h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Back in October 2007 an electric fire built into a fireplace mantel in the lounge was the only source of heat in our flat. You could switch it on in the winter, off in the summer, put pictures on the mantel piece and have a fireguard surrounding it when having babies. For the following eight years and two months the fire loyally providing warmth and comfort when required. Then Sarah decided to despise and detest it – Hate!-Hate!-Hate! – with a loathing of the intensity normally directed at interfering Vice Chancellors.

She has now issued an ultimatum – the fireplace has to be gone by the end of the week, or there will be consequences. I'm not entirely sure what the consequences actually are, only that they promise to be:

a.) dire
and
b.) somehow my fault.

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You only put the fireguard around it when having babies? Why was you having a baby in the lounge, anyway? Come to think of it, HOW were you having babies? I assumed that was somebody else's job...



Can you replace it with a gas fireplace? It sounds like what we had in my bedroom when I was a kid, and I found it comforting on cold nights.

'HOW were you having babies?' - the normal way, my wife and I were having a vigorous game of croquet when we tripped over a hoop - haven't you read Charlotte Yonge? She edited the 'Mothers' Union' newsletter so it is good to know that all those women facing childbirth and motherhood for the first time had someone they could count on to turn to with their questions on cracked nipples, post-natal depression, breast pumps, feeding in public and, of course, the thorny issue of whether women should have pain relief during childbirth or whether they should suffer as all the sins of the world are all their fault.

Alas we're a first floor (UK first floor, where ground floor is 0) maisonette and we don't have gas (except possibly following the application of sprouts), so only electric fires.

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I should have thought of that.

And I think I would issue a poetic plea to preserve that fireplace, if only for the pleasant memories of croquet, etc...

Alas the fireplace has gone now – but we got someone eminently qualified to help me take it away; a fireman who had previously been an Olympic Torch bearer.

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I hope you lit it first.

Ah, at least there was symbolism involved.

But, then, one has, surely to ask, if hopefully then to know, with what, will teh removed as it now is, fireplace be replaced with; havnging already demonstrated electric is not suitable and also that gas is not practicle....

Electric was fine for heat, she didn't like the appearance of that particular fireplace, saying it was old-fashioned. I suspect that it is because it was the only thing in the lounge that was here when we moved in.

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