I was sprawled on the lounge chair last week as my appetite wrestled with my inertia - laziness, if you must - when the urge suddenly seized me. Steak! I must have steak! Not stove-grilled steak or pan-fried steak. Hairy-chested barbecue steak! The sort that real men ate. My kingdom for a brontosaurus T-bone.

Dressed in a clean, but creatively stained, sweatshirt and jimjam pants not unlike those favoured by circus clowns, there was little chance of being mistaken for a cave dweller. I looked more like someone who had just had a makeover in a St. Vinnie de Paul clothing bin, but one of the delights of living alone is that one does not have to dress for dinner.

It was dark and cold and the airconditioning system was running on recycle, meaning the inside of my apartment was a cosy 35șC, for I don't believe in taking chances with winter, that blighted season which I detest. So I slid back the glass door leading on to the balcony and tested the ambient temperature with my nose. I regard anything below 20șC as unacceptable and clearly at this moment the temperature outside was a life-threatening 15șC. The neanderthal within me craved a barbecue but the big girl's blouse, by far the more dominant force in my character, refused to go outside and cook it.

My barbecue occupies a special place in my psyche for it belonged to a mate of mine who bought it, used it twice and dropped dead. Not while cooking on it. That would have tested even my appreciation of the macabre. Rather, he went to his maker in his bedroom, which is how he would have wanted it, an untimely departure which orphaned his newly purchased barbie. So in honour of my late mate's memory, I stole his barbie.

True, I could have souvenired a photograph of him from his desk as a memento or perhaps an object d'art from his living room, but I chose to nick his barbie. This I duly had shipped at considerable expense halfway around the country and it now lives in my garage, surely one of the few memorial barbies, I like to think, in the city. Whenever I use it, I am reminded of my mate, but not even my fond memories of him would drive me out in to a sub-Arctic 15șC evening.

Suddenly, the barbie gods beamed on me from on high, pointing their tongs towards me and blessing me with the divine spirit of inspiration. I'd dash downstairs, grab the electric barbie and be back inside before frostbite had a chance to savage me. I would then put the electric barbie on top of the stove, turn on the extractor fan and have an indoor barbie! Brilliant! I could have my steak and do so in warmth and comfort. Why didn't more people do this, I wondered? Even I was dazzled by the shining light of my lateral thinking.

I turned on the barbie, grabbed the steak and removed the cork from a bottle of red which lay fortuitously close at hand, tossed the steak on the grill and retired to the lounge with my glass.

All went smoothly for a few minutes, the aroma of sizzling meat mingling with the bouquet of the wine. Suddenly, things began to dissemble.

I noticed that the fan didn't seem to be coping terribly well with the smoke. "Funny," I thought. "You wouldn't think that one steak could generate so much smoke. It never seemed to be this smoky when I used it outside." Suddenly, alarm bells began ringing. They weren't ringing in my head. They were ringing in the apartment. The smoke alarms were going insane, the clouds of smoke pouring off the barbie becoming so intense that I could barely see the stove from the lounge.

There was only one thing to do. Panic.

I ran around in decreasing circles for 30 seconds until deciding that it would probably help to turn off the airconditioning and open some doors. Fumbling with the lock, I rolled back the sliding doors to the balcony and staggered outside, clouds of smoke billowing out behind me. "The steak!" I thought. "I have to save the steak!!!" Like a fireman entering a blazing building to save a trapped child, I raced back in to the apartment, unplugged the barbie, threw the steak on a plate and retreated back to the balcony.

Faces were beginning to appear on the balconies above and below me as people peered over the railings and wondered who had been stupid enough to apparently attempt to cook an entire cow in their apartment?