Sooty

One can almost set one's watch by the chimney sweep's two annual visits. We did have an agreement that he comes on Thursday or Friday. last year he was here on Friday 24th May.

But today he turned up unannounced at the gate. As I was about to go out with the dogs, I managed to delay him until the afternoon. Luckily he is a very pleasant cooperative guy and agreed. Probably under law he would be able to insist on entry and if necessary could call the police for assistance. While an EU decree opened up the chimney sweep service to open competition, the reality is that things remain as they were for most people.

Theoretically we can choose a sweep from anywhere in the EU but every four years the official assigned area "Chief Sweep" is obliged to check all fuel (gas, oil, wood) heating units to see they are in good condition and inspect the records that they have been cleaned according to the law. This vsit was this "big" check. Mr Dischl knows our set up so it didn't take long but he could for instance make problems with our recently acquired cooking hood extractor, if it influenced the flow of fresh air to a heating unit! Need to get some cracked fireclay slabs at the back of our wood burning unit replaced.....in due course! Did ask him to do a special clean & check of the wood pellet heating unit after the "murderer" accusation I received recently on the Guardian newspaper online discussion of biomass heating!

He has a new apprentice who started in May (on the left carrying the ladder).

Now just a sideline for any UK readers who will be voting on Thursday for a new EU set up. Probably most of Europe and certainly here in Bavaria and Germany there is little good said about the EU, everyone concentrating on some of the crazy legislation. Fact is that without the EU there would probably be no less laws and regulations but what most here want is that the EU concentrates on the big issues and less on the local ones: natural that when one discusses local issues and tries to find a compromise suitable for 28 countries from Norway to Malta, lots of ridiculous things emerge. However I don't know anyone who wants to get out of Europe (the Euro perhaps) but they do want change and that can only happen if all the countries take a positive, active roll in getting these changes. In this year remembering the start of WWI 100 years ago, lets not forget that Europe has been free of war for 70 years. That alone is worth it.