Sausage sizzle saga

One of the good things about being in a long distance relationship is that it’s like being on one long date. One of the bad things about being in a long distance relationship is that it’s like being on one long date. Now the purpose of a date is not just to have a fabulous day/night out with someone new, but to assess your date’s potential (is he a keeper?) and, if the answer is in the affirmative, to showcase yourself to your best advantage (hair! clothes! makeup!).

While date-land is a fun place to visit, you just can’t live there. For a start the pressure to constantly appear witty, wise, well-groomed and all-round wonderful 24/7 is just too much pressure to bear. But one of the bizarre unrealities of a long distance relationship is that you stay in this early-days-of-dating headspace long after the early days of dating are over in real life. Limited time together means striving to make every moment count, with the accompanying pressure to make every hour in each other’s company Quality Time.  

Recently the Country Mouse and I decided that we needed to do more ‘normal’ things together, a realisation we came to when it became obvious, even to us in our rose-coloured bubble, that our relationship was heavy on adventure, passion and holidays, but light on day-to-day reality. So we planned some regular couple time doing couple things, and what could be more suburban couple than a visit to Bunnings on a Sunday morning?

Now the Country Mouse loves Bunnings, a hardware megastore he describes as “like a dress shop for men”. As a highly impractical woman I’m lukewarm on Bunnings, a shop devoted solely to the practical end of life – like making things and fixing things. ‘Lukewarm’ is probably a bit generous, I am more like tepid on Bunnings. But I love the Country Mouse and the Country Mouse loves Bunnings, so a-Bunnings I was going. Given that I set out with such good intentions it was sad that it unravelled before we even got to the first do-it-yourself aisle.

For those of you not in the know, here’s a short explanatory paragraph: Bunnings is known for its charity sausage sizzles. Every weekend a different local charity is given space to set up at the front door of the store and make a motza selling sanga sandwiches to the hungry hardware crowd.  

Diversion over, back to the story: Heading toward the door I was assailed by that delicious smell of artery-clogging barbequed meat – salt and fat, yum! It was the perfect start to our perfect normal couple morning. I joined the queue. The older man serving took my order - one sausage, no bread, lots of tomato sauce. He looked stunned. “No bread?” “Yes, no bread” “Where will I put the sausage?” “On a napkin” “You want a sausage sandwich with no bread?” “Yes, I want a sausage, not a sausage sandwich” “Why?” “Because I have already had all the bread I want to eat today and honestly...that white sponge-like bread you are using is disgusting, devoid of flavour, fibre and nutrition.”

Stunned silence is such a cliché, but stunned silence it was. I could see in his eyes I had gone too far, I was an obnoxious weirdo. So he turned. Addressing his co-workers, he rolled his eyes heavenward loudly and sarcastically repeated my request “YOU WANT A SAUSAGE SANDWICH WITH NO BREAD?” He thought he would embarrass me, that I would be named and shamed as a food freak. Poor deluded man. “YES! THAT’S WHAT I SAID! A SAUSAGE! NO BREAD!” It was a standoff.

At this moment I remembered the Country Mouse and the fact that we were supposed to be having a normal couple kind of morning, that is, one that involved going to a hardware shop and well, shopping. Instead the Country Mouse was shuffling from foot to foot wishing that he was anywhere but here.

Like many men, the Country Mouse hates conflict - any conflict anywhere, anytime. And a conflict involving a woman is the worst kind of conflict of all. Any sign of disagreement, dispute and, worst of all, raised voices flips him immediately to his wide-eyed kangaroo-caught-in-the-headlights look, the kind those poor marsupials give just before they know they are about to morph into road kill.

Despite my attempts to reassure the Country Mouse that conflict is normal, that those folk who can argue honestly and fairly are emotionally healthy, he remains unconvinced. To him conflict is Bad; ‘bad’ with a capital ‘b’. And here I was having a conflict:

(a)  with a stranger

(b)  at a charity fundraising stall

(c)  outside his beloved Bunnings

Worst of all it was actually (d), all of the above. This was not good. The morning was not going well. I could read his mind “City Mouse, move away from the sausage sizzle, move awaaaaaaay from the sausage sizzle.”

But just at that moment an unlikely saviour appeared in the form of one of my oldest friends, DJ. One of the pros of moving to the country is that the Newcastle-Hunter Valley area is already home to two of my closest friends, DJ being one of them. As an ex-Sydney woman now happily settled in the HV she is a source of wisdom on what I need to know to acclimatise to country living and how to wrestle with – and win - the cultural clashes I regularly encounter.

Until now the Country Mouse had not met DJ, and DJ had not met the Country Mouse. So when she appeared, at that most timely moment, the situation got complicated, there were now four of us, all having different conversations. Me doing the introductions between DJ and the Country Mouse, those two greeting each other, and me and the barbequing man having our ongoing bread-based standoff. DJ was curious “What’s going on?” After a brief explanation she laughed uproariously, put her arm around my shoulder and said “Oh Kimberly you are not in Sydney anymore”. And then she was gone chuckling all the way into Bunnings.

I tried to salvage some dignity “I didn’t really want a sausage anyway!” I announced to the Country Mouse, the barbequing man and the rest of the sausage sizzle queue. And with that we went, like a normal couple, to buy some kind of inexplicable hardware. The Country Mouse was smiling: the conflict was thankfully over, he was buying things in Bunnings and we were holding hands – peace and order had been restored to his world.

A happy ending? Not quite. About a month later I was at Bronte Beach early on a Sunday morning, swimming in the cool ocean and recovering from a 42 degree C day in Sydney. And what should I see in the park behind the beach, but Bronte Surf Life Saving Club’s regular Sunday fundraising barbeque? I headed straight for the sausages. There was a big crowd; the surf club was raking it in. One of the women running the stall announced: “Can everyone waiting for food form two queues please? People wanting a sausage only, no bread, queue to the left. People wanting a sausage on bread, queue to the right.”

There were enough people wanting sausages only to form their own queue! But wait. It got better. The queue for people wanting a sausage only was longer than the queue for people wanting a sausage and bread. I strutted through the park. “There were TWO queues! TWO QUEUES!! And the queue for no bread was longer than the queue for bread!!! Longer!!!!” It was a moment of triumph. I was victorious.