Photographs from the Day of the Bonfire

Back before Christmas we had a House Cleaning party, to air and de-cobweb, which turned into a sort of House Warming when we lit a fire with some of the older carpets...

More at flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/51751031@N00/

Yay! The Firebasket is ready to collect from the Blacksmith!

Next challenge - getting it up the hill (I feel the need for a lift in a
landrover...)

I am sitting opposite the noisiest father and son team in the South East.

They have taken the seats opposite me in Cafe Nero, and are dedicated slurpers,
cooling their tea and chocolate by mixing it with air in every mouthful, then
smacking their lips.

I suspect they are enjoying their drinks a lot more than I am.

Here is some advice.
If you are going to take a lump hammer, on impulse, to the broken iron bars of the old grate in your remote cottage, in preparation for a brand new firebasket - PUT YOUR BOOTS ON FIRST.

I was in socks because the floor was only half laid, and I did want to tread good Northumbrian muck all over it. And the old grate was so tempting. The hammer and cold chisel were off to one side. The bars had to come out before the new went in....

Ouch.

Cue idiot woman hopping on afore mentioned half-laid floor, cursing the universe and her own stupidity.

Actually I had the luck of the truly idiotic- no permanent damage, no one to see the spectacle, and no pain by the time I needed to pull the wellies back down, and slide down the hillside for tea and toast with the Young-Parents.

The upside is that I was able to measure the void and draw up plans for a new firebasket - the old one was burnt down to about half it's original size, and didn't hold much more than a single log at the time - the new one will be deeper, hold several logs at a time, and have a stable surface for kettles, dutch oven, bake stone etc.

Monday morning saw me and Mr Young-Parent at the blacksmiths on the Industrial
Estate at Hexham, handing over the plans. (We had to shoo some rather dense ducks out of the road first).

There was much sucking of teeth, and holding of my sketches to the light, and scrabbling around for bits of square section steel - but the upshot is that next week I pick up a new firebasket for the grand sum of £40.

Fingers crossed that my measuring-fu is stronger than my lump hammer-fu.