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18 Oct 2016

In Happy Memory of Coal




One of the things that I most looked forward to as a young child was the arrival of a man at the door: the milkman, the postman, the bin man, the gas man, the electric man and - my favourite man of all - the coal man, carrying his great, heavy black sacks of fuel.

My mother - who I don't think ever quite trusted any of these men - always gave me the job of supervising the delivery. I would count in every bag as it was emptied with a lovely crashing noise around the back of the house, piling up into a magical mountain of fossilized carbon that sparkled with all the dark glamour of the underworld and provided a wonderful play area to climb upon.  

It was a sad day when, finally, my parents succumbed to the lure of modern convenience and decided they'd had enough of going out into the cold and shoveling coal into a scuttle and raking over the ashes each morning, installing an ugly new gas fire which warmed the house, but not the heart.

I say my parents, but I really just mean my mother, for I believe my father loved (and subsequently missed) the open fireplace as much as I did. Certainly he loved to stand before it, warming his legs, as he would say, and loved also to poke at the red hot coals, as if attempting to divine the elemental mystery of fire.    

1 comment:

  1. I also miss the proper coal fires, mainly for two reasons. Firstly the ventilation in the house was much better with coal than gas, gas has the knack of making your throat dry. Secondly, you could have the best toast in the world and before that on the old ranges it was the best bread and butter pudding and rice pudding that has ever been made! I have just thought of another reason for missing it, I used to get it free as a perk of the job! Ten tons a year!

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