influence, I ended up making a potato salad with about 19 potatoes, seven eggs and sundry cucumbers and onions because I kept saying, "What if it's not enough? Everyone likes potato salad! What if we run out?" Needless to say, we're still eating that damned potato salad.

4. Taking a "power nap" at your own party at midnight because you are "tired and emotional" is not a good idea.
No. Bad idea. I woke up at 4.30am. Bloke was cooking more sausages and there were only three guests left, one of whom had taken over as hostess and distributed coffee and brownies while I was asleep. (Thanks Trace - you rock. Go visit her Bunny's Flickr site. Bunny is extra cute and has fans around the world.)

5. Brownies containing 250g of dark chocolate, 1 1/2 cups of assorted chocolate chips AND cocoa are like heroin.
Ooh yeah, baby. You could mainline these things. (If you want the recipe, just ask.) The amount of chocolate and fat is awesome.

6. Somehow, if you barbecue meat of any sort, your kitchen floor will look like someone has wrestled a lamb on a spit.
Yes, I do know what this looks like and It Is Not Pretty. Some years ago, there was a New Year's Eve party at a share house. It is The Most Memorable New Year's Eve Party Ever for a number of reasons. First, one of the hosts traded clothes with his sister. She looked cute in his safari suit and pith helmet, but even though he's a top bloke, it has to be said he looked like crap in her form-fitting red dress with its circular cut-outs down the side. You could see his blue jocks through the cut-outs. Not good. Second, the girlfriend of another of the hosts returned home from a very long night shift as an intern medico to find the lawn on fire. One of the cintronella flares had failed, spilling burning oil all over the grass. Last, but most certainly not least since it's the point of this story, the beer snacks were supposed to be chunks off a whole lamb on a spit. It's a revolting concept, even in principle, since I prefer not to have to think that the meat I eat once had big sad eyes, a tail and hooves. Ultimately, though, the real problem was that by the time the lamb was finally cooked, everyone was too trashed to work out how to serve it. "Put the fire out and carve it straight off the spit", I hear you say. No. Someone decided to remove the whole damned lamb from the spit and take it into the kitchen to carve, despite the fact they didn't have a plate anywhere near that size. Oddly enough, the lamb was fairly hot at this stage and it ended up being dropped it on the kitchen floor. I walked through the kitchen to find someone writhing on the floor with a whole cooked lamb. The burns must have been horrific. When I returned, the kitchen was wall-to-wall with lamb fat and dirty footprints and naturally, someone had slipped in the fat and gone arse over tit. Double plus ungood. So, this is what my kitchen, laundry and back hall looked like. I have no idea how it happened, since the closest thing we had to a lamb on a spit was dinky little lamb koftas on satay sticks. How? (And while we're talking about lamb, what the hell is with those damned spring lamb ads trying to market lamb like designer perfume? "I love looommmb?" What the hell?)

7. Couscous travels.
Couscous is the Superman of carbs. It can travel faster than a speeding bullet, I swear. Stir it very, very carefully. It's hard to clean up because it sticks to the floor like shit to a shirt.

On the whole, though, the party was fairly successful. Mr Furpants didn't come racing into the backyard with a half-dead mouse and proceed to pull it to bits in front of the guests. (Yes, this has happened before.) No-one threw up in the kitchen sink, or indeed anywhere else in the house. No-one peed in the kitty litter. No-one passed out on the lawn. So, mission accomplished, really.

Eh madame, voudriez-vous un Sexy Lager?