Out for a run

Not me, obviously.

Looking out over Castlerock Beach.  Hasselblad, HP5+ on Ilford MG Classic Fibre paper.

The ship is heading to Derry by the look of it - probably with timber or maybe coal.  A fair few of us Irish still have coal fires - mostly using smokeless coal behind glass-fronted stoves nowadays but you still see older houses with open fires in use during the Winter.  And Autumn and Spring.  Sometimes even late summer - you know, those late August evenings when it can get a bit damp and chilly.  

It was the mid 70s before my parents had central heating installed - before that we relied on convector heaters to warm our bedrooms in the morning and a coal fire in the living room.  The fire took on something of a ritual - cleaning it, setting it, lighting it and fuelling it.  Fuel was proper big old lumps of coal and then what we called 'slack' was used to top the fire (slack being smaller, gravel-sized bits of combustible coal-like material).  Often the slack would get water poured on it to dampen the whole fire down, form a crust and make the coal last a bit longer.  There was a 'damper' just above the fire which could be manually pulled out or in to increase or decrease the draw/draught but when that didn't do the trick a sheet of newspaper would be held over the front of the fire.  This was, not surprisingly, just as dangerous as it sounds - if you weren't careful the newspaper caught fire and would have to be rather quickly removed and the fire extinguished.  At times there would be a tremendous drown-draught and an burst of soot and smoke would come down the chimney into the room.  It was a dirty old business, keeping an open fire going.  The cast iron stoves we have now are better in terms of fuel efficiency and little or no smoke or soot comes into the room but they still require regular cleaning.  To be honest we could easily not bother with them at all and rely on our oil-fired central heating but old habits die hard and having a proper fire in the room gives it a real homely feel, especially at this time of year what with the long dark nights and what have you.  We don't set them every night of the week - mostly just weekends and holiday times.  Plus we give them up on the 1st of May (or thereabouts) each year...and try to hold off until the 1st October (or thereabouts) until they get lit again.  That's the theory, anyway.