ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

For a brief moment earlier this year, a local man let himself believe that this year was going to be his year.

Instead, he says, he’s started to make his own hot sauces that he gives out to friends in the hope that they too will start the hobby.

When instead they barely say thank you and never return the bottle it came in.

“I’m trying,” insists Donald Spoake, a 28-year-old systems architect at South Betoota Polytechnic College.

“But as it turns out, it takes people quite a while to get through a half-pint of Carolina Reaper hot sauce. It’s not like they’re putting on their Special K in the morning,”

“So for now, I guess I’m the hot sauce guy to my small network of acquaintance pals. Fuck me, I thought I’d get into golf or slot cars before this. And it’s not like it’s hard. You just buy a bunch of hot chilis, mash them up and mix them with a bit of vinegar. It’s not like homebrewing beer.”

When asked by our reporter how he thought things got this way, Donald said he did not.

“I don’t know,” he said.

However, he’s remaining as optimistic as he can.

“One of my coworkers makes his own hot sauces but I haven’t told him that I’ve started doing it, too,” he said.

“I don’t want to come on too strong. I’ll have to ease into that conversation sometime before Christmas.”

More to come.