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.‘I’ll cook again tonight, if you like, Gramps,’ I say.He gets this panicky look on his face, as if the prospect of two consecutive nights without steak is giving him palpitations, so I put his mind at ease.‘I’ll do steak.No worries.’That settles it.I don’t tell him that I’ve got a sauce planned and we’re going to forgo the boiled spuds for something slightly more exciting.That stuff is on a need-to-know basis.Granddad eases himself further down into his chair and fixes his gaze onto the bush.It looks like he might never speak again, but I’m in the mood, so I gee him up a little.‘You like the trees, hey, Gramps?’ I say.‘Sure.’‘What type are they, then? Around here?’I’m almost interested, I swear to God.‘Ironbarks, mainly, in this part of the forest.Plus stringy-bark and casuarina on drier slopes.Silver wattle and blackwood in gullies.Up high you can find stands of ancient myrtle.’I’m back in Discovery Channel territory, but I’ve only got myself to blame.I try to dredge up an intelligent comment.‘Ironbark, huh?’ is the best I can manage.‘You’d like ironbark,’ says Granddad.‘It’s tough, like you.After you’ve cut it, when it’s dried out, you’ll bend a nail if you try to hammer one in.’Was that another crack?‘Hey,’ I say, as if I’ve just had a brilliant idea.‘Will you teach me how to roll a ciggie?’ It’s a sudden conversational detour, but worth the attempt.Anyway, I’ve always thought rolling your own was pretty cool.Plus, it would be doubly cool when I get back to school.There’s all these kids smoking the expensive brands – even Russian Sobranies, those perfumy things that come in the pastel colours.I’m not kidding.I’ve seen them and damn near cacked my pants laughing, particularly when one guy got out this gold-plated cigarette holder.I reckon it would be awesome to whip out a dog-eared pack of baccy and roll up in front of them.Knowing the sheep in most of my classes, they’d all be doing it in a week or so.That’s the thing with expensive schools.Being trendy is a religion.Of course, Granddad will probably tell me to get stuffed.On the one hand, he tends to mind his own business.Then again, he can suddenly turn moral on me, like with buying me smokes and grog.Difficult to know which way he’s going to turn.As it happens, it’s no worries.He doesn’t say a word, but gets his pouch and goes through the routine.It looks easy.Lay the paper out, get a decent bunch of tobacco, tease it along the fold, roll it between fingers and thumb, tuck one side of the paper over and roll it up.Quick lick along the gummy strip and there ya have it.A pretty cool rollie.It certainly doesn’t look like rocket science, so I give it a whirl.I go through the steps he tells me, but I can’t get it to work right.There’s loose tobacco falling out all over the place and then I can’t tuck the paper in nice and tight.It takes ten minutes and at the end I’ve got this sad, drooping apology for a smoke.It’s as wrinkled as Granddad and twice as bent.Unsmokeable.Absolutely unsmokeable.Even Granddad smiles at it.Well, I say smile, but it’s nothing quite as dramatic as that.There’s this general rearrangement of wrinkles around his mouth and he quickly smothers it, but I reckon I know a smile when I nearly see one.It occurs to me it’s the first time I’ve seen him smile since I got here.Are we talking serious bonding, or what?I give it another few tries before I get one that even looks like a candidate for sticking in your mouth.It’s still bent over like crazy, but I’m kinda proud of it.Granddad gives this little nod as we look at the sad, twisted thing and I take this as approval, so I light up.He then takes the pouch off me and rolls this perfect cylinder in about two seconds.He does it with one hand, the posing dropkick.I nearly cough my lungs up and send them flying over the fence, the tobacco is that strong.‘Jeez, Gramps,’ I say when I can get enough air into me.‘What is it with this stuff? I mean, I know smoking kills, but why are you in such a rush?’‘Those things you smoke are full of chemicals.This is pure tobacco.’‘Yeah,’ I reply.‘I feel positively healthy smoking this.Maybe I can get them on prescription.’We smoke another.I wouldn’t like to bet too much on it, but I think the second is slightly better than the first.It should be.It takes me fifteen minutes to roll it.And this time my lungs don’t feel like they’re being kneaded in concentrated sulphuric acid.I get three fires going afterwards.One in the front room, the stove in the kitchen and the one in my bedroom.It’s kinda fun.I roll up newspaper and then put kindling on top, a decent-sized log on top of that and set fire to the paper.They all take.Three out of three.I’m getting the hang of this frontier business.Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll be putting out bushfires, skinning wallabies with my teeth and getting curiously interested in line-dancing.The meal goes pretty well.I find fresh herbs growing in Granddad’s vegie plot and mix them up with grated potatoes.There are green beans as well and I wash and top and tail them.I’ll sauté them in garlic butter right at the end.Granddad is of the let’s-boil-’em-to-buggery school when it comes to vegetables, and he needs educating.I fold an egg and some milk into the potato mix, shape them into small patties and fry them on the stove top.I’m getting to like this stove top.The only problem is there’s no way to regulate the heat.It’s all the one temperature – like the core of Venus.So I’ve got to be careful, otherwise everything burns.While the potato’s cooking, I beat the living daylights out of a couple of steaks and stick a pan on with butter, milk, onions, herbs and a few other things that are a sauce-maker’s trade secret.I turn the potato patties like a maniac and then, just when they’re nicely browned, flip them onto a metal cooling tray on the stove.I reckon that’ll help them cook through.The steaks are good quality, better than anything I’d get in Melbourne, I have to admit.Granddad likes them coated in five centimetres of carbon, but I want them medium rare, so a knife slides through them and there’s blood on the plate.In the coupla minutes they’re sizzling, I drop the beans in a pan on the stove and toss them around, stirring the sauce and turning the steaks.It’s a bit mad at that stage, and I could do with an extra pair of hands, but it all comes together.I slide the food onto plates, hide the barbecue sauce where Granddad will never find it, and serve him his tucker.It’s funny.Granddad looks pleased with the steaks, like he’s being reacquainted with an old friend, but he’s not sure about the rest of the meal.He does some prodding with his fork before he starts to eat.I reckon it’s good, though [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]