Remember getting up and lighting the fire

[sezlez 10]

Who remembers getting up and lighting the fire on a cold winters morning.

First clear the ashes and be careful taking them outside if it was windy or you got a face full.

Screw up the day befores Star into tight balls (broadsheet then) and save a double page to help draw the fire.

Place the paper in the grate and lay the sticks (we always had a boxfull ready) over the paper.

Place the coal on top, only small lumps first till it got going then larger ones.

Pull out the damper (always covered in soot) to help draw the flames and light the paper.

Then the tricky bit came, we used to stretch the double sheet across the front of the fire place sometimes aided with the coal shovel propped in front leaving just a small gap at the bottom to allow the air to be sucked in which fanned the flames.

Many a time has the draw of air been so great that the paper was sucked into the flames igniting it and would have to be quickly snatched back and screwed up before the lot went up.

 

Once the coal had been lovingly coaxed to flame it was time to wash off as your hands would be as black as the chimney breast.

 

Next was to get the kettle on and sit with a hot cup of tea admiring the flames dancing and the sticks crackling and that lovely glow of warmth that hit you in the face because you were sitting about 6 inches from it.

 

MAGIC !!!!

[lindilu 10]

did you ever do toast on an open fire. no taste to beat it

[melthebell 863]

still do "light the fire" round here

just seems to be us thats never had a real fire (just storage heaters )

[Greybeard 10]

Funny how the world goes around. I was first allowed to light the fire when I was 9 years old. and here I am 60 years later still doing it !

 

I use a firelighter and sticks these days, and with a good flue don't have to 'draw' the fire to get it going. We're ouside the smoke-free zone so I can still use ordinary housecoal and we burn a lot of logs too.

[Basalt 10]

This brings back memories. Ours was a coke fire and you lit a gas jet under the coke to get it going. We used paper to draw ours, if you forgot you had a burnt hole in the middle.

 

We could only light ours at tea time, it cost too much in coke to burn it all day. However who remembers the magic of Christmas morning as a child when you had opened your pressies and you went downstairs to find the fire blazing.

[Allen 38]

Sunday mornings as a child was spent making "paper sticks" for lighting mi Granma's fire. We rolled the newspaper sheet diaganolly (it was longer that way) and then platted it into what we called a paper stick. These went under the coal for lighting it.

We didn't have a real fire at home, but I will always remember mi Grams and that fire. And the smell (and taste) of her home made bread in the Oven Range she had.

And that rocking chair by the fire.....and listening to the wireless.

[Jabberwocky 46]

I used to love to walk to school in the mornings and smell the smoke from all the chimneys.

Every now and again Ill be reminded of it because a couple of houses here still have coal fires.

 

Making toast too in the mornings, theres nothing quite like a big thick slice of bread thats been toasted on a real fire.

[Joto 11]

Lovely memories, own up any of you males whose wee'd on an open fire caught my sons doing it when they were lads

[Titian 10]

I'm mid 30's and when I was younger we had a large old house with no central heating. Each morning my dad would get up and start a fire so that we would be warmed. Ahhhhh.

 

I do remember crying every bath night in winter though (we only bathed on Sundays as it was soooo cold). Our bathroom was freezing and we used to run downstairs in towels to get into our jammies that were waiting by the fire, then watch the muppets on tv.

 

I also remember the transition from bedsheets to the new fangled duvets. That was exciting!

[hazel 11]

It was the smell of the charred newspaper that was so evocative Joto

Don't think I have smelled it since.

We had a yorkshire range and my Dad used to put the large shovel propped at the side of the oven with the newspaper over the top so it was not sucked in immediately, the paper used to char first and then set on fire,

We toasted with a long handled toaster and warmed our feet on the pegged rug in which you could see bits of the clothes you had worn.

Around the rug was linolium, no fitted carpets very cold to the feet.

In one corner was the wieless very large and worked by an accumalater which was like a car battery.

The nine o'clock news was listened to very carefully, no one was allowed to make a sound.

I realised when I was older why. It was because the news was about the war and how we were hopfully winning.

 

hazel

[40summat 10]

When i moved up to Scotland my cottage was heated by an open fire, when any visitors came to stay they would always want to tend the fire.

The novelty had long since worn off for me but my guests would feed and tend the fire as if our lives depended on it, even arguing over whether it needed a poke or not.

 

On one visit i had to let them have their own day to tend the fire and they'd be the 'keeper of the fire' for the day, it was one less chore for me, but keeper of the vacuum didn't work in the same way.

 

I had so much less rubbish to put in the bin, and collecting bits of driftwood from the beach was a healthy pastime, rewarded by some amazing coloured flames, especially if you had a piece with a copper nail or screw in it.

One of my friends said it was a sad sight to see a fire going out, watching the embers die. not sure if she was just feeling the romance of the occasion or was a secret arsonist.

[Jabberwocky 46]

Lovely memories, own up any of you males whose wee'd on an open fire caught my sons doing it when they were lads

 

I have to admit that I did that.

 

The smell is horrible too.