two chimney sweeps, one fireplace, and disaster

some saw muck, I saw money!

Gordon and I had a lucrative scheme every Wednesday, when we would sweep chimneys. We did this for about two years, it was hard work, and of course very dirty. But in Lancashire there is a saying “where there’s muck there’s money”, and chimney sweeping certainly proved that. One thing that is a certainty in business is that if you can find something that no one wants to do, someone will pay you handsomely to do it. Of course I wanted to charge more, I always did, but Gordon lived his life helping others and would have done it for free if you asked him, my heart sunk sometimes when I thought of our lost profits, but my protests fell on deaf ears, after crawling around in soot for an hour if an old lady said she had no money it was a ‘freebie’. I suspected that the 'old lady' network was bigger and better organized than MI5 because we seemed to do more for free than for money some weeks. That hurt me and my undeniable passion for money, but we always managed ‘to put a crust on the table’ as they say.

a perfecdtly sealed fireplace

The job involved going into the room with the smokey fireplace, sealing with a small sheet and masking tape so that the soot that was dragged down the chimney by the brush was contained. No one wants a house full of soot! All the chimneys we cleaned were in terraced houses, the flues were against one wall, with a fireplace in each of the two downstairs rooms, and one in each of the upstairs rooms, which is why every terraced house has four chimneys. To clean the chimney properly we had to open up a small two or three brick hole in the flue in the loft so that we could sweep both up and down the flue, then finish off by putting the flue brush into a small hole in the sheet we had taped on to the hearth, this is the final sweep and the one where the brush pops up out of the chimney for all to see. Finding the correct bricks to remove in the loft was critical for obvious reasons; remove the wrong ones and shove the brush up or down and the soot being cleaned went into the wrong room. But luckily the bricks had been removed many times before in the hundred year old history of the terraced houses we worked on so the bricks were easy to spot by the relatively new mortar holding in said bricks.

Everything that Gordon did involved him taking on a new persona, for chimney sweeping it was a Yorkshire accent. I have no idea where the accent originated, or where he practised it, but every Wednesday it came out as if he had just driven in from the dales. Instead of saying “you go into the loft and open up the flue” it came out as “yoo gu up in’t loft and oopen up t’flooo” sometimes it ended with “sith thi” he also wore a brown leather vest and a large red handkerchief around his neck.

We tied the ladders and brushes on to the ski racks on the Ford Transit van and set off for a day of cleaning soot filled chimneys. We could clean six flues a day easy.  Tape the hearth, find the flue, take out a couple of bricks, brush up and down, wait for the flue brush to stick out of the chimney, pull it down again and clean up. We put the soot into large paper sacks that we got for free from a builders merchants that once had potatoes in them. These went into the van, none of them were really sealed and soon the van had an acrid sulphur smell and a film of soot was everywhere.

One day we had a job in a big house in the Burnley general hospital area. It still had four rooms, but big rooms, but this was the proverbial job from hell. “Na then where’s t’chimney love” the older lady that met us was what I called snooty. She seemed to look down on us as low life workers as soon as we went in to the house. She had white sheets on the floor laid out in a path to the back room where there was an imposing fireplace, the type of which I had never seen before. It was made entirely of slate, polished black and certainly beautiful. We received our explicit instructions, “do not step off the sheets, do not leave any soot, and do not break anything”.



success! brush spotted through the firepot



This was normal in some houses, we were sweeps, no longer human and of course no longer intelligent, so we had to receive orders before being allowed to start. Gordon reassured her with “don’t thi worry we’ll tek care of it, wi ‘ave done this before tha kno-ows”. I started to tape up the hearth and when I stood up I hit my head on the slate shelf of the mantle, I hit it really hard and immediately fell back onto my knees with the impact, closely followed by an ornament that was on the top of the hearth. Whatever it was, it was now no more, shattered pieces of porcelain were everywhere. The lady shrieked in horror, Gordon tried to lighten the situation, ‘at least it were’nt a new un love!” not good, she was not happy. I left Gordon to it trying to calm her down, and escaped up the sheet lined stairs to get into the loft to open up the flue. I had done this dozens of time, ‘easy peasy’ job. Up I went, counted the flues, downstairs on the outside , upstairs on the inside, I found the flue and opened it up, removing the three bricks that we would now put the brush in to clean the upper part of the flue. I screwed the flue rods together and pushed them up, Gordon was outside by now and I heard him yell through the slates that the brush was through. I then pulled the rods out and pointed them down to clean the lower flue and pushed them in. I pushed and pulled and pushed them in a bit more and pulled back slightly until Gordon, who was now in the back room yelled up “start whenever thi wants too Don”! 

Start? I should be finished! My heart sunk, in a dizzy stupor after hitting my head I must have removed the bricks from the wrong flue, “Gordon I yelled, iv’e buggered up”. That was all I had to say, he knew immediately what had happened, he ran upstairs, I climbed down from the loft, and we met teach other at the top of the stairs.  We opened up a bedroom door and saw nothing but soot. It was in the air, on the floor, on the bed, probably inside the bed. “Bloody hell” I said, “now what”. Gordon was almost speechless “don’t know” he said, all I could say was “sorry”. Gordon made a facial expression that could have been deep thinking, or deep worry, or both, “Jesus, she'll go mad”.



not sure why he's smiling, that is one dirty job!



