Jimbo’s chimenea
Posted on Friday, June 9, 2006I bought a chimenea today, a cast-iron one because it’s less likely to crack than the pottery one I already have, and it’s also a good bit bigger. I mean, it isn’t enormous, but it’s big enough to push in a medium-sized Christian Brother sawn in four. The pottery chimenea served me well for two or three years and I have to admit I got well pissed in its balmy heat on many a winter evening, but it was just a tiny bit small for my liking.
Me neighbour Jimbo invited myself and the Bullet over to his house last week to witness the inaugural lighting of his chimenea and so I loaded up on cheap Duck’s Flat wine and moseyed over for a look. He had the patio all arranged nice and Mexican, with flaming torches and Willie Nelson somewhere in the darkness singing Seven Spanish Angels. He had rich dark wine - blushful Hippocrene if ever I saw it - and food of every taste and flavour. Flautas, taquitos, quesadillas. He even flew in a Mayan chef for the night. It was lovely. However, what he didn’t have was a chimenea.
- Where’s the fuckin chimenea? I asked, not unreasonably.
- It’s over fuckin there, he replied, in what I thought was an insolent and churlish manner.
- Over fuckin where?
- There, you blind fucker! He was pointing at a small, sad, glazed object with a hole in the top.
- That? You call that a fuckin chimenea?
- Yes I do. What do you call it?
- I’d call it a flower-pot.
We settled down after that and Jimbo broke out the good wine he bought in a case last month, as I was hoping he would. My Duck’s Flat was safe for another night. With a flourish, he applied a flame to the prepared kindling and we watched in pleasure as the fire took hold, spreading to the wood and suffusing the cosy patio with a peaceful glow. It was lovely. It was quiet and peaceful, and nobody really took any notice of the soft click as the first crack opened up in the flower pot. Nor the second. But when a third and a fourth crack ran around its surface, the Bullet hopped up on a wall in case it exploded all over his feet. And as we watched, horrified and enthralled (Jimbo horrified, me enthralled), the whole thing opened up like ceramic petals on a beautiful alien fire-flower and collapsed all over Jimbo’s Mexican-style patio.
Nice chimenea, I told him, supportively.
Stumble it!
