A BIG FIRE (2)

My two brothers-in-law were highly efficient in bashing down the kitchen yesterday while I was at work. However, the result (apart from the empty internal hole) was a large pile of wood in the yard. What to do?

One of the advantages of living in the country is that you can do things not allowed for townspeople. So instead of loading the wood onto a trailer and taking it to the dump (six or seven times), I simply made a big pile in the middle of our field and burnt it. It was perfect burning weather; still and dry.

It also gave me the opportunity to get rid of the pile of garden rubbish, which I had tried to burn 18 months ago (and which has since got even larger). Half of it went today, and without using any petrol, the other half will go tomorrow, when it is also expected to be dry. All in all, a good start to my half-term holiday.

Walter Blotscher