Gendered hot air

I got into something of a tiz when buying metre long steel wood stove flue tubes today. I needed a masculine to masculine converter - or so I erroneously thought after watching a US You Tube.

The guy in the showroom told me that they didn’t exist for this flue type and the one that I was buying was ‘tutto femmina’.

It was all getting a bit arcane or surreal and I wondered about a sally down the path of a self- identifying feminine flue tube. A trip to the open store room and a dose of brisk air soon put me right.

I do find Italians have a very assertive way of talking and often in these slightly nerdo-techno craftsman/artisan discourses I feel way out of my depth. I would in Blighty but I’d feel less tongue-tied and at a linguistic loss. I mean what is a ‘top securing plate’ in Italian.

Anyway I bought two flue tubes ‘alla tutta femmina’ and an immediately redundant brace (staffe) and managed to get them in the car without smashing the freshly glazed windows (for €20).

Back at the ranch I squeezed myself under the low stone chimney cowl fighting back my claustrophobia and fantasies of getting stuck fast to measure the flue height and subtracting 5cm for each tube join. Quite a scene with the head torch and glistening creosote on the stonework.
Thrice measured I got out clamps and planks and saw horses and an angle grinder and rather amazingly cut the tube where I’d marked it, great gouts of flashing steel flying behind me.

I wriggled myself back under the cowl and managed to join and heave two tubes into the one already on the stove. It felt touch and go and I had my mobile tucked into my fleece chest pocket. You can imagine the call I might have made to The Boss - Hi sweetheart, I’m stuck in the fireplace, can’t get out, the stove and tubes blocking me. I’m cold and getting colder. Could you maybe ring Gianluca or the vigili di fuoco (fire brigade) and ask them to rescue me?’

Anyway the flue tubes flew into place without pinching my fingers or crushing my toes and I managed to extricate myself back into the light.

Buoyed by the ease of it - I agonise over this stuff in the small hours - I went up on the roof again - ladder tied and secured to an eyebolt I got off that wrecked yacht in St Margaret’s Bay in Kent years ago (I just knew it would come in handy one day even if there was a wait and change of location to be had).

I measured and figured and then found a piece of galvanised steel and with the angle grinder cut out a tube circle and a slot for the chimney closing flap. Back up on the roof in the rapidly sinking sun I was amazed it fit so well. I went down for some wire to hold it on in a gale.

It feels like job done. The proof will be in the firing of the stove.

We shall see.