C'mon light my fire

Today

Decided to light a fire tonight. It's a bit chilly out there and we're not going out.

Over Christmas we lit a couple of fires. Becky's friend who was visiting us for Christmas was just delighted on Christmas Eve. "You've got a real fire", he grinned.

I lit one last week when my nephews and nieces were visiting and gave them a quick lesson in how to do it. Of course, we've got central heating and anyway, this Winter's another mild one. In fact we had a discussion about whether we'd be too hot.

In My Day

When we were children we only had one source of heating in the main rooms and that was a coal fire. We lived in a great Victorian pile and the living room was about 30ft by 18 with a 15ft foot high ceiling. There were floor to ceiling sash windows at each end so the room wasn't exactly draught-proof. (For those who don't know, sash windows are intentionally draughty to give the fire some up-draught so that it won't go out.)

If you were lucky enough to get a seat by the fire, your legs got very hot and red on one side while the other side of you was distinctly chilly. Daddy or Mamma built the fire like this:

Newspaper first. Then a wigwam of kindling sticks. Finally the coal. If the weather was bad the fire might be reluctant to draw at all and sometime smoke, very black & dirty, blew into the room. Occasionally there was a chimney fire.

The fireplace itself had clearly been reduced in size, probably in the '30s to economise on the amount of coal that it burnt.

Daddy had his own set of chimney brushes, which slotted together so that you could go up to the top. We also had the chimney swept regularly by a professional. I can remember the fine film of soot everywhere after he'd finished, as well as the smell. Mamma & daddy were scathing when vaccuum cleaners began to be used instead. An ancient skill might have been lost, but it was much cleaner.

Mamma and Daddy were also critical of those who had central heating; I can't now remember why. I do remember Daddy caving in and buying some cylindrical heaters, that looked rather like the paraffin heaters available at the time. There was a large one for the living room and small ones for our bedrooms. At least that put paid to frost on the inside of our bedroom windows.

Later, when the clean air act came into force, we had to use coke or other smokeless fuel. It might have been cleaner but it wasn't such fun to light or to look at.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to sitting by the fire tonight with a nice glass of red wine!