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[mouldering ancestral pile] adventures with furnishings
One of the things the refurbished mouldering ancestral pile contains is a wood stove.
And so, a few weeks ago, my mother was grousing to me that this meant that among all the other infinitely many things the house still somehow needed was a set of fire irons.
Aha, says I, I actually just saw a set of those get offered on the local Freecycle. Want me to ask for it?
She did. I did. It was spoken for. But the person very kindly wrote back and said that if they were a no-show, we had next refusal. Thank you very much, I said, and at least for your sake I hope it doesn't come to that!
The original claimants were a no-show.
So off I shipped Adam, into the night, and he returned with fire irons in the back of the car, and left them there on the grounds that it's not like we needed them in the London flat, and I blithely ignored them until it came time to pack the car (and even then paid them only enough attention to tangle them up in the legs of the folding garden chairs).
We got to Cornwall, and I blithely ignored them some more except insofar as necessary to move them from the boot to the hearth.
A few days after that, my mother arrived! And I showed them her, thereby getting my own first proper look at the things. And, to my mild astonishment, she liked them! So that was nice!
(At this point I paused to shake the internet until it told me that the weird thing that was definitely not a stand for the tools was a fire dog or andiron.)
We had a pleasant rest of the week, proceeded back up country via owls, I had two migraines, etc. And then, a few days ago now -- Monday, in fact, in the horrid clutches of migraine #2 -- my mother messaged me a video of the wood stove actually in use with fire in and said (1) tools excellent (2) so now we just need tongs and a stand...
... sigh, thinks I, alright, I did rather let myself in for this one. I volunteer to find some suitably matching tongs and stand. It can't be that difficult, I think. You can get brand new fire iron sets for well under fifty pounds! Sure they're pseudo-wrought iron and sure they've got a nice bit of barley twist in the middle and sure they've got lovely leaves at the ends where they've been folded over to make loops, but that won't be too hard to match, right?
... right?
Three days of desultory web-searching later, with absolutely no initial luck, I turn up a set on Etsy that isn't quite right for four hundred quid.
I begin, very quietly, to panic.
And then. Then. Then I find the right thing. The barley twist is right. The shovel and brush head are right. There's even a close-up of an identical poker.
... this fire iron set I picked up for free, I discover, was almost certainly hand-forged by Paul Margetts, Sculpture and Metal-Work, of Forging Ahead Dot Co Dot UK. (He made? the gates?? for Worcester Cathedral???) He's got a whole page of fire irons! The very first paragraph at the top of the page includes "Tongs and pokers are also sold individually"!
... the very second paragraph at the top of the page reads:
From this I learn two things. The first: the internet is wonderful and terrible in equal measure. The second: ... well fuck, I actually really like this dude's sculpture.
And so, a few weeks ago, my mother was grousing to me that this meant that among all the other infinitely many things the house still somehow needed was a set of fire irons.
Aha, says I, I actually just saw a set of those get offered on the local Freecycle. Want me to ask for it?
She did. I did. It was spoken for. But the person very kindly wrote back and said that if they were a no-show, we had next refusal. Thank you very much, I said, and at least for your sake I hope it doesn't come to that!
The original claimants were a no-show.
So off I shipped Adam, into the night, and he returned with fire irons in the back of the car, and left them there on the grounds that it's not like we needed them in the London flat, and I blithely ignored them until it came time to pack the car (and even then paid them only enough attention to tangle them up in the legs of the folding garden chairs).
We got to Cornwall, and I blithely ignored them some more except insofar as necessary to move them from the boot to the hearth.
A few days after that, my mother arrived! And I showed them her, thereby getting my own first proper look at the things. And, to my mild astonishment, she liked them! So that was nice!
(At this point I paused to shake the internet until it told me that the weird thing that was definitely not a stand for the tools was a fire dog or andiron.)
We had a pleasant rest of the week, proceeded back up country via owls, I had two migraines, etc. And then, a few days ago now -- Monday, in fact, in the horrid clutches of migraine #2 -- my mother messaged me a video of the wood stove actually in use with fire in and said (1) tools excellent (2) so now we just need tongs and a stand...
... sigh, thinks I, alright, I did rather let myself in for this one. I volunteer to find some suitably matching tongs and stand. It can't be that difficult, I think. You can get brand new fire iron sets for well under fifty pounds! Sure they're pseudo-wrought iron and sure they've got a nice bit of barley twist in the middle and sure they've got lovely leaves at the ends where they've been folded over to make loops, but that won't be too hard to match, right?
... right?
Three days of desultory web-searching later, with absolutely no initial luck, I turn up a set on Etsy that isn't quite right for four hundred quid.
I begin, very quietly, to panic.
And then. Then. Then I find the right thing. The barley twist is right. The shovel and brush head are right. There's even a close-up of an identical poker.
... this fire iron set I picked up for free, I discover, was almost certainly hand-forged by Paul Margetts, Sculpture and Metal-Work, of Forging Ahead Dot Co Dot UK. (He made? the gates?? for Worcester Cathedral???) He's got a whole page of fire irons! The very first paragraph at the top of the page includes "Tongs and pokers are also sold individually"!
... the very second paragraph at the top of the page reads:
As I move towards retirement I am no longer making Fire Irons
I have left this page on this site for information purposes and hopefully to inspire others
From this I learn two things. The first: the internet is wonderful and terrible in equal measure. The second: ... well fuck, I actually really like this dude's sculpture.
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Until I got to the end of this sentence I was convinced I was going to read you'd blithely ignored them all the way back to London ;)
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