No life
Fired up
Jeremy Clarke
One thing I do have in common with the ladies of our residential home is that we all love a nice fire. A log fire unites us and lends significance to our otherwise rather futile existences. 'Ooh, lovely,' com- ment the ladies when they see I've lit one.
I start to plan our winter fires during the summer. In the garden we have a eucalyp- tus tree that sheds its bark on the lawn all the year round. Before mowing the grass every week I gather up the long curling shards and store them in the shed for use as kindling later on. For lighting-sticks I smash up the unwanted furniture of those ladies who have passed away. (The home averages about two deaths a year.) On hearing about a death in the home I imme- diately think of lighting-sticks: lovely, clean, dry, straight-edged lighting-sticks of antique mahogany, pine and teak. When Miss Beryl Jarvis passed away last August, I had her dressing-table and wardrobe bro- ken, sawn and split into pencil-sized lengths before she'd reached the crematorium.
Logs I buy well in advance of the burning season from a Mr Pine, a genial, ill-kempt old man who seems to be able to get his hands on a limitless supply of fallen timber. If I ask him for beech he brings beech. Or ash, he brings ash. If any of his beautiful ash logs are too big for the grate, and require splitting, they fall apart under the weight of my falling meat cleaver as whitely and cleanly as if they were green apples.
I lay the fire first thing in the morning, before the ladies are down. I use broad- sheets to line the grate; tabloids don't get a fire going like they used to. On top of the lightly screwed-up balls of newspaper, I put a layer of eucalyptus bark; then a layer of tinder-dry pine branches saved from the Christmas tree; a layer of hardwood sticks from Beryl Jarvis's dressing-table; a layer of household coal; and on top of this lot I balance two or three of Mr Pine's wonder- fully straight-grained logs. If I've been out for a walk on the beach already, I might put on a piece of seaweed, or a bit of old fishing-net, or a herring-gull feather, just to give the whole thing a nautical flavour. After lunch, when the ladies have tottered back to their respective armchairs for their afternoon nap, I light it.
When Violet Joint was alive, she man- aged to keep her eyes open just long enough to ensure that I lit the fire at the front of the grate, rather than shoving my lighted match in at random. Vi had very strong opinions on the right and the wrong way to lay and light a fire. One thing she told me that I didn't know — and she told me this on one of those very rare days when I had to apply a second match — was that if a fire burns unevenly to begin with, the house is in for a run of bad luck. Actu- ally, there could be something in this super- stition because not long afterwards I was laying about Vi's bedroom furniture with the thick side of my axe. Hers was flimsy glued-together post-war utility stuff, mostly. Once the flames have taken hold I stand a big metal fire-guard in front of the fire to prevent ladies from falling in on their way to and from the lavatory. Head-shaped dents in the fire-guard testify to the abso- lute necessity of this. The profoundest dent was made by the head of a gentleman, the only gentleman we ever had, a big, forget- ful ex-naval officer who'd served at the Battle of Jutland. Early one winter's after- noon about five years ago, Commander wished us all goodnight, tripped over the coal scuttle and fell headlong into the fire- place, taking the clock with him as he went. Fortunately, Commander was always falling over and had taught himself to bounce. When he finally died, from natural causes, Commander's third and last wife took everything away except his pocket diaries. There were about 50 of them. Close examination of the minuscule writing revealed a catalogue of meals eaten, rounds of golf played, and of every passing shower between the years 1919 and 1971. 1 tried supplementing my lighting-sticks with them, but they gave off too much smoke.
And then Doreen Hume severely dam- aged the guard by trying to climb over it. Doreen was very confused, and sometimes mistook the fireplace for the door. When she finally died, the lighting-sticks I got from her old oak bureau lasted us nearly the whole winter.
I'm a bit worried at the moment. My stockpile of lighting-sticks is a little low and the ladies are all looking so well. Perhaps one or two of them might let me have a chair or two on account.
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