After a Long Absence

Dear readers! Y Ddraig Goch news from the deep south of Brazil is BACK. Don't go away.
If you've been following events in my life, I'm still in a flat in Cristal, still doing barbies most weekends and most importantly STILL with the Little Angel, sometimes she pisses me off with weird moods but all women do that don't they?
Barbecues
For my foriegn followers, if I have any left that is after an absence of seven months or so...
A Brazilian barbie is like this - don't read this if you are vegetarian!
Huge Slabs Of Dripping Red Meat must first be purchased from the soopie-doopie (supermarket kiddies!) or açougue - the butcher. I prefer the supermarket because at the butcher's you have to ask for the right cut and look at it and try to sound as if you know what you're talking about when you say 'hmm that's a nice piece but I wonder if you take a shave of the bottom', most Gaúchos DO know what they are talking about - I don't (I'm not Gaúcho, I'm a bachgen from Cymru), so I just go to the soopie-doopie and get ready packed meat.
Shopping list: Meat (which usually includes sausages and chicken hearts)
Bread (for the garlic bread)
Charcoal.
Beer (most important!)
oh and maybe pop for the kids. (cries of "what no salad?!)
Having purchased your HSODRM (Huge Slabs Of etc.) you must now spit it. The spits are a good yard long, depending on the size and shape of your HSODRM you'll need a double (two pronged) or single spit. A light coating of rock salt then on yer fire it goes.
Ooops forgot to mention the fire preperation.
The barbie pits here are like brick raised stand-alone (I mean they're outside on a terrace or garden wall) fire places with a short chimney. Here's the traditional Gaúcho way of preparing the fire (the alternative non-Gaúcho way is emptying the charcoal into the pit, pouring on half-litre of alchohol, light match and WOOOF!). Take a standard 600ml beer bottle and a tabloid newspaper, make sure that the newspaper has already been read by all the members of the family, neighbours etc. Make sure the beer has been drunk from the bottle. Take a double page of the paper (one sheet) and diagonally screw it up at the same time forming a ring, so you'll get a screwed up paper ring! Place this tightly over the beer bottle (if it's loose make a smaller ring). Repeat several times until the bottle complete with screwed up paper rings. Place the bottle with the SUPRs into the barbie pit and pour charcoal over the top. Make sure the bottle doesn't topple. When you've emptied the bag carefullyextract the bottle from the rings and you have a kind of short paper tube going into the charcoal, the Gaúchos call this the 'volcano', light another piece of paper and pop it into the volcano and wait. Soon it'll be roaring.
Next - drink lots of cold beer and serve the meat to your happy mates.