Isn't it amazing the way things change ?
I've been camping for over sixty years. I am becoming an old lady
....but I've enjoyed almost all of those years, so no, I'm not going to apologise for being 'old'.
We used to camp on the foreshore around the Clyde lochs. My parents took me and my big brother camping the year I was born. The GareLoch, Loch Goil, Loch Long, etc., it's a beautful bit of the world. Harsh and bitter cold at times though. Fire on a foreshore was no hassle....Uncle Jimmy used to brew up with the tilley stove inside a galvie bucket though. Didn't matter whether we were onshore or out on the boat, he managed a brew, and never spilt a drop. Nearest he ever came was going through the Rhu narrows and an American sub rose up alongside us. My Dad hit it with an oar, shouting about oars before sail, sail before steam....
he could be easily annoyed by stupidity could my Dad. He'd lived wild on Rannoch Moor for three years in the 1930's as he recovered from rheumatic fever (no NHS back then, no invalidity benefit, no broo, folks just made do) and he could make a fire anywhere. He'd been a fireman during the war; a Section Officer, and he'd worked through the blitz at Clydebank and then was part of the crews sent to London when it was blitzed. Fire was life, fire was to be treated with care, he taught us to get out if there was a house fire, don't hide from it. Fire was everywhere, he even managed to live on Rannoch moor using a primus and a wee fire. He taught us how to raise the fire off the wet ground.
Fire was a constant. We had a fire in the house every day in life...no hot water otherwise, let alone heat.
My Grandpa's workshop was heated with a wee pot belly stove, and there was another firepit outside in Granny's garden. I mind watching with all the glee of childish horror as Grandpa roasted a split sheep's head on that one. Singed (singe/burnt off the hair and outer skin) Sheeps' Heid was considered a choice dish when he was growing up, and Granny wouldn't let him cook it in her kitchen, and the big pot that boiled up the pluck to make haggis was done outside too....the thrapple (the windpipe) hung over the edge of the pot as the lungs boiled. That let all the mucous stuff inside boil out.
The smell, like the memories, lingers.....
Fire was constant. It was a daily use thing, every house in the land had fire.
Right enough we had a dreadful pollution problem too.
The world changes though. Few children now grow up learning to use a rather blunt hatchet to split kindling for the fire. Few children use that same hatchet's poll to belt apart the huge lumps of coal either, and learn the control necessary not to send the stuff flying everywhere.
Few children sit and stare into the fire coals and see the gas escaping from them catch and become flame...or watch the resin bubbles froth and spit and then burn in strange colours.
To us it was normal.
We used to have two enormous neighbourhood fire days every year. Old furniture, rotting fences, whatever would burn, went onto the bonfires for Victoria Day in May (that usually burnt in daylight) and Guy Fawkes night in November, that burned in the dark. Fire was our recycling, and the rag and bone yelled about any old iron.
Every child grew up knowing fire, knowing the big fires as well as the household ones.
Our world has changed, and I think it will change a lot more than we might be comfortable about.
Woodburner stoves are next to be proscribed I reckon.
BBC
"Burning any fuel is bad for the environment.
It is a myth that wood burning is cheaper than gas central heating and heat pumps.
Breathing wood smoke can increase your risk of heart disease, of a range of cancers, of things like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, of asthma and even dementia."
STV
New study links the growing popularity of domestic wood burning to lung damage.
news.stv.tv
My rambling is just the history that many of us carry about fire. We feel confident in our ability to be careful with it, able with it, but in a changing world, are we ?
One wee spark and up goes a gorse bush in Summer, and from there.....an entire mountainside's alight.
My own favoured camping stove is a catalytic one (no need for a galvie bucket, no open flame, not cheap, and it's pretty soul less. No 'fire', kind of thing.
Different times, different needs, different laws.
We have become a different people.
M
