No smoke

I can’t remember if  ‘taking down the Christmas tree’ was on my list of New Year’s resolutions, but if not then maybe it should have been, because it is absolutely the only resolution with which I have had any success at all today.

Neither do I think that I am being entirely accurate in describing even that as a success.

Once Mark had buzzed off in search of cattle grids I set about taking the decorations down. I wash all of these and pack them neatly ready for next year, it is a present for me then I find them again. I start at the top of the tree and work my way down, cutting the branches off and burning them on the stove as I go.

This arrangement usually works jolly well, except I realised after about the third branch that I had left the bottom vent of the stove open.

In order to understand the next events you need to know that we have a tall thin house, and the fire is in the very bottom of it. The chimney goes up through four floors and hence draws brilliantly, so much so that our stove is an extra-singing-and-dancing sort, where you can shut it down so tightly that it gets only the merest whisper of air or none at all. The flue goes up the chimney and is sealed tight at the bottom otherwise you get the most massive draft as all warm air is vigorously sucked up the chimney.

At this point the fire wasn’t sealed tightly and was burning merrily. I shut it down and went to look at the chimney from the outside, which was smoking vigorously. As I watched it, it slowed down to normal pace again, because of closing the vents, so I stopped worrying about it and went back indoors.

The doorbell rang and it was a woman coming to tell me that there had been a lot of smoke coming out of the chimney. We looked at it and she agreed that it wasn’t much smoke any more, except that it turned out that she had already phoned the fire brigade on her mobile phone.

The fire brigade turned up.

I told them that the chimney was fine, and indeed there was no smoke at all any more.

They said that since there had been a report they had got to investigate and were coming in whether I liked it or not.

They came in and instantly spotted the fire in the stove.

They said that this would have to be dealt with, because it was The Rules that if they found a fire in a house where they were then they had to put it out.

They opened the stove up fully. All the doors and vents.

They had also left all the outside doors open, upstairs and down. I do this if I want to create a cleansing draught through the house.

It created a splendid draught.

Flames shot up the chimney from the previously just-smouldering Christmas tree. The fire brigade panicked and rushed about to find a bucket into which they could shovel the fire.

The chimney caught fire.

I rang Mark who came dashing home and found the fire brigade trying to poke a hose up the chimney on their special chimney rods. Mark told them that they didn’t have enough rods and that they wouldn’t be able to get them up the chimney anyway because of the kink in the middle.

They told him that they were professionals and that they would manage nicely.

They broke two rods and then ran out anyway. They rang for another fire engine to come, which would have more chimney rods. Then they sat down and waited, fire roaring away up the open chimney.

Mark  got cross with them and soaked an old pillow and shoved it up the chimney. The firemen outside the front door came dashing in to tell us that whatever had happened the smoke had all stopped. The indoor firemen explained that it had been Mark so the outside firemen said that this didn’t count and that as far as they were concerned the chimney was still on fire.

By the time some more rods turned up there was no more smoke and no evidence of any fire anywhere. The fire brigade poked more rods up the chimney anyway, except they couldn’t because of the chimney’s eccentric kink, so in the end Mark did it for them. Then they squirted water up which came gushing back down.

Some water turned into steam and floated out of the top of the chimney.

The fire brigade said that if the walls inside the chimney were hot enough to steam then they couldn’t go away, but had to keep going until the steam stopped.

Mark said that they would be lucky if it stopped this week, because of the chimney being hot anyway and pointed out that outside it was very cold indeed, and that there was also steam coming from the vent pipe of the loo, in roughly similar quantities.

The fire brigade said that this didn’t matter and that they needed to be sure that the fire was out. They would send a man on the roof to investigate.

Mark said that he couldn’t investigate even on the roof, because the chimney stack is chest height and there is a four foot chimney pot on top of that. Mark knows this because he put it there. The fire brigade said they would do it anyway.

We sat in the living room with the downstairs fireman and listened to them talking on the radio. The fireman on the roof explained that he couldn’t see down the chimney because it was too tall. The fireman on the ground told him to smash the chimney pot off and that they would pretend that it had broken in the fire. The downstairs fireman went dashing up to tell the rest of the fire brigade that we had heard them, so they decided to knock a hole in the chimney stack instead.

A fireman knocked a hole in the chimney stack big enough to stick his head in, stuck his head in and said that he couldn’t see a fire or any smoke or anything.

The fireman outside said that there must be one somewhere, so would he please knock a hole in the roof to see if it was there. They knocked a hole in the roof but still couldn’t find a fire.

The fireman on the ground said that maybe the ridgepole was on fire where it sticks into the chimney. Mark said that it couldn’t be, because it is about six inches back from the flue and filled in at the end with cement so it doesn’t actually stick into the chimney. He knows this because he did it.

The fireman on the roof reached in through the enormous hole they had made and bashed all the cement off the ridge pole, which wasn’t on fire.

They sent for a special ladder unit from Barrow to see down the chimney. This took an hour to arrive.

The downstairs fireman had a cup of tea and told us about his children.

The ladder unit arrived and the firemen on the top peered down the chimney and said that they couldn’t see a fire. They squirted some more water down the chimney anyway, just in case.

They told us that we now had an unsafe chimney stack and on no account should we light the fire because there was now a bare wooden ridgepole sticking into it. They added that they were sorry about the hole in the roof and they had left a bit of plastic over it, which they would like back tomorrow, please.

They rolled up their hoses then, and all three fire engines and both superintendent’s cars drove away. The police unblocked the road.

When they had gone Mark went upstairs and sawed through the ridgepole and left the saw stuck in it so that there would be a metal plate between the roof and the bit of wood in the chimney. After that he lit the fire and burned the rest of the Christmas tree. They have had all of the doors open all afternoon and the house is cold.

They were here for five hours.

I am so glad we have got the support of our heroic emergency services.

Mark says he will fix everything tomorrow.