{"id":19687,"date":"2017-12-09T00:21:06","date_gmt":"2017-12-08T23:21:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=19687"},"modified":"2017-12-09T00:21:06","modified_gmt":"2017-12-08T23:21:06","slug":"advent-day-8-an-open-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=19687","title":{"rendered":"Advent Day 8 – DO NOT TOUCH The fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"An
\nThere is a log fire at the Old Anchor Inn, by the River Thames in Abingdon. Over the fireplace mantel are the words “DO NOT<\/u> TOUCH The fire”.<\/p>\n

As a child, one task I was sometimes allowed to undertake was to clear the grate of the previous night’s ashes, and then start the next day’s fire. This would either entail using white fire lighters, or the gas poker under a pile of coal. <\/p>\n

On a number of occasions I remember watching as adults held a thin sheet of newspaper in front of the fireplace to draw up the flames. This was a more risky process, and on a couple of occasions I saw the flaming newspaper being sucked up the chimney. It could have caused a chimney fire but didn’t. We learned from our elders that fire had to be treated with respect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a log fire at the Old Anchor Inn, by the River Thames in Abingdon. Over the fireplace mantel are the words “DO NOT TOUCH The fire”. As a child, one task I was sometimes allowed to undertake was to clear the grate of the previous night’s ashes, and then start the next day’s fire. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-heritage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}