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This is the first Christmas of the 51 I have thus experienced that I am spending in my own home. I've always been at my parents' house or my in-laws' house (maybe my grandparents' house) and twice in hotels in exotic locations. But I've never been in a position to leave the Christmas dinner table and go to sleep in my own bed (rather than the one I was leasing off my parents - not paying them in money, but in letting them hang out with me). With all respect to my family, my in-laws and the staff of the two hotels I stayed in, I am very very happy about this. This new house is a great Christmas house and we've made it ready enough (bar some last minute tidying) to host the event. Aside from oven space shortage, but luckily we've easing ourselves in slowly and my parents-in-law are cooking the Christmas dinner. I hope that in future years we will do it all ourselves, but with everything else this is a life-saving pressure vault for us.
And today, thanks to some solid last minute work from
the guys at Arcangel we took delivery of a beautiful handmade grate for our 18th Century fireplace. Suddenly the oldest part of our house is alive again and ready for Christmas. Within minutes of it turning up - delivered by a man with a musketeer moustache (his excellent choice of face wear) and another man with blue hair (because he's been playing King Neptune, in the local panto - I saw him and he was a very accomplished singer) - I had lit up a smallish fire (the fireplace is properly big and old because that's how they used to make them back in 1702). I thought it might go out as I was just finding my way with the logs and the coal, but it lit beautifully. I sat in front of it and thought to myself, this is where I am going to sit until I die. I hope that's some way away and that we're not overcome with fire or carbon monoxide, but I am looking forward to warming myself in front of this fire until I no longer need to be warmed. I was glad now (though not initially) that the previous occupants had not left their fire grate behind. It seemed an odd thing to take as it was such a specific fit for this fireplace and, you know, seems a bit of a prickish thing to do in any case, but I assumed that maybe they'd spent a lot of money on it, or coincidentally and another big fireplace at their new house. As it turned out they'd sold it to the next door neighbours, who needed a grate for their fire. It hadn't fitted their fireplace though, so they were going to put it on eBay. I found this out just after we'd commissioned our own one. But now I am glad we have one that is ours. And perhaps I am already attached enough to it (and have spent enough on it) to consider taking it with me when I leave this house.
But that will probably be in a box and it would seem rude to my family to insist on being cremated with my fireplace. Even if, presumably, they'd be able to reclaim it afterwards.
Anyway, I am alive for now and it was a lovely Christmasy feeling to finally be able to sit in our little snug room and warm ourselves in front of a fireplace that has had fires burning in it for over 300 years. And maybe, who knows?, another 300.
I tried to imagine those first people who had sat by that fire (and I presume cooked on it), but I couldn't get a vivid image, but the people of 2332 probably won't be able to imagine what kind of idiot would have been sitting in front of that fire in the ancient and forgotten festival of Christ mass back in 2017 either. Hopefully they can check out this blog and see this picture. They'll assume we had no feet.
And we're settling into village life. We went to a party at our neighbours and drank mulled cider and sang carols and the Fairytale of New York with a cross section of the people who like boozing in our village. We fitted in. I think we have lucked out here. It's a sociable village full of mildly eccentrics, who are welcoming and fun. No one would know this place was here unless they had to come here. And yet we can get into the city pretty easily if we want a break from the peace and the constant boozing.
But why would you? When you have a proper fire to sit in front of until you die.
