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Drawing the Fire
Richard Bell’s Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, Saturday, 14th November 2009
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OUR GAS FIRE doesn’t just have a retro look, it is retro; it’s a Cannon gas fire which had already been installed for a number of years when we bought the house 26 years ago. It gets through its annual service fine each year although eventually it’s going to be impossible to get spare parts like the ceramic radiants. I like it because it is what it is; to me this looks exactly as a gas fire should. There is a fashion for making gas fires look, often very convincingly, like open log fires.
‘Drawing the fire’ was the expression used for getting a strong draught going in the fireplace when you were lighting a coal fire. You held a newspaper in front of the fire and the draught roared up the chimney, fanning the flames as it went.
Drawing the fire, using a broadsheet newspaper.
As we relied on the kitchen fire for hot water, the fire in the kitchen range was
kept alight all day, so as a quicker method of getting the lounge fire going for
the evening, my mum would take a shovel-
My brother and sister and I would attempt cover the food on the table as she went through, as particles of soot would drift down as she passed.
Don’t try this at home!