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An old post which seemed to bypass most of my present followers:

It’s dark now that the clocks are about to be changed and in the evening

all one can think about is activating the wood burner and settling in with

the hope that something interesting will be on the television.  I go out

scavenging for wood- from skips, with permission, -or just appropriating

blown down twigs and slender branches.  After a walk I look like a

babuschka trundling home in a Chekhov landscape, or Babuschka Baba

Yaga, to be more precise.

When I was little I was unfamiliar with the concept of a  wood burner, but

very au fait with the actuality of a coal fire.  Here is a poem that I wrote

about:

The Coal Man

 

Once a week the coal man called with his sack

of bulging hessian, a shouldered sheep

wrapped round his sooty neck, his black back

bent double.  He left a glistening heap

in bunkers, bawled on like a hoarse banshee.

Peeping from behind the curtain, my eye

would meet his own and in childish fancy,

its balefulness predestined that I’d die,

cursed by the red-lipped  golliwog’s* fixed stare.

His load was the object of poker, tongs,

its coke-corrupted, crackling dross the flare

of a chimney fire; feeling which belongs

with hearth mythology, childhood’s subtle

fears of elemental forces.  The guard

was prohibition’s symbol; the scuttle

source of adult power to ignite flames barred

to the uninitiated.  Daybreak

began with vestal rituals, the sweeping

of ash, its careful wrapping.  I would wake

to a smoky haze, the first blue leaping

through yesterday’s newspapers.  A stray spark

had to be stamped before it took its hold:

individuality’s searing mark,

product of the dark trolls, Vulcanesque gold.

God took His own delivery; the sky

rumbled as His cellar filled with tinder

and this child, captivated by a lie,

trembled.  The Coal Man might note smut, cinder

in grimy heart of smallest sinner-a

companion set no talisman or charm

against His briquettes’ out-poured brouhaha,

or sudden brilliancy which caused alarm.

The Grimy Giant’s voice was the thunderclap

Which sent one to the haven of a lap.

 

* no longer PC, but in the Fifties many a child had

a golliwog, so this toy, held in affection, was of its time

and that was its name, whether one approves of it, or not

in present times.

 

( PS Beware of burning wood unless it is super-dry oak

which has been seasoned for two years and has been

properly stored.  I was exposed to bituminous, evil-smelling

smoke from others’ chimneys and my lung function in

my lower airways deteriorated to 56% and steroids did not

really help. Had to move house in the end.  Wood smoke

particulate is highly toxic.)

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