Fire watching and Feng Shui

We have had such an exciting morning! Rachel took the anti-Hamish cardboard out of the upstairs chimney, and burned a lot of papers in the grate. We've never seen a burning fire before.

Rachel says she found two boxes of old work papers in the small attic. She was horrified, and said something about bad Feng Shui, whoever he is. Apparently, having rubbish stored above your head is bad enough, but to have two boxes of old work papers could be deadly, she says. Especially if you retired early from work because of all those papers and what they meant.

She says they came home with her when she was moving offices, and somehow got lost in all the other bad rubbish. No wonder she didn't like sleeping in the room under the small attic. She spent a long time yesterday shredding, and said the noise was shredding her nerves as well as all the bad papers. Then her friend Annie suggested burning them.....

So we had a cleansing-fire ceremony. Rachel didn't wear her specs, so she couldn't see the small writing on what she was burning, but it was 10 years old and looked very boring.

I watched carefully. Rachel said I had saucer eyes, and that I wasn't to think about playing with the matches or stepping in the ash. Millie watched too; she went up this chimney a lot when she was the Naughtiest Kitten Ever. The back of the fire has her claw marks from when she was dragged out by Rachel.

There's still a lot of paper left, to shred or burn, but Rachel said that was enough for today - she had a tartan arm and leg from sitting over the fire, and the ashes needed to cool down before going in the wheelie bin. Our auntie Lesley down the road set fire to her bin once with hot ashes, and we wouldn't want to be made a mockery of by the neighbours like she was!

This is our fireplace now. Very messy, and still hot.

I promise I won't go near it!

Me too. I'm a reformed character.

The boys don't need to promise; they were too scared to come upstairs, and anyway, they had a new catnip mouse to play with in the kitchen. They have no Sense of Occasion.

We all smell kippered, Rachel says. If we stay out of the fireplace, she might buy us a kipper some time. We don't know what a kipper is, but we're always willing to try something new!