The abyss of time in flames

By Oliver Morton

Because my father was born at Christmas time, his parents named him Noel. But that was not the name by which they came to know him. As a baby he would stare, rapt, into the fire in the grate of their house in a Welsh mining valley, off in a world of his own. His mother took to calling him "Joseph the dreamer", and from then on his family always called him Joe.

A love of looking into a hearth is something I have inherited from him. As I write this in my own sitting room, a log is crackling on a bed of slower-burning coals in a fireplace not dissimilar to the one my dad grew up with. The house would be warm without it, but I find it one of the more enjoyable duties of winter, once a week or so, to walk up the road to the filling station, load a battered old rucksack with solid fuel, and lug it back home. It makes the northern hemisphere's turning away from the sun a bit more palatable. And, in a simple, reassuringly domestic way, it celebrates what makes the planet quite so special.