Dad’s Brush with the Smoky Chimney
These days, many of us only ever think about chimneys at Christmas-time, when Santa comes to visit. However, this story reminds us it wasn’t all fun and games when the coal fire in the lounge was the only source of winter heat – which was true for a lot of people back in the nineteen sixties and seventies.
It was many years ago now, possibly the late sixties or early seventies. Back in the days when people still had coal fires and chimneys, and you had to have a chimney sweep come to your house at least once a year to get all the soot out of the chimney but not, preferably, into the lounge – or whichever room it was you had your fire.
Dad was traditional, even for those times. Mum was not allowed to work outside the home. My sister, almost from the time she could toddle, was expected to help with the housework and cooking. Whereas me and my brother helped with DIY or gardening. Of course, with Mum not bringing in any income, and Dad only on a classroom teacher’s salary, money was always tight. I can still recall waking up to our bedroom window being covered in ice on the inside. Baths were shared and the lounge was the only warm room. We even had a toasting fork: Sunday teatime was toast and dripping, all done in front of the fire.
Then, one Sunday, the fire started smoking and we had to evacuate the lounge. However, Dad decided we could not afford to get a sweep to come and sort it out. I don’t know where he got the brushes from, but suddenly, Mum was rushing round the lounge moving every trinket and picture out of the way, furniture was being covered and paper laid on the carpet. I don’t know what I had been doing – possibly reading, as a kid I was a real bookworm – but I was told to change into old clothes as I was helping Dad clean the chimney. I think my sister and brother had found friends to play with outside …
Dad was already muttering words under his breath as I crept back into the lounge. The sort of words that would earn me a smacked bottom if I dared repeat them. He was shoving the brush as hard as he could up the chimney, but only getting so far. I stayed out of the way. I knew Dad was a fan of Charles Dickens, and I did not want to be forced to climb up there.
‘Get me a torch. Now!’
I scarpered and found Mum in the kitchen. She looked puzzled at my request, but knew not to argue. I went back to the lounge, carrying a bulky torch carefully with both hands.
Dad had ripped down the cloth covering the fireplace. The brush and poles lay scattered over the lounge floor. Soot covered the empty fireplace and the hearth. ‘Give it here,’ he said.
I handed the torch over; glad I wasn’t going to have to peer up into the inky blackness myself. His head and the hand holding the torch disappeared.
‘I can’t see a bloody thing! It can’t be blocked that bad!’ His head re-emerged. It was not quite fully black, but he had soot streaks down his face. I did not dare laugh, or even smile. I just waited.
‘Out of my way.’ I was standing between Dad and the door to the hallway. I flattened myself against the wall as Dad strode past. I stayed where I was, hearing him dial a number. A local number. There was a conversation with Dad trying not to sound angry. Something about the wrong brush and a choke. There was no way Dad was going to pay any more money, but it turned out his brush was too stiff to go past the narrow bit towards the bottom of the chimney just above the fireplace. I crept towards the open door. The man on the other end of the phone line was speaking very loudly, trying to talk over Dad’s interruptions. The basic message was, if Dad didn’t get the chimney properly cleaned, the soot would build up until it caught fire.
Dad slammed the phone back into its rest. He went back to the lounge. Not bothering with any cloths over the fireplace he tried again. He still got nowhere.
‘I’ll give him fire,’ he muttered, ‘William! The matches!’
I rushed to obey. In the hall, I discovered Mum cleaning soot off the telephone. Before I could open my mouth, she said, ‘Kitchen drawer. Other side of the oven.’ She carried on with her extra job.
Of course, it took time for me to work out she meant the ‘other side’ if you were standing at the sink, not if you were sitting at our small kitchen table. At least I found the matches before I had to go back to ask Mum; but Dad was ready to bellow at me as I dashed back to the lounge. ‘Don’t run!’ Mum called.
Dad had cleared the newspaper off half the carpet. He was stuffing it up the chimney. At arm’s length, I handed over the matches. Dad set fire to the paper, but it didn’t burn quickly enough.
‘Get me some of those sheets of newspaper – don’t scrunch them up!’
I handed over three sheets of last Sunday’s broadsheet paper. Dad wanted my help to hold them up to the fireplace, where the draught sucked at them, trying to pull them into the fireplace.
‘You hold that side,’ he said, ‘and don’t let go.’ My hands pressed as hard as they could to keep the paper from disappearing into the fireplace. The paper in the middle began to go brown.
‘Dad,’ I said. He ignored me. He had turned away from me, his head close to the wall, as if he was trying to listen to what was going on inside the chimney.
‘Dad,’ I tried again. The brown patch was spreading.
‘Shut up!’
‘But, Dad, the paper’s burning!’
‘I know that. It’s meant to!’ His head was still turned away.
‘No! The paper we’re holding, Dad.’
‘What?’ he finally tuned to look, ‘Why didn’t you say so?’ A quick grab and the paper, now with a burning hole in its middle was shoved into the fireplace. And, with a ‘whoomph,’ the paper turned to flame and began to disappear upwards.
‘Go outside, and see if there’s smoke coming out the chimney.’ Dad was still looking at the fireplace. I didn’t wait to be told twice. I dived out the front door, and stood by the garden gate looking up at the thick black smoke and red sparks ploughing up out of the chimney into the late afternoon and darkening sky.
‘Looks like you’ve got a chimney fire, there, laddie. Need to call the fire brigade.’
‘It’s all right, Mr Hughes, Dad’s inside. He sent me to look.’
Mr Hughes was our neighbour. Dad reckoned he was ‘an interfering sod,’ but I wasn’t to tell him that. Anyway, on hearing Dad was inside, the old man sniffed and shuffled by me on his way to the corner shop. I went inside to report. According to Dad, the sparks would burn themselves out before they did any harm.
Dad lit three newspaper fires up the chimney that day. He wasn’t happy until I could report white smoke coming out of the chimney. Nobody called the fire brigade, not even when Mum called from upstairs that the chimney breast in the bedroom was ‘getting quite warm.’ We didn’t get the chimney sweep. The fire stopped smoking – by which I mean all the smoke went up the chimney and none came into the lounge – and Dad put the brush and poles away in the back of the garden shed, never to be seen again.