Chestnuts roasting by an open fire …

Chestnuts roasting by an open fire… 

Sorry for the seasonal opening. It’s a bit early for that kind of thing, isn’t it? Nonetheless, it is an enduring yearning, isn’t it? The homeliness of your home, how welcoming it is, is often measured by your fireplace, your hearth. That’s why the writers of seasonal songs often allude to the fireplace.

And this connection between hearth and home has ever been so. Anthropologists looking at the earliest habitations of mankind will always take the presence of fire – or in its most primitive form, a fireplace – as evidence of settlement. Mankind has clearly valued the fire as a friend and ally since the earliest times. These times themselves reach further back. The discovery of the remains of what are being called ‘human-controlled fires’ in South Africa recently dating from a million years ago have added 200,000 years to the timeline of mankind’s use of flame for comfort and, some argue, cookery.

http://genius.com/3122973/Nas-new-world/When-we-made-fire-by-two-sticks-rubbin-together

Clearly our dependency on the ability to control fire has shaped the way we have gone about designing our homes. Even if we flash-forward through the millennia to relatively recent times, we still find that our Stone Age ancestors had the fireplace firmly at the heart of the home. Later Neolithic houses have been unearthed which show that the fireplace was a stone box, designed to contain the fire. It was the Romans, of course, that applied some thought to the clever use of fire and the distribution of heat with their fancy hypocausts delivering hot air up through the floor.

But generally speaking, the open hearth was the main way of heating dwellings of any size for centuries. The smoke would go up and out through the roof (if you were lucky) or, from around the 12^th century and if you were a rich show-off, you might even have had a chimney.

Ah chimneys. They soon turned from being symbols of affluence to symbols of industry. How chimney sweeps came to be known as lucky is a bit of a mystery. Mostsources point back to a story about King George and a horse. And where would Mary Poppins have been without her friend Bert the chimney sweep (even if his mockney accent was a bit unusual!) For the rich, of which Mary’s employers certainly were, the fireplace could be a lavish bit of one-upmanship. Fireplaces themselves became ornamental and desirable. Architect Robert Adam made his name designing the great fireplaces of Georgian Britain. An Adam fireplace was a very desirable showpiece in the well-to-do home of the 18^th century.

http://the-octopus-garden.blogspot.co.uk/2010_08_01_archive.html

These days, you don’t have to engage a great architect to have a feature fireplace. A Bio Fire will bring all the homeliness you need and there are lots of traditional and modern designs you can choose from to suit your home décor. Best of all, you don’t even need a chimney. Sorry Bert! Whether or not you choose to wear the usual seasonal knitwear as you warm yourself and enjoy the flicker of a real flame is entirely up to you ;-)

http://www.ticatoca.com/view.php?product=1217

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Fireplaces – this time it’s personal. About a romance and homeliness of an open fire.

Fireplaces – this time it’s personal 

My partner, bless her, is always going on about the romance and homeliness of an open fire. We don’t have one, you see. What we do have is a gas fire that is fed by a pair of unsightly orange bottles that look like two unexploded 500lb bombs at the side of the house. We live in Northern Ireland. Mains gas is still a novelty and although it is slowly creeping out around the country, the first mains to be laid serviced the wealthy metropolitan areas, not out here in the wilds. Like most people around here, we rely on kerosene to fuel our central heating. When the wind is howling off the North Atlantic (next landfall North is Iceland!), you need it too. 

Her yearning for the open fire is based, I suppose, on memories of her Irish childhood, with the fire glowing peacefully in the grate, dogs lying comatose in front of it, the sweet pungency of turf smoke scenting the air. What she might have forgotten is that someone had to clean that fire out and lug buckets of filthy ash outside to be disposed of. Or that someone had to stagger in with a bucket of turf or coal and keep the blessed thing going. When you could get it going, that is. 

http://uk.pinterest.com/pin/113575221826473715/

Nonetheless, I understand her longing for a real flame, particularly now that we’re properly into winter (for those who don’t know it, the Northern Ireland calendar runs January, February, March, March, March, April, September, October, October, November, November, December …) and those longer nights are a bit nippy. The fireplace has always been the centre of the home, as I have pointed out in previous blogs, and she’s quite right to hanker after that special ambience and cosiness a real fire brings. Maybe she’s a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright, who maintained strong view about the role of the hearth in the family home. 

http://uk.pinterest.com/pin/320037117240093819/

Ever since those earliest hearths, those first controlled flames that brought comfort to our ancestors, upkeep of the fireplace has been an important part of the domestic routine. Not just the gathering of combustible materials but keeping the fireplace clean and free of obstructions to maximise its effects. The benefits of the fireplace were obvious. The downside was the upkeep. As human beings congregated in towns and cities, the combined outpourings of so many domestic and industrial cities became a hazard in itself. But there was no alternative cleaning out the fire and lugging the ash out for disposal. It was a necessary evil. Unless you lived in Downton Abbey, of course, and had the downstairs staff attend to it while you shot some peasants. I mean pheasants. 

Well, joy of joys, there is a way to enjoy all the physical and spiritual comfort a real flame affords without the endless burden of fetching and cleaning. A Bio Fire gives you all the advantages without the mess and bother. Styles to match your living space décor, portable or permanent and no fuss. What could be nicer? 

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Ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties …

Ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties …

http://mcgore.com/interesting-decoration-halloween-design-ideas/black-bats-wall-decoration-with-shaw-laminate-wood-flooring-and-vintage-gel-fireplace-in-modern-living-room-design/

In Britain, we’re somewhere between the full-on Trick or Treat fest that our North American cousins enjoy and the slightly darker European traditions linked to paganism and witchcraft when it comes to marking Hallowe’en. In its purest Christian sense, it’s All Hallows Eve, the night before All Saints Day on 1 November. It is also All Souls Day on 2 November, so for Christian folk at least, it’s a time when the departed are very much to the fore.

Of course, this ‘celebration’ of death has acquired a new and spooky vocabulary in modern times. We have a lot more monsters to choose from if we’re dressing up for a Hallowe’en party. Because whatever its roots as a festival, Hallowe’en is very much about celebration.There is a change in the air, the clocks have gone back and summer (if we had one at all) has departed. Inevitably, Christmas is already on the horizon. There is no escaping it! It is also usually half term, so the kids are extra excited about having some time off. All in all, Hallowe’en is the start of the last quarter of the year and gateway to a season full of excitement, ritual and wonder.

http://www.sheknows.com/parenting/articles/844773/great-reasons-to-go-apartment-building-trick-or-treating

For all its focus on the darker things, Hallowe’en is a homely celebration. It’s about parties and welcoming visitors to your home, even if it’s just the local kids trick or treating at the door. At this point, I’m bound to say that today’s trick or treaters don’t have much in the way of tricks. When I was a boy … well, let’s just say that most of the fun was to be had the following morning when the grumpier souls in our street, the ones who opted for ‘trick’, found their cars quickly spluttered to a halt. It’samazing how effective a potato firmly wedged in the exhaust pipe could be. Don’t do it, kids!

http://uk.pinterest.com/pin/284078688970837239/

Whatever the excuse – and Halloween is a great one – these colder, longer nights are a great reason to curl up on the sofa with a good book (or a spooky film) and be glad that you’re inside and nice and warm. One of the homeliest of the Hallowe’en traditions is the jack o’lantern, usually carved from a pumpkin or, if you’re a hardcore traditionalist, a turnip. It’s amazing how relaxing a flickering candle inside a hollowed-out vegetable can be. Nothing’s wasted either. You can make soup from the flesh and save the seeds to plant for your own seasonal crop next year.

Of course, you can enjoy the relaxing warmth of a real flame all year long. It’s just extra nice at this time of year anda Bio Fire is an excellent way to do it – either as a full fireplace or a table ornament. They’re clean and efficient, stylish and a real asset to any home and if you want to add a whiff of seasonal ambience to your living space, there are lots of scents you can use with your fire for that extra seasonal touch!

http://dferraro.me/2013/02/25/assignment-2-book-cover-in-progress/book-cover-goodie2/

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Turn off, tune out - 'come home to a real fire'

Turn off, tune out - 'come home to a real fire'

In the olden days – say, the 1970s – you could relax in your home safe in the knowledge that the boss couldn't ring you up from his car, nobody would be sending you messages about things that needed to be done in the morning and that once you closed your front door, that was more or less it for the night. You could relax. You could switch through all three TV channels (no remotes!), confident that even if there was something you wanted to watch, the broadcast would finish at midnight.

Picture source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-2418874/How-television-killed-Fair-Isle-jumper-ARMCHAIR-NATION-BY-JOE-MORAN.html

Life has changed a bit, hasn't it? None of those things are true today. The telephone is in your pocket, you are receiving text messages and emails at all hours of the day and night and there are more 24hr television channels than anyone could ever watch. Relaxation is now something you have to actively seek. You have to make time in this modern, distracting world to simply do nothing.

Busy as life is, everyone needs to recharge, to have some downtime and just be free to do or think about nothing at all. And we all need a place to do it. For some it's a favourite bit of the settee, for others it's a sheltered corner of the garden. As mankind has known for thousands of years, there is no better way to relax than in front of a dancing, mesmerising real flame. A Bio Fire offers you a unique opportunity to enjoy the soothing effect of a real flame in any number of domestic settings. Because it can go wherever you want to be in the house, it can be a permanent fixture in your favourite room or you can enjoy a more portable unit that can grace any room in the house – or space in the garden.

A couple relaxing by a bio fire - no chimney and no worry about fuel suply.

What could be more soothing and revitalising than quality time spent relaxing in your favourite part of your home, watching the dancing pictures in a flickering real flame? A Bio Fire gives you a superb range of options for your hearth or tabletop. They can also be freestanding and come in a wide range of traditional and modern styles to match your existing décor. And a Bio Fire is not simply a stylish and decorative addition to your living space: it will warm your room as only a real flame can, but without the need for a fixed chimney or the worry of your fuel supply – you only use what you need.

As they used to say in those old television advertisements, 'come home to a real fire'.  Except progress is your friend in this case. Your modern real fire is clean, stylish and efficient. And that's one less thing you have to get stressed about.

Left picture source: http://bungalowclassic.tumblr.com/post/68972245255
Right picture: Bio Fires

Picture source: http://www.liscombelodge.ca/2014/05/07/lovers-hide-a-way/