Kippered Curtains
Cindy and I like open fires, but it has to be real trees, not anthracite or some plug in Disney effect. However there are a few draw backs. I will under the influence of even the poorest Shiraz, ignore the smoke drifting across the room slowly ‘kipperfying’ the curtains, the furniture and us! And without ranker, I’ll put my ‘nosh trough’ down umpteen times of an evening to fire fight sparks, launched with an explosive crack into the room, as carbonising logs release their stress, showering red hot embers over the shag pile. Which when left to their own devices lay smouldering scorching and melting the carpet, fill the room with acrid fumes, and ultimately could render us homeless!… I have to implement a selective memory ban on those bum clenching occasions when the chimney caught fire, filling the house with big ‘shouty’ blokes in black jackets and yellow hats! (another blog).
We have had central heating now for twenty five years, but at the very first hint of Autumn evenings being classified as being ‘a bit chilly’ we light the logs, and keep doing so over the ‘dark days’ until at a quarter past Easter!. We love the in your face heat that toasts your front and ignores your back, the crisping of your socks, the crackling roar of the flames vying to be first up flue. We like the ‘wiff’ of wood smoke that curls out from under the bressumer beam, scenting the room with essence of tree, or in one case burning tar as I tried to burn old hop poles (not good). A fire evokes in us, some primeval sensation of well being that must have had its genesis back when some ‘bod’ with too much body hair, brought a bit of forest fire back to the cave to ‘one up’ on the neighbours.
There are few things better to set the mood for a comfy evening like a roaring hearth, but conversely few things better to ‘bring it down’ like coming in damp and cold after tending assorted ‘ungrateful’ critters who don’t give a toss that your boots leak. To find a chilled room, because you (for ‘you’ read ME) had forgotten to light the fire, have left the log box empty, found there is no kindling and after accusing all around remember it was me that had nicked the matches to start a bonfire and will have left them up the field somewhere in the damp grass
Originally at Forsham Cottage our only source of heat comfort was a ‘biggish’ open fire. In the long and relatively narrow room that was our living room there was also a second sealed off chimney. We thought it sensible to install a wood-burning stove but still wanted the option of the open fire, so it was an obvious move to open the sealed fireplace and ‘bung in a burner’.
I am not renowned for my patience and typically was itching to see how big the sealed fire place was, intrigue got the better of me, so one evening before I was due on night shift I got a ‘lump hammer’ and with a few randomly aimed blows, caused a small cascade of bricks and lime mortar, together with several gallons of acrid water in which had been marinading several pounds of soot. Cindy was very calm for all of ten seconds, then went into “ that’s typical of you” rant, the one where apparently I can never be bothered to roll back the carpet let alone move the settee and then bugger off to work leaving her with a f’ing mess. She dragged up yet again the time I fell backwards off my ‘patent pending’ plasters shoes, which consisted of milk crates, one strapped to each foot with an electric flex lashing. This innovated footwear afforded me that extra foot of reach I needed to address the ceiling between the oak beams. My elevated plaster shoes worked well until I over stretched, and when trying to stagger back to gain balance, found that the slack in the flex lashings hindered reaction time. I banged my head and hurled a hawk load of wet plaster up the window, across some newly exposed brick work and there was the odd splash up some stripped beams…Oddly enough, I buggered off to work early that night as well!
At first I was thinking the water must be an accumulation of rain that had found its way down the flue over the years the chimney had been bricked off. But having pushed the sweep rods up the flue to find the top had been capped, initially there was no obvious reason for the water to be in the chimney. The chimney-breast went up through the bathroom. Unlike my dad I am no plumber but even I knew bathrooms where a potential source of water. I rolled back the bathroom carpet and levered up some floorboards, to discover not so much a damp patch, but a dew pond. A dew pond due to a poorly executed soldered pipe joint which judging by the juvenile stalactite the copper verdegree had been ‘issuing forth’ for some considerable time.
The more boards I lifted the further out went the banks, disappearing to the West under the landing. To the South, under the airing cupboard and seeped under the kidlets room. North it hit the outside. East was into Mrs T’s, I never actually got around (until now) to mention it to the good lady.
On the bright side it goes some way to explain the ‘old folks place ’ smell in the back half of the house, which we had categorized as ‘cottage character’. Plus as most of first floor joists were now exposed we could treat the woodworm ….. or at least the ones that hadn’t yet drowned.
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