The lady had done what most people did and left us alone while she went into the neighbours while we did the cleaning, after all who wants to stay in a house with two chimney sweeps. It was at the same time that had we found the disaster than she came in, another shriek, and the nicely spoken woman let out a stream of expletives that left us in no doubt that we were in fact stupid and stupider. “Na then we’ll just open up reyt flue and clean proper chimney, then we’ll clean this lot up for yoo, good as noo” Gordon said. The woman said very matter of factly “you will replace the bricks you have just removed, then remove yourselves from my house and do not speak to me when you are doing it”.

Very quietly I climbed into the loft to replace the bricks, that I thought was the best place to be, ‘the old woman could never climb up here’ was my thinking. We picked up our gear, put the ladders and brushes on the top of the van, the empty soot bags inside the van and climbed in. The van had no passenger seat, so I sat on my milk crate and looked at Gordon, “Sorry I said, didn’t mean to do that”, “don’t worry” Gordon very kindly said, “we all make mistakes” as we were driving away. When we stopped at the end of the street we heard a woosh as the ladders came flying off, closely followed by the brushes. We had forgot to tie them down, as they dropped onto the small front of the transit van we just looked at each other and started laughing, such was the life of a chimney sweep. “Reyt” he said, “lets get t’next un, and this time don’t mess up, sit thi!”

calling doctor Kirkham

“If he puts one foot on the floor, he’s dead!”

Those were the first words out of mums mouth when she came rushing in the back door of our house. I could swear that she had a slight grin on her face as if to say ‘I told you so’. She had been to an elderly couple’s home just a short walk away further along Clough Street. The husband, Mr Howell, had suffered what was possibly a minor heart attack, the doctor realising that he was in no immediate danger had told him to stay off his feet for a week and rest before going down to his surgery to see him. Of course mum had been to visit Mrs Howell, seen her husband and immediately diagnosed his impending demise if he so much as stood up. "stay off your feet", meant that if he stood up, well, he would fall down again, for good!

What followed was the customary, and by now expected, diagnosis of Mr Howells illness, the possibility of a brain haemorrhage was always top of mum’s list of likely outcomes, closely followed any number of death inducing events.

“I told Mrs Howell, I’m here if he takes a turn, oh yes, I’m here WHEN he takes a turn”

Mum was an amateur doctor, which I suspect is the result of bringing five boys into the world and looking after them during their various illnesses, and watching Dr Kildare. At any time she would arbitrarily decide that a person had suffered a stroke, heart attack or cerebral haemorrhage. She would always preface this with, “I thought he looked off" or, "I knew something would happen” when I heard this I often thought ‘well why didn’t you warn him then’, in fact one fateful day I said just that, she walked in saying that Mr so and so had suffered a brain haemorrhage, and even though the doctor missed it and had simply told him to rest at home, he was actually very sick, mum would have to be ‘ready’.

Dr Kildare's medical school?

Mum loved illness in other people, she revelled in their misfortune; she could diagnose with amazing speed a multitude of diseases and ailments. This was confirmed, just as a group of doctors will concur on a diagnosis following lengthy discussions with Mrs Barnes who lived one side of us and Mrs Connell who lived on the other side. The three of them would discuss the symptoms, deciding if the victim would live or possibly die, “well you know he looked peaky last week”, or

“it runs in the family”,

perhaps the best I ever heard was “you know I dreamt that last week, I did, I dreamt that this would happen, Oh yes', followed by "I did to, so did I” the three of them nodding in unison at the memory of a week old dream. Surely a quiet word in the unsuspecting ear of the patient might have helped? I heard the “I dreamt it would happen” more than once, always after the event, and always with a rendition of the actual events not the predicted events.

Sometimes mum would come home with “he’ll be dead by the end of next week!” Now to me this would be serious stuff, that statement was always followed by “but he’ll be happier when he’s gone!”

“Why mum?”

“Because I said so”, well that scared the living daylights out of me, to be told that not only he would die happy but would be happier when dead, I was only twelve, I mean what did I have to look forward to?

The cure to all illness was a bag of fruit bought from the greengrocers across the road. “I’m going for fruit!” was heard and mum would be off holding her purse bringing back a big bag of fruit. This would consist of apples oranges and grapes, apples and oranges were optional, but the grapes were a must, they cured everyone and everything.

“She’ll be better after these grapes” I tried one once, taking a grape out of a bag lying on the sideboard, when she saw me mum shrieked at the top of her voice, “don’t you dare take grapes from a dying woman’s mouth!”

Won’t they be wasted on her then I thought, to myself, better not say that out loud. But, if I ever got seriously ill all I needed was a big bag of grapes and I will be fine, grapes, the cure-all of the Kirkham’s.

Mr Howell made a remarkable recovery, and was one of the first people in our neighbourhood to take a foreign holiday, Spain was becoming a holiday spot, and Mr and Mrs Howell celebrated his new found health by having a week in the sun.

“That foreign food will kill him, what do you think Mrs Barnes?” “Kill him” Mrs Barnes replied nodding in agreement, Mrs Connell who with her husband owned the chip shop next door was equally adamant, “No fish and chips in Spain Mrs Kirkham, no fish and chips in Spain, he’ll never last”

So it went on, our three very own doctor Kildare’s dreaming of and predicting illness, offering help and condolences in advance to neighbours, buying fruit and waiting for ‘news’. My mum's suspicion of 'foreign food' carried on for many years, maybe for the extent of her life. Shortly after Roz and I were married, I developed Bells palsy, mum came to visit and shouted at Roz as she stormed out of the front door, "if you didn't feed him that foreign muck this wouldn't