Burn

From the warmth of the duvet I heard Neil open the logburner (the door squeals like a toddler who’s been refused a cookie). Strange, I thought, he doesn’t usually do that until I get up and moan about the cold. A few minutes later he appeared in the bedroom, cup of tea in hand.

‘I re-lit my fire!’ he sang.

I groaned. 7.30am is far too early to cope with his puns. But it galvanised me into action to get out of bed. Turns out when he opened the door to throw on a used tissue he’d noticed a spark and a lump of the last log we chucked on before heading to bed the night before lurking in the far corner. Not surprising given it was the size of the average log that trundles down the highways on the back of an articulated lorry.

Getting up in the cold is the drawback to being here. No matter how cosy a logburner is once it’s chewing merrily through trees, I have yet to encounter one that will turn itself on an hour or so before you get out of bed. So we have to wrap on the layers and shiver until it gets going and the heat permeates through the room. It’s been a struggle to keep it active the last few days, the recent load of logs we had delivered being very hard and heavy, smouldering like a romantic lead rather than kicking into flames like an action hero.

Later this morning, having neglected it whilst I focused on an online jigsaw, I was trying to coax it back to life by yelling at it. ‘Burn, you bastard, burn!’

‘I think the line is Burn, Baby, Burn!’ Neil said, sniggering at his own joke.

Clearly today is Punday. Really it’s Friday so he’ll soon be on the beer, which means they may get worse. At least I’ll also be on the beer, at which point I’ll giggle along with him rather than rolling my eyes.