It Warms You Twice

You chop trees down, and then, in an interesting turn of phrase that must be confusing for those learning English, you chop them up.

In the book "Stig of the Dump", one of my childhood favourites, the boy Barney is reminded that firewood warms you twice - once when you cut it into pieces, and once when you burn it.

I didn't do any chopping of wood, either down or up, for our Beltane bonfire - I just stood around and enjoyed it. I've always enjoyed playing with fire. Bonfires are spectacular, fun and strangely comforting - I am sure our love of them must have been hard-wired into us over thousands of years.

Feeling rather wicked, we burned some old paintings that had been left behind by a previous occupant of the house and as they burned they looked appropriately symbolic for the fire festival Beltane.

I like the way that the partly-burned wood piles up and glows and makes shapes and patterns. One of my earliest memories is looking for pictures in my grandparents' fire in their hearth - central heating is far more convenient, of course, but far less romantic.

Then the fire died down and we could no longer see people's faces.

Beltane celebrates the approach of summer. These days we're simply pleased that summer's on its way - in previous centuries people must have been elated just to have survived another winter.