Seeing thick smoke off in the distance often has me wondering if it is my house being engulfed by flames.
In this instance I was hundreds of miles away from home so I could stand and watch with a certain amount of horror knowing I had no reason to revert to panic as I brushed the imaginary lady bird from my hand while reciting these lines from my nursery,
“Lady bird lady bird fly away home
your house is on fire
Your children are gone.”
I remember a fire across the road in London once when I was a child. It was a narrow street and we could feel the heat from the flames as they roared into the sky. The house was gutted but my parents told me it had been empty.
I recall set fires in fields in England to burn the stubble, controlled as they were they still ran fast engulfing everything in their path.
My grandmother always had a fire in the lounge which my brother was mesmerised by. We had fire guards so that he couldn’t get too close but if that guard ever came down, when the fire was being fed new wood for instance, he was there in a flash with a stick or a piece of paper to hold while it burned.
Bonfires are common at this time of year in England, a place to burn leaves and dead wood seasoning the air with a smoky flavour.
I had an inglenook fireplace that would take a whole bough. The fire could be coaxed to stay with us for a whole weekend banking it up for the night, heating the baker’s ovens in the walls, providing embers for potatoes and chestnuts and a warm place for the dogs to doze.
My youngest son, from an early age, took on the responsibility of our living room fire. During the winter months we would sit around the fireplace for school gently reciting poetry and reading before growing drowsy with the warmth and drifting off as the flames faded.
One day I was on the phone to a friend, my son with me in the kitchen. It was evening time and a candle was burning nearby. With a mother’s premonition I turned around to find him wadding up serviettes and lining them on the edge of the butcher’s block to light. Blazing pyres created a fiery display loaded with danger he didn’t see.
I hung up the phone to give him my full attention and together we watched the fire do its work and the paper rapidly reduced to ashes.
In my sons’ new flat they have a fireplace.
The cave-man yearning lives on in all of us!
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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