“What
can’t it burn?” was the first thing I asked when he’d finished reading me the
shortest user manual in the world.
Two
hours later and hungry, we knew the answer.
It
was the first day of summer after a grey longest day and we’d put all our eggs
of expectation in one basket after dedicating the best part of the last two
weeks of a damp June to moving. We’d survived a variety of homelessness;
finding shelter within boxes and cooking by candlelight, and it wasn’t the
adventure we’d marked it out to be. But today was marked to be different. We were
going to have fun. And so, also in our basket, we’d packed Surinamese blood
sausage, bread, garlic, a faro salad, ¾ a bottle of wine, a skillet and Alex’s
new Kickstarter stove; solar powered, clean burning and all chrome. 'Cus that's fun.
Our
new backyard is a manmade wood gone wild. It was built in the 30s as a counter
measure to the Depression and seems to have been built in order to facilitate
private bbqs and swimming naked. I’ve gotten lost there twice and honestly
wonder how people arrive at the points they want to - there are of course paths, but
they’re mostly unmarked. Unless you recognise those on which the wild
strawberries thrive.
The
stove could have had a whole army full on marshmallows for all its flame and
ember, fuelled only by dry grass and the shards of wood we found. It was developed
in Lesotho to burn clean to reduce the deaths in developing countries from CO2 poisoning, as well as to reduce the amount of time spent collecting fuel: it burns all
biomass and it burns it up completely. It’s solar powered and it can charge
your phone. AGA take note.
I’d
like to meet the king that eats better than us.
