  It came in a big rectangular box with the photo scanned onto the side. Green and black with the text in red to stand out. In the catalogue they had it swathed in sausages, spitting chicken, sizzling steaks. Obligatory pints propped on the neat wooden shelves. It wasn't beautiful but it was slick, on its wheels with its shiny roasting fork. We carried it back, sweating in the midday heat.
I'd grabbed a couple of stripey green folding chairs and the crackling plastic packaging slipped in my hands. I swore as one slid down and cracked against my shin. Drivers grinned out the windows at us as we tottered along, burdened. When we got the thing home we emptied it out onto the living room floor. Well, tried. What we lack in there is space: two sofas, a big TV, a coffee table scattering papers and bills and takeaway menus. We creep round, sofa stealers pulling their knees up to their chins to stop trips and spillages: pasta and ribena and olives and wine. So, I took it into my bedroom and spread the parts out on my double bed. Four different types of bolts, two types of washers, two types of locks virtually identical, some hexagonal nuts. Long legs, short legs, the fabulous wheels (actually cheap black plastic with dirty cream inserts), grill pan, grill, fork.
Axle. My housemate gave me a screwdriver and left me to it, staring blankly at the instructions. Diagrams with twenty different points. They say 'it might as well have been in Japanese' but it was quite straightforward. Just fiddly, tring to get to hold together a pole, a pan and three different parts of screw. All to mixed up bootleg Michael Jackson pulsing in the background.
Thriller! I knelt on the floor and wrestled with the metal. I twisted and sweated and screwed. My calves and my feet cramped up all at the same time, aching, stabbing pains that shot through the muscles and wrapped (racked) round the bones. I danced to my feet and bounced around, cursing, working the knotlocks out. Pirouetting on tiptoes. My room is on the ground floor facing the street. What would they have seen, those passers by? A girl in dirty denim and faded pink Bambi top jittering dementedly round a half-baked barbeque.
Satanic rites? The furnace, semi-constructed. Possession. I wheeled it out eventually, proudly, after the unfortunate mishap of screwing the guard on upsidedown and having to reconstruct the damn thing. It was a little bit unsteady, wobbling but upright. It stood alone. Now it's been filled with charcoal and burnt out and smeared with grease it looks as it's meant to. Almost picture-perfect. 
