Come on baby light my fire
Grandad January 8th, 2008
I have done it again.
We have a very nice central heating yoke in the kitchen. It looks exactly like an old log burning stove. Except that it burns kerosene.
It has to be lit manually, and that is very simple.
All you have to do is open one of the regulators [there are two burners] and wait for a minute or two until enough kerosene has trickled in. Then you set fire to it, and it makes a nice mellow blue flame.
We left one burner on all night, to stop the icicles forming on the beams in the kitchen. Earlier, I was feeling a little chilly so I thought I’d light the second burner.
I went over, opened the regulator, made myself a cup of tea while the oil trickled in and you can guess the rest……
I just noticed a rather strong smell of kerosene. Sh*t. I forgot to light it again. I went over, and sure enough, there is a quarter inch of kerosene just about at boiling point at the bottom of the burner.
In the early days, I used to follow instructions. These said that if a burner filled with neat kerosene, you have to switch the whole thing off, let it cool down, and then ladle out the kerosene. This is an extremely difficult and very messy job.
So now what I do is simple. I light it.
It goes off with a lovely whoomph! Then when I close the fire door, the draught takes hold. I get a yellow flame that roars up the chimney like a blowtorch. It makes a peculiar noise, like a banshee giving birth, and looks like an F14 on full afterburner.
I just hope it’s scaring the sh*t out of the builders next door.
They’re annoying me again.
Subscribe to audio
