Our First Christmas in our new Home!

 If you look carefully, you can see the little knitted Christmas stocking hanging from the mantel!  I'm afraid we don't take Christmas terribly seriously at Orca House.  I suppose it's because we don't have strong religious leanings, and also, it's mid-summer here in South Africa, and the warm weather and beckoning seas and beaches mean that we're all usually outside enjoying ourselves.

Anyhow, because lots of Christmas card designs feature fireplaces, I thought it was a good time to show ours off.

Nicky designed the fireplace, pinching some space from the spare bedroom behind it.  He based the design on an old Inglenook type, but then read a book which a friend lent us.  The book featured the fireplaces and the stories of a certain Count Romford.  More about him later.

The beautiful decorative tiles around the opening are made by my daughter Cindy, who is a potter.
Many of them feature various of our dogs - Iris Binney, and Figgie, and funny quirky sayings.  I did the tiling myself, and didn't bother working out the sizes.  I just stuck them on, and was lucky to be able to go and help myself to her stocks of tile sizes whenever I needed to.

The big tile on the chimney breast shows a ship-wreck, with a desperate man on the rocks waving....

Now, to get back to Count Romford; briefly, he was an American of the 18th Century, who worked out a method of altering inglenook fireplaces so that they really WORKED!  His success took him to England, where he changed the fireplaces of members of the aristocracy there, and from thence he was invited to Europe to make the measly European fireplaces work properly too.  Someone in Europe was so chuffed with his work, that he gave him the title "Count".

Inside our fireplace there is a stainless steel fire-box, with an adjusting rod, to open or close the chimney.  From the firebox, the smoke goes into a 25cm diameter stainless steel chimney, which protrudes through the roof, and is higher than the highest apex of the roof.

In this picture, you'll notice the step-ladder that served as our very dangerous staircase from December (when we moved in) until the end of August (when James and Teddy came to install our permanent and very beautiful one).  Apart from ourselves Helen & Nick, there were Rosy, James, Cindy and Sam with Bea and Nicky.  Also, we invited John and Pippa Sanderson-Smith and their son James (Ryan is in the Caribbean studing medicine so couldn't come);   Pru and Richard Bolus, Orioe and Cos and Cos's girlfriend Njeira from Kenya.    Andrea Richards.  A lovely time was had by all.