THERE’S a faint whiff of burning in the living room carried, I originally assume, on the spring breeze via the open window. It’s barbecue season, I think, imagining the neighbours determinedly chomping down on their charcoaled Cumberlands, picking bits of carcinogen from their smiles.

For there’s no-one so content as a Brit at a barbecue, especially on a hot day – even if their skin, unused to clement weather, is beginning to resemble the inside of an uncooked beefburger.

And should the sky start to turn greyer than the smouldering charcoal – well, no matter. Out come the Dunkirk spirit and the waterproofs. We shall not be moved.

It’s served us well, this great British reserve, got us through the Blitz, the Cold War, the onslaught of reality TV and the lack of Formby asparagus in the supermarkets.

But it really comes to the fore on a drizzly afternoon when you’ve bought up 6lbs of sausages, a mountain of frozen burgers, five dozen white baps, two bottles of ketchup and a token bag of mixed salad leaves.

Clouds in the sky? Pah, we simply pretend not to see them and stoically roll the barbecue into the single 1m sq patch of sunlight in the garden.

No matter that you have to scramble over a neglected rockery and wade through a patch of nettles to get within tonging distance of the lamb kebabs – that’s why God invented dock leaves.

We fuss over the length of time we can leave the meat on the kitchen surface before the salmonella kicks in, as recommended by Health and Safety, all the time pretending that the temperature inside the fridge is not actually marginally warmer than that on the patio.

And we are liberal with the ice in the jugs of Pimms, dismissing its part in the frost bite we will surely suffer later on when holding a glass of the mixture. With the arrival of May 1, the annual routine begins – weather forecasts are carefully consulted on an hourly basis and the ubiquitous green and white-striped canopy meticulously checked for missing guy ropes, lost pegs or suspicious-looking burns from the previous year.

Once all variables are in place, barring an unforeseen obstacle such as the neighbours hanging out their washing just as the sentry is being relieved of duty, a party is dispatched to Tesco for provisions.

There, the shop assistants cower in the detergent aisle as the customers, their pupils marked with the sign of a toasting fork, plunder the shelves for disposable barbecues, bags of powdered white and pink marshmallows and tubs of coleslaw the size of a municipal swimming pool.