Wednesday 18th February 2026, 4.30pm (day 5,291)
Brrrr! It’s cold outside. Get that fire lit!
First flames
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: fire
Trixie
Friday 28th November 2025, 4.40pm (day 5,209)
Mulling over the choices for today’s photo I said to Clare, “Is this one a bit too pathetic?”, and she replied, “maybe, but it sums her up quite well, it’s Trixie’s role to look neurotic and a bit pathetic”. This is true — except when a strange dog dares to approach her, then she turns very territorial. She hogs the fire, too. But of course we know all these things about her because she’s part of the pack.
Getting the fire going
Monday 25th November 2024, 4.15pm (day 4,841)
It’s gone from ‘cold and crisp’ to ‘chilly and damp’ so there’s still a need to get the fire going. Indeed this task is not just the responsibility, but the active duty, of those who drink in the Railway during the early shift.
Excessive waiter theatrics
Friday 8th November 2024, 6.10pm (day 4,824)
My PhD student of the last five years, Sara, passed her viva voce examination today — with only minor corrections, a very good result (for a good thesis, I honestly did think) — and so took me out to dinner at a Turkish restaurant in Manchester. The place’s waiters definitely had an overblown sense of theatrics. Salman, Sara’s son, looks somewhat apprehensively at one of them striding towards us with the kind of flamethrower that, if carried outside, would probably see him arrested for branding an offensive weapon. All this just to put a second or two of extra charring on the spicy meatballs. Food was good, though.
Hugo portrait
Tuesday 13th February 2024, 5.20pm (day 4,555)
Hugo’s third appearance on here, and all within the last twelve months. As Clare has just said to me, he is an ‘ugly little thing’, but still, endearing. Definitely one of the pub pack, anyway.
This winter’s fire
Thursday 9th November 2023, 5.20pm (day 4,459)
The fire in the pub has been lit some two or three weeks earlier than last year. This is a good thing.
Rebuilding (study with green)
Tuesday 18th April 2023, 4.55pm (day 4,254)
Photographically I still mildly regret not looking out of the window at about 3am on the morning of 2nd August last year and seeing this building aflame. This picture is taken from my house so we’d have got a good view: as it was, I did smell the burning and hear a distant alarm but once my subconscious had determined that none of this was coming from our living room, or similar, I went back to sleep and missed the opportunity. Never mind. The rebuilding is under way, as you can see. I like the green on this shot, which is what caught my eye in the first place.
Hugo no-go
Monday 17th April 2023, 10.40pm (day 4,253)
It’s approaching chucking out time on Monday night in the White Swan but Hugo doesn’t want to go anywhere. He’s quite comfy, thank you.
Fire just lit
Tuesday 3rd January 2023, 3.20pm (day 4,149)
Opening time at my local pub is 3pm on Tuesdays, and a nice thing about arriving early is that I get to light the well-laid fire. The lump of lava on the right is a firelighter doing its job: within a few minutes this whole construction will be alight. Sometimes the interest is in the details — such as the paper to the left, what series of numbers goes 3, 10, 50, 70, 100 I wonder?
Aftermath
Tuesday 2nd August 2022, 8.35am (day 3,995)
At about 3.30am in the morning I was awoken by a distant but continuously ringing alarm down in town, and a sense that I could smell smoke, although both these things only reached the semi-concscious level of awareness. Having convinced myself that if there was smoke, it was external to our place, I drifted back to sleep.
In the morning, it became more apparent where all this was coming from: the La Perla restaurant in town burned down overnight. This morning they were still dousing the smouldering timbers, the town cordoned off as I walked past on my way to the station — so this was the nearest I could get for this bit of reportage. No one was hurt, but I imagine there are a number of people who today are extremely upset.
Being 42 