Ireland’s flip-flopping approach to the burning question

I DON’T do it. But every weekend, I want to do it. I want to take assorted rubbish, create a waffle-weave support system of twigs and branches, and set fire to the lot in the back garden. The smell of a bonfire on a sunny afternoon turns me on.

My father used to stuff garden waste and anything else handy into a black oversized bucket and set fire to it on Saturday afternoons. He would then sit down in the smoke and listen to sport on the radio. The neighbours hated him. My mother complained that she couldn’t put out washing because of the smuts. My older sister complained that she couldn’t put me out because I would wheeze. Dad would regard it as a good day’s work when the garbage was reduced to a handful of lumpy ash.

It seemed at the time an annoying but relatively harmless idiosyncrasy, of which my father had many.