But for the constant undercurrent of line learning at the moment, a very relaxed day all said. I can only focus on the learn in regular small sporadic doses, and we had a day that allowed that.
Out in the morning to buy logs. This time of year it gets dark so early, it starts to feel like late afternoon at about half ten in the morning. We were out driving about – we got three big netted bags of the things, which sounds like loads but those wood burning stoves are voracious. They do heat up and send the heat round, but compared to an open fire they are much less effective. I guess safety is the main reason they exist in such quantities now. They are more controllable, you don’t have to put a guard in front of them when you’re away, I don’t think they need a chimney sweep in the same way. I grew up with coal fires, and I guess that is a luxury we won’t have again. The coalman would come once every few weeks and there was a coalhole in the garden he would fill up. Then dad would send one of us in there with a wheelbarrow and a shovel and we would get it to the back door and shovel into a big scuttle to take inside. We’d fill the smaller more decorative scuttles by the various fires with great big lumps of coal. And that’s what we burnt. For years. I remember the smell of it, the dust of it on my hands. Sometimes they’d pop and explode out of the fire when we were watching telly. There were burnholes in the rug.
I would love to open up the fireplace in London, and get it back into action, but I’m not allowed to. If I had my own place in the country I’d get a fire no question. It was my childhood work to clean and set them so I don’t really think of it as laborious – just a precise and active task with a quantifiable reward in the warmth it gives off when blazing away. And we all know how I hate the cold. Fires are great. You have to understand them and treat them with respect. The reality of them though is better than the idea that most urban folk have of them. Sure just never go to bed or leave the room without setting the fire guard.
So I’m writing from bed. It’s really early but Lou is fighting a cold and is pretty bunged up and I’m gonna take my rest while I can – I don’t want to catch it – too many lines to learn and deliver in the next few weeks. Gonna try and eat healthy and rest (and stay warm of course). 🔥
