Chop chop

I recently ticked off something that’s been on my to-do list for 25 years, and installed a couple of wood-burning stoves. The house had two empty spaces (a little-used fireplace and a never-used 19th century clome oven) while outside I am lucky enough to have a patch of woodland, and scores of hedgerow trees, all of which needed attention from the tree surgeon.

So I now have a couple of fields full of lopped branches, which I am slowly turning into logs for the stoves. This is where my plan is starting to come unstuck.

First of all, it is currently impossible to go into the fields without sinking knee-deep in mud. Secondly, I have yet to acquire some of the paraphernalia needed for a truly organised log-producing operation, such as a chainsaw, saw-bench and pneumatic log-splitter. This means that most days I work myself into a breathless sweat using a hand-held bow saw and an axe. And thirdly, the branches are really still too “green” to burn cleanly, and so I have to scrub soot from the glass front-window of the stoves to properly enjoy the fruits of my labour.

I could add the expected moan about having to clean out the ash every day, and lay a base of newspaper and kindling, and then poke and puff at the thing for 15 minutes before I can be confident that all is working as it should.  I mention all of this because I it reminds me of a much-loved aunt whose life, generations ago, was dominated by her solid-fuel cooker. The centrepiece of her kitchen was a 1940s Rayburn, which in the immediate post-war years was as trendy and modern as austerity Britain was allowed to be.

It not only heated her whole cottage, it also provided hot water to the kitchen tap. The cottage didn’t actually have a bathroom, but hot water from a tap was nevertheless a revolutionary development. Every mealtime was regulated by the temperature of the Rayburn. Electricity came from a Lister diesel generator – but only when it was really needed, for things like lighting and the wireless (there was no television.)

The importance of the Rayburn can therefore not be over-stated. It was, quite simply, never allowed to go out. My uncle and cousins seemed to spend every waking moment sawing and chopping logs, using much the same equipment as I do.

By the 1960s, the Rayburn was losing its appeal. The village now had electricity and the neighbours had an electric cooker. Auntie wanted an electric cooker, and the Rayburn went.
Chatting to the log-burning engineers who installed my stoves, I found that demand, in 2015, had never been stronger. Particularly, it would seem, among second-home owners who – allegedly – have little interest in actually lighting the things. Plenty of pine cones for decoration, but very little sawing and chopping, and no need for matches.

My stoves are very effective and do warm the house. For a whole host of reasons, I am now importing less oil from Saudi Arabia. I stare into the flames and think to myself: nostalgia just isn’t what it used to be.

PS Last week’s piece about the best bait to use in mouse-traps triggered a surprising response, so many thanks to readers who suggested a wide variety of foodstuffs. Particular thanks to Mr PK of Bodmin, who catches mice with no bait at all, simply by cunning deployment of his mousetrap in a particular place.