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I called them chimleys back then. It was a cold December evening in 1964. We sat in front of the fire. The coals were glowing but there were no flames. My father touched the embers with my note to Santa which read: 1 gun. One tipup lory. One book with Aminals.

Flames began to lick around the edges of my precious piece of paper. It began to curl up and blacken around the edges. The blackness was fast approaching the spidery words I had scrawled in my excitement. My father passed me the piece of paper. I became worried.

“Let it go....quickly,” my father said. He sounded as excited I was.

I did as I was told for once. I was a child of five. The piece of paper I clung to was the most important thing in the world to me at that particular moment. The whole of Christmas, the world's future it seemed, was reliant on my list getting to its destination. All the toys in my bedroom cupboards counted for nothing. I really didn't want to let that paper go. Fright gripped me for a second. The whole thing seemed like something adults would call surreal.

Finally I let the paper go. To my amazement it flew from my hand and disappeared up the chimney and into the darkness. I couldn't understand why. It seemed like magic. I asked my father. All he said was that heat always rises. I didn't really understand. I was just thankful that it did.

“Was it magic? I asked later.

“Yes. It was magic.”

After a while I relaxed again. As a child I didn't like that state and became excited again, and a little worried. I can now see that I was like a little electron in those days.

“Are you sure it got up there?” I asked.

“Yes”

“What if it got stuck?”

“If it gets stuck Father Christmas will find it. He will read it when he comes down. He always checks.”

I trusted my father. I was satisfied, but only for a moment. Then I became unsatisfied. It was my role as a child to be unsatisfied.

“Daddy,” I said.

“Yes.”

“You know when you took me on that mountain top in the summer holidays.”

“Yes.”

“Why was it so cold up there if heat rises?”

He told me it was way past my bedtime. I trudged upstairs, buried myself and dreamed of heat rising.

A few tense days later, on Christmas morning, I received everything that had been written on that piece of paper. I was excited again and wondered what we would do without chimneys.

After Christmas the house was full of bricks and dust. All I heard was banging. It seemed to go on for years but was only a few weeks. We had to eat in the conservatory for a time, then the living room. Eventually the house fell silent and we ate in the dining room again. The house looked more like my friends houses afterwards. There was only one thing missing. No, there were two things missing. The chimney breasts in the dining room and the lounge had gone. The rooms seemed bigger now though. But my father, in knocking those chimney breasts out, had inadvertently given me space to think, brought forward my adulthood. I always had my doubts but now I was sure. I was six now and didn't believe in this Father Christmas thing anymore.

I think it was a couple of years later during the school summer holidays. I was bored anyway so it must have been. My father asked me if I wanted to go out for a walk. He normally took me down to the woods near the big school or up on the hill where you could see the Thames. It was so open down there but I used to wonder about this huge white concrete tower that rose up above the greens and the browns. I didn't know why but I always wished that that tower wasn't there. It spoiled things somehow but I never asked what it was because its ugliness scared me. I liked walking though. It always made me feel small. I liked that feeling.

“We are going down to the Thames,” My father said. He never said much but I always waited for his every word.

As we left I noticed that he was carrying his camera so knew it was going to be an important day. He only ever took his camera out when we went on holiday. This made me feel rather tense and excited.

“Why aren't we going to the woods? I want to see the spotted flycatchers nest again,” I said wondering how they were getting on.

“I'll take you tomorrow. Today we are going to see an explosion. Have you ever seen an explosion before?

I didn't know if I had or not but it sounded exciting. I had seen them on television but knew that wasn't really seeing them.

We walked and walked. It was a much longer walk than normal. “Is this explosion going to be good?” I asked.

“Yes, I should imagine it will be quite spectacular.”

That sounded pretty good to me. Spectacular sounded so good. I forgot my tiredness, my impatience.

We went over the brow of a hill and the river came into view. We could see for miles and I felt small again. It was a good feeling.

After going a little way down the hill we sat down on a grassy slope. All I could see was mile upon mile of a vast river and big scudding clouds. Everything seemed so open and wild to me. This was what we always saw in the distance from the hill. I don't know why but it seemed such an adventure to be much closer to something that seemed from the hill to be in another world. But there was something there I had never seen. It was the power station.

“When is the explosion? I asked.

“In about ten minutes.”

That felt like next week to me. My father gave me sandwiches and crisps. It seemed to bring the moment nearer.

“When is it now,” I asked. I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to be looking at. But I trusted my father. If he said something was going to be good I knew it would be.

I sat there waiting for my father to say something. It seemed that life was all about waiting.

The he said something. “Look at that over there. That is a power station. It has come to the end of its useful life. Today they are going to blow that chimney up.”

I looked. We couldn't see the buildings from the hill but the white tower that used to scare me turned out to be a chimney beyond my imagination. It completely dwarfed the square boxy buildings of the power station which was the first one I had ever seen.

“What does it do?”

“It burns coal to make electricity.”

I remembered our new electric fires and asked, “Is that why we don't have a burning fire at home like we used to?”

“Yes. I suppose it is. They put that one big chimney down there so we wouldn't have to have chimneys at home. I had never thought of it like that.”

I had never heard my father say he had never thought of something. I felt strange then, as if I was becoming a bit like a grown up.

My father said, “Look now. It's time.” He raised his camera and suddenly it happened. The chimney started falling but it didn't topple over like a tree. It looked as though it had disappeared into the ground. The bang came after. What looked like smoke rose high into the sky. It all happened so quickly. I wanted to see the spotted flycatchers nest, something I could watch for hours.

At first I was a little disappointed with the explosion. “Why did the bang come after?” I said.

“Sound travels more slowly than light,” he said.

“Was that the smoke that was stuck in the chimney?”

“No. That was just dust and the smoke from the charge.”

“Why did it go so high?”

“Heat rises.” My father said.

Oh yes. I remembered and felt like a child again.

As we walked back I began to think that it wasn't so bad after all. “Are we going to get our chimneys back now?

“No. They are building nuclear power stations to replace old ones like that.” My father pointed.

“What are they?”

“They are power stations that split atoms instead of burning fuel. Splitting atoms give huge amounts of power.”

In the evening I asked my father, “Do the new atom power stations have chimneys?

“Sort of,” he said.

I wondered if all chimneys were going to be knocked down. There would be none left. I wanted to know about atoms too. But I was worried. I was worried that if I asked my father a question that was too difficult he would send me to bed. He always sent me to bed when I asked him something he didn't know.

So I said, “Why didn't they keep that chimney for one of the new power stations?”

“They can't put a nuclear power station down there.”

“Why?”

“They are too dangerous.”

But I found that old chimney rather scary. It seemed pretty dangerous to me. It wasn't green or brown. I only liked green and brown at that time in my life.

“Why are they dangerous?”I asked.

“I'll tell you some other time,” he said.

“Why do the atom power stations have chimneys if they don't burn anything?”

“They sort of have chimneys but they are really cooling towers for getting rid of steam. All power stations heat up water to drive turbines whether they split atoms or burn coal or oil.” My father was looking rather tired by now.

“What are atoms and how do they split them? I said feeling rather tired myself, I was ready for bed.

“I think it is way past your bedtime,” my father said. I somehow knew that one would do the trick.

I trudged upstairs, buried myself and dreamed of spotted flycatchers.

It was to be twenty years before a chimney entered my life again. I was walking and scrambling on the Isle of Skye with a friend called Jo. My father had instilled in me a sense of adventure. We were on the Cuillin Ridge. The weather had suddenly turned nasty and it had begun to snow. Visibility had gone from miles to virtually zero. The wind was beginning to gust. We sat down to plan an escape route. I felt incredibly small at that moment. It was not a good feeling. I was cold, quickly getting colder. Fright gripped me for a moment.

“Where are we? Joe asked. She was inexperienced.

“Here.” I showed her our position on the map.

“We had better continue along the ridge. We need to get down quickly.”

“That is not advisable. A compass is useless here.”

“Why?”

“The rocks are magnetic.”

“How come?”

“I'll tell you later. The crucial thing is that we know exactly where we are. If we move we will lose that advantage.”

“But we need to get down.”

“We will, we will. Just be patient.”

I took a dog eared guidebook out of my rucksack. It was little known but a very special old book. I had bought it second hand from a climbing shop. They didn't write them like this anymore, I thought. It was for carrying on the mountain, not for reading at a coffee table. It was my Bible.

“I'm scared,” said Jo with alarm.

“Don't be. I am going to find a way down.”

I read the chapter in the book covering the section of ridge we were sitting on. It took quite a while but I eventually found these words.

Just below the col notice a huge flake of rock protruding upwards about twelve feet at an angle of forty five degrees. This can be used as a marker for a relatively safe escape route should the need arise. To descend to the loch step around this rock to the left and you will immediately find yourself on an exposed knife edge spur. Continue for about three paces. This is safe but will take some nerve. Then descend left (do not in any circumstances descend to the right). The descent left is a stiff Grade One scramble but should not give any undue difficulty. After about thirty feet you will naturally be funnelled into the top of an obvious chimney if you keep descending. Under no circumstances make any moves of reascent, especially in poor visibility. Descend the chimney steeply for three hundred feet until the walls disappear. You will then be below any cliffs. The ground will become less steep but perfectly safe if care is taken.

We followed the author's instructions to the letter and ended up in the chimney. The mist swirled within it like smoke. I didn't know there were chimneys on mountains until I started climbing. This one was formed when a volcanic dyke of softer rock had eroded away to leave a square faced open channel with walls on three sides. The chimney was unremittingly steep but I put all my trust in the author. I trusted him like a father, I had too. The author was proved correct. I knew that if he said something was going to be safe it would be. We got to the bottom and descended to the loch.

Jo told me that I was very clever. “I trust you,” she said.

“I am not clever. I just know who to trust.”

In the evening we went to a pub. Later, at the hostel, we lay on bunk beds talking. Jo was in the bottom one.

“You never told me how the rocks get magnetic.”

“You must be tired. I am. Let's get some sleep.

“Just one more thing though. How could you put your trust in that book when we couldn't see our hands in front of our faces?” She asked.

“My father wrote it.”

I turned over, buried myself and dreamed of chimneys.

Comments

Opening: 5
Characterisation: =8
Dialogue: 8
Setting: 8
Plot: 4
Suspense=4
Ending: 5
Enjoyment: 8
comments: All those different chimneys;home,power station (nuclear incuded)rock on Skye. A novelette with the child`s point of view excellent.

Dorothy Spry

Opening: 8
Characteristaion: 8
Dialogue: 8
Setting: 8
Plot: 8
Suspense: 8
Ending: 10
Enjoyment: 9

comments: Loved it! Well written, well paced and a nicely planned finish. Just a little bit technical around the geological formations - slightly lecturing but not overly so. More!

Andrew Bee

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