Chim chimernee

(The grainy B&W photograph is the result of a strange lens I am determined to master-the idea being that when I am expert with it I'll look back on this effort and laugh, though actually I kind of like it. )

A few weeks ago I was running down the Pleasance and noticed a huge bank of chimneys in St Mary's Street up ahead - these are just a small section of them. I don't really have anywhere to go with this except for vague ponderings about just how many fires they represented, how they got all the coal in and what the air must have been like when they were all going at once.

Generally I am quite a fan of open fires and do not like central heating. Central heating means that all your rooms are not-quite-warm enough if you want to spend any time sitting whereas a coal fire meant you had one hot room where you could go for a heat and the rest was bracingly baltic. As a child my bedroom was so cold in winter I soon learned to cultivate the warming properties of switching on Rossini's La Gazza Ladra on my tape deck and conducting to it. I may have been as mad as a badger but it worked.