FROM WHERE I SIT -- NO. 5 AND FINAL

Am all stressed out. The server has been down for 36 hours. This is the last in the series.

This is an old Vermont Castings stove. It heats the whole house. Where I sit next to it becomes too much of a hot seat and I have to move. It is sitting on top of locally quarried stone which has fossils of plants in it.

The fireplace itself is new in that we had it built. The original one was in the kitchen. It is traditional, however. Tuscan fireplaces are very shallow, which is wise because more heat comes out into the room than from deep ones.

The mantle piece is fairly old, c. 1800. An acquaintance found it in a barn and we bought it. It was dry, split, the wood was grey and it has patches of red lead paint on it. Who turned it into the beautiful thing you see today. It was not Himself. I glued and clamped it to close the cracks, filled the many nail holes, removed the red paint, smoothed it with fine steel wool and applied coat after coat of staining wax. It's just one of those things I did before I got onto the internet.

The copper fire dogs do not look right but I couldn't part with them. I bought them at auction in Norfolk. They're Dutch and were once silver plated. So then, they were once very posh and probably stood in front of a lovely, tiled fireplace. I found the copper kettle in an old water mill. It was black and cost nothing. It is Victorian.

The lions on the mantle piece are from the Rait Antiques Centre in Scotland and were bought by Himself. He is a Leo and collects lions. I am lucky he was not born a scorpion or a crab. The fire iron has a brass lion at the top. See, I told you. The ball between the lions is Indian and bought in the street for two euros.

The little bronze snuff box to the right of the lions has stamped onto it: "O that men should put an enemy into their mouths to steal away their brains." It is from Macbeth. I love the sentiment. The round snuff box is made of wood and rolled paper tubes. It's Victorian.

The metal jug is engraved with a tree within a circle and the word FRAXINUS. Fraxinus is Latin for ash tree. I have no idea whose crest it is.

The pottery jug has a dog and cat on it and the cat says, "It is years since last we met." Himself bought that, too.

We once used the black pot for peats; now we use it for wood. The brush on the floor is a standard hearth brush which I didn't know was there until I saw the pics on the screen.

Now, to figure out how to back blip for yesterday.