For New Year's Eve we had a lovely campfire kinda thing, outside on the concrete driveway under the stars, with the fire inside an old dryer drum turned on its end like an enormous metal can. Washing machine drums are better, because they have hundreds of little holes in the wall to let the light out the side, but the dryer was OK - you could still see the fire pretty well from the top.
So I mention this to my mum on the phone yesterday, saying that we're going to make another fire in the evening since the weather is really nice for sitting outside. And she reacts as if I've mentioned that we're making homemade explosives or something. "What? Are you sure that's safe? I hope you've got a hose ready!" It's fine, I tell her, the fire sits on a big concrete driveway, nothing's gonna burn around it.
So evening rolls around and by the time it's dark enough to enjoy a fire, the wind has picked up quite a bit. It's marginal for comfort and possibly too strong to actually get a fire going, but Matthew thinks we should try anyway, and he proceeds to build the fire. Only for some reason, he puts it under end of the carport.
I should also mention here that I've cut some groovy slits around the wall of the dryer drum so that we'll be able to see some light coming through the side. These slits, even though very thin, have the added effect of allowing vast quantities of wind into the centre of the drum, where Matthew is trying to get the fire started.
After about five or ten minutes of adding newspaper and jostling some sputtering bits of kindling, the fire actually gets going. I notice that the wind is blowing some burning ash and embers around inside the carport, and mention that it would have been better to place the fire out on the driveway, like we did on New Year's Eve. I also wonder about the fire harming the plastic roof of the carport. Nah, says Matthew, it won't generate that much heat. As he proceeds to add more wood. And more wood. And more wood.
Two minutes later, all this wood is burning nicely. So nicely, in fact, that the flames are about chest-height. I can see this fire getting very friendly with the roof of the carport.
"I think we'd better move the fire now," says Matthew, who has obviously recalculated his estimated heat output. Umm, yeah. On New Year's Eve, we moved the hot dryer drum by holding onto the cooler metal grate below it, but when we did that it only contained hot coals. There weren't four-foot flames being blown around all over the place then. How does Matthew plan on surviving those?
Some broom handles are located. We can slide these under the grate and lift the whole thing without getting too near. Umm, except that the broom handles are only about five feet long. So at most we can be two and a half feet away from the centre of the raging inferno. Did I mention the flames were reaching about four feet? Blowing all over the place?
I had a flash of inspiration.* The barbeque lid! Using a broom handle to lift the barbeque lid from a distance, we cover the top of the drum. At first it doesn't look good - lots of smoke, and huge flames now jumping out those groovy slits instead of out the top of the drum. But eventually, the fire goes quiet enough for us to move it using the broom handles under the grate.
So out on the driveway, it's even windier, and once we remove the barbeque lid we've got Son of Raging Inferno happening. Blowing burning embers all down the side fence, with its garden strip covered in dry pine bark!
We have to put the fire out or Something Bad will happen. A hose, lots of water (and steam), and we're left with some glowing coals. We stare at the coals, amazed at how resilient the fire is. A bucketful of water finally kills it.
Possible morals to this story:
- Don't let Matthew build a fire at your house.
- Carports are not good places for parking fires.
- Strong wind scatters burning embers. Far.
- Mother knows best.
* Sarah was inside feeding Jenna, and says she thought of using the barbeque lid five minutes before I did. Five minutes, huh. It's not as if a house can catch fire in five minutes, is it?