Friday 14 April 2006

Crazy World of Arthur Brown

I found a new way of lighting a fire this morning. Well, it’s not strictly speaking new, I’m sure people have been doing it for years and I have read about it but it was new to me. I was trying to light the fire in the usual way, home made tinder on a leaf and sparks from the Fire Steel, normally the tinder catches and a small flame is produced, from this I light some dried grass and so on until I’m sitting back with a cup of tea and warm feet. It was probably the rain and the mist that stopped this working today; either that or I had messed up making the tinder. In either event I could not get the fire going, occasionally the tinder would flare up but the grass would not catch. In the end I was left with a very delicate ember of glowing tinder about the size of half a five pence piece on the leaf. I carefully transferred this piece of tinder to the charred end of one of yesterday’s logs and sandwiched it in place with a piece of charcoal that I had previously made. My gently blowing onto the ember of tinder, most of which blew away; I encouraged a small spot on the charred log to start glowing. Over the course of about a minute I continued to blow and with each breath the area of log that was glowing expanded. An orange glow that expanded on every breath, I assume that the underside of the charcoal was undergoing the same process. For soon a flame appeared only to go out again as soon as I had stopped blowing on it. Holding the dried grass over the charcoal and log ensured, a few breaths later, that the grass caught light.

Hugely satisfying experience


Gotta rush


bye

2 comments:

Mervyn said...

Great stuff. You're becoming a pro!

Hugh Sawyer said...

Daniel

I'm currently avoiding writing any of the pseudo philosophy that comes to me whilst at the fireside. I am very aware that this time has changed me a lot but this process is ongoing and so I'm going to refrain from writing about any of the 'deeper' issues until I can look back and write about them as a whole.

Jamman - petrol is like sooooo kewl.

Steph,Norfolk! Brilliant idea, it's flat as well so no uphill. Mike has an idea that kind of invoves Norfolk but it is a secret for now. Suffice to say that it is sillyer than going to the jungle.

maddox - pro? sadly not, the next day there was a lot of huffing, puffing, hands turning black and ash going up nose but no fire.