Alex James

Slow life | 29 November 2008

Life begins

issue 29 November 2008

So cold: I tried lighting a fire, but smoke just kept blowing back down the chimney, setting off the fire alarms. It’s a design fault with that fireplace. It happens whenever the wind blows in a certain direction. The architect really messed up there and I cursed him, the idiot, as I rubbed the heat on my hands into my trousers, having run outside several times, a sparking, smoking log in each hand. The wind was really howling and it was raining sideways. The fat logs continued to be on fire, lying on the grass, drinking the breeze, sending sparking, glowing embers flying around the back garden.

Well, I suppose I just didn’t know much about fireplaces when we built that one. That fire is one of those things I’m always about to sort out, I made some headway with it last week, in fact, but then there are always so many things that need fixing: endless lists of old stuff breaking and new stuff not working properly.

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