Where There's Smoke, There's A Fire

I continue to pay the exorbitant annual fee for a chimney sweep and throw logs onto the fire as casually as a billionaire refuelling his yacht.

- Adam Edwards

There is a non-negotiable prerequisite for anyone buying, owning or living in a rural house in our hills – a real fire. I do not mean a humble grate of coals in front of which one has a tin bath, cooks a piece of pork or warms a shivering body. I am talking about a glorious flame-licking blaze that is the anarchic edge to every Farrow and Ball sitting room; the log fire that is the kernel of every Cotswold home; the fire that is lit just before the Sunday lunch gin and tonic, that flickers during Blue Planet 11 and is still glowing softly when the lights are dimmed after the late evening news.

That fire is of course folie de grandeur – a ludicrous indulgence in the 21st century that is little more than a confidence trick in which we all participate.

I came to this conclusion after reading a full-page review of a new book Playing With Fireby Paul Heiney. “A life without a fire in it would be no life for me,” writes the author. He adds: “The lighting of it remains a joy, a near religious act that makes a cold and chilly house into a warm and cosy one by the mere kindling of a flame.” His words are mostly nonsense and secretly I have always known it.