Fuel supply

I left Mark busily sawing up logs and retreated to the taxi rank this morning. He has been doing something to the stove to make it shut down more efficiently, so we had to let the fire go out. I never really like doing this, the fireplace feels like a dark abyss in the middle of the house when I do, as if scary things might come down the chimney, but something has been letting too much air into it and one of these days it is going to get too hot and I am going to accidentally set the house on fire again. I have been a bit worried about this for a while, on and off, so it is a huge relief to have an on-site husband to deal with it for me. It is a while since we have had to have firemen, and they ate two cake tins full of homemade biscuits and the dog was so scared he pooed on the landing, so it is not an experience I want to repeat in a hurry.

It is always brilliant to have a full stack of logs. Mark has built some shelters outside and slowly fills them up during the summer, so that by the time the first frosts start to creep in we have got a log pile which is as long as the garden and taller than me. It looks really nice when Mark has done it, he stacks it beautifully with logs in alternating directions, when I do it it looks a bit like a heap. He takes mine down and re-stacks them sometimes if they are outstandingly scruffy, he thinks I don’t know, but I do. It is gold-coloured and sharp smelling to start off with and slowly darkens as the months go past. You have to leave wood to season for a year before you can use it or it is damp and smoky and cold and green, and doesn’t burn bright and hot the way you need it to. There is no feeling as pleasing as a long stack of dry logs at the end of October, it is heartening for the winter ahead and as you walk past them you can smell the lovely clean smell of fresh-split wood. However it is February, so there are only a very few left now. I have used almost all of the ones in the garden so Mark has gone off up to the farm where we stored some big tree-trunks last year, to cut them to a usable size and split them up. I am actually perfectly competent with a chainsaw apart from the little accident with the garden chair last year, but mostly we both think it is a better idea if Mark does it.

We don’t have any other heating, the log burner in the living room has a big boiler for the central heating in the back and it keeps the house really warm, which it has to because I am a complete weed about cold. I dry all our washing on a rack over the top of it, and it heats up the water, and I keep a kettle on the top of it so that when I want a cup of coffee I can just move it over to the gas cooker and it boils in a jiffy. Somebody gave us a huge stack of cut floorboards last year, they were absolutely dust dry and were perfect for chucking on the fire when you wanted a bath. We have got gas to the house, but I don’t like using it for heating, it makes the air feel different. I know this is silly but it is true, so we haven’t ever used it. We hadn’t actually thought about using coal as well, until one of our neighbours helpfully suggested it this morning, and then we did think about it for a few minutes but then remembered that it doesn’t look or smell nice, and the ash is gritty and horrible, not nice powdery potash that you can put on your garden or in the bottom of the guinea pig cage, and Mark said that in the end it burns the grate out as well, so we thought after all that we wouldn’t bother, and would carry on filling the log pile as planned.

By the time I got home he had mended the fire and put new rope round the doors, so it is nicely sealed and smouldering beautifully: and he found that one of the vents was sticking open, which he has bashed back into place and it seems to have solved the problem. He has started bringing more logs back from the farm, not very many yet, but we have got lots at the farm now to bring over, and he is going to haul them over tomorrow, so the log pile is growing steadily. It isn’t at all the same as having money, but it feels wealthy anyway. It is a lovely complacent feeling to have a garden full of warmth, tangible riches. Unfortunately I don’t think the hairdresser will accept them as payment.