Are you fucking kidding me, clay pigeon shooting, hamburgers and beer? Sounds like the absolutely perfect weekend activity for a middle-aged bloke trying to define his life stage and relevance. Fatty food, alcohol and shooting stuff: It’s all a win, win, win to me - but what to take?
This is probably not the weekend to try out my new man bag, as useful as this all-purpose, multi-pocketed, stylish accessory seems. I can picture the stunned silence. Twenty armed, and now dangerous, males coming to terms with one of their own fronting up packing a satchel - even if it is made by Driza-Bone and, as they say in the movie The Hangover, Indiana Jones had one.
The main problem with the man bag is that you end up carrying everyone else’s crap around for them. ‘Here, honey, can you hold this, and my lipstick, and these…’ You might also be asked to dance backwards when short of gals - which would be common, I imagine, on this sort of trip. So it might yet again stay at home until I get invited to a weekend getaway with the finding-your-inner-female group.
Shooting clay pigeons sure does sound like fun. The beer is for afterwards as they have a wise, if unfortunate, zero-tolerance-for-alcohol-before-loading-the-shotgun policy. This takes away, I think, a certain ‘whoopsy, sorry-about-that’ edge to the weekend – you know, that perfect YouTube moment we all dream of?
It gets better, if that is possible. There’s also the ‘we hang around a barbecue afterwards and eat burgers’ advertising angle. But all I can say is, you had me at clay pigeon shooting. Sure, it’s obvious a barbecue is what we’d do after 25 clay pigeons blasting out of the sky, it doesn’t need to be said. And I’ve got just the recipe, or idea, for that after-blasting glow.
No room here for fancy wagyu. Nor that ‘£95 bling burger’ that a dazzling marketing team from England’s Burger King designed for release just as the economy teetered in 2008. This burger, which included truffle, Kobe beef, Louis Roederer Cristal champagne and saffron, was no doubt the straw that broke the British cash camel’s back. I wonder what these brilliant young men are doing now – lollipop guys in Oswaldtwistle?
Nor is there any need for fancy lettuce, stuff that really should be fed to the cow. If using beetroot, say no to a suggestion of baby or orange beetroot - it should come from a tin, end of story. You just need solid unconfronting ingredients. If someone suggests sourdough rolls, everyone should go quiet, look threatening. Every now and then stare at them so they know how close they came to being ejected from the gathering.
What we want is good old-fashioned Aussie grass-fed beef, the best you can find. Use a mix of chuck, that’s the shoulder and full of flavour, the rib, and even some ox tail or shank. These all have good amounts of fat to lubricate the patty. Grind up the meat coarsely or have your butcher do it for you – tell him you’re going shooting and drinking beer. He will get it, and, with determination and a certain jealousy, make sure the beef is perfect.
All you need now is a good sprinkle of salt and a few grinds of pepper. Form and knead the patties until they are tight, sticky cohesive balls. Test a small burger by frying it up to see whether there is balance of salt. It should hold together and leave a certain oily drizzle down your beard - you’ll require that for the weekend too .
Arrange on a platter to take with your buns, beetroot, onion, iceberg lettuce – I can’t stress this last ingredient enough; do not turn up here with micro-herbs – plus the regulation case of tinnies and the 12-gauge.
Every man there will bring their version of the perfect sauce to go with burgers: tomato, BBQ, chilli, it doesn’t matter.
It’s sure to be a chest-beating, no-holds-barred kinda weekend. Where we all come back to our cubicles on Monday with the knowledge that we tested ourselves and we achieved wondrous things-and are now content with our alter egos, who would never ever contemplate, even with persistent spousal badgering, the purchase and use of a leather handbag designed for the modern man.