There’s nothing like a warm Saturday afternoon to take advantage of sitting outside (albeit wearing a thick hoodie to combat the chill) with some music in the background and a large joint of pork smoking on the grill. Slowly cooking a side of meat takes a lot of time and patience and it is the ideal time to pick up my notebook and pen.

The cook started last night with preparing the cut, trimming off the fat and applying the rub. Thankfully with this type of cooking you don’t have to be overly accurate with your measures (which is handy considering my circumstances!) so I can plough on with a tablespoon of muscovado sugar here and a few teaspoons of smoked paprika there without worrying too much that I’ll overpower the flavour of the meat. Just to be sure I do try to mix the spices under Kath’s watchful eye. I typically prefer mixing my own rub over a ready mixed blend because the shop bought ones often contain a bulking agent such as Maltodextrin which irritates Kath’s gluten intolerance. Applying the rub to the meat is also fairly easy because it is simply a case of sprinkling the mixture onto the surface and using your hands to rub it in. The texture of the surface gives an indication of when it is evenly coated and once the outer layer is fully covered, you simply cover the joint in foil and pop it in the fridge overnight.

Smoking a 3kg collar of pork can take anything up to 10 hours so I like to start nice and early. This morning, Chester woke me up around 7am with a single bark signifying he needed to go outside to spend which was the perfect time to get up and get going with stage 1: soaking the wood chunks. Soaking the wood means it doesn’t burn too quickly and helps it to produce lots of lovely hickory scented smoke to really get into the core of the meat and so it is good to let the chunks soak for at least 30 minutes. At this point, the second most important task needs to be completed – Tea! I really cannot function without that first cuppa and with the wood needing to soak, there is plenty of time once the animals are fed to sit with a hot steaming cup of tea in silence and catch up on the socials. Not long after I sat down, William came down and took over control of the telly and, as it is the start of school holidays, his ADHD is quite dysregulated and so in between the pacing there are a lot of questions in quick succession such as “what’s a ware rabbit?”, “what year is it?”, “Did you watch Wallace and Gromit as a kid?”, “What year did Wonka come out?” and all this before 8am!

Tea drank and it is time to get the barbeque prepared so first order of business is to take the meat out of the fridge so it has time to reach room temperature and then I head outside to get the barbeque ready. First things first, I give the grates a good brush and get any remaining fat and residue from the Mother’s Day brisket off. Now that’s done, we can lift the grates off and fit the foil trays, one for the water bath and the other to catch any fat drippings. Beside the water tray, the smoker box goes directly above the gas burner and the first handful of wood goes in. Now that is ready, we can turn on the gas and slowly bring the grill up to temperature for indirect very low cooking, this means that the temperature is no higher than 130 centigrade. It is important to get the right soundtrack going so, as the first wisps of smoke come out from under the lid I select The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St and fire up the record player. Years ago, long before I had an inkling I would end up needing to use a range of equipment to simply read my name on an envelope, let alone a page of a book, I read Keith Richards’ autobiography where he explained how he spent days hunting around the basement of his French chateau to find the perfect acoustics to record his part of the album as the rest of the band were holed up elsewhere. I love hearing these types of obsessions as it just shows how committed we become to our various causes.

As the closing bars of Soul Survivors gives way to the opening riff from Let it Bleed’s Gimme Shelter, I give the joint its first spray of cider vinegar and add another chunk of wood to the smoker box. By the time the Stones have been replaced by The Who’s epic rock opera, Tommy, the last of the wood chunks go onto the grill and the meat gets its final spritz of cider vinegar to stop it drying out. I hear the soft sizzle as the cold vinegar hits the hot surface giving me confidence that it has hit the right spot and so close the lid once again and allow the Acid Queen and Pinball Wizzard to accompany the crackles and sizzles from under the lid.

When lunchtime nears it is time to get ready for stage 2 of the cook where the joint is wrapped in thick, pink butcher’s paper and put back on the heat until the core temperature reaches almost 95 degrees, which could take anything up to another 6 hours. At this point, all my jobs are done and I can finally pick up my pen. As Jimmy Buffett says, it’s five o’clock somewhere so I feel it only right to crack open a can of Siren Brewery’s anniversary Helles lager “Times Eleven” to help get the writer’s juices flowing. Doing something like this really shows that, with a couple of minor adjustments, it really doesn’t matter if you have full use of your sight or not. OK, so I may need to use the magnification app on my iPad or my augmented vision goggles and on more than one occasion I have asked to borrow Kath or Kira’s eyes to check the grill temperature but otherwise the cook has been no different from how I used to do it just a few years ago.

One of the biggest things I have to overcome is the internalised ablism telling me that I cannot do something because I can’t see very well any more. This simply is not true but always having that little demon on my shoulder pecking away at my self-confidence can have its impact, especially when combined with the expressions of disbelief from others. With so much negativity, if I (and so many others like me) were to bow down to the pressure then I will quickly become internalised and soon the things I love doing will become distant memories. The thing is, this constant battle is exhausting and so taking a day like today out to do something I love with nobody but my nearest and dearest around me is necessary to reset and prepare for the next onslaught that is just around the corner. Ironically, the constant treatment by others that I am somehow less able and require their pity is more exhausting than my degrading eyesight. People need to stop assuming and interfering and instead simply ask if there is anything they can do to help which is so much more appropriate.

Anyway, it is now 7pm and, almost exactly 12 hours after starting the cook, the time has come to take the pork off the heat. I unwrap it from the paper and use a couple of bear claws to pull the succulent meat apart into long, thin strands of tender meat, perfect for when the family comes round tomorrow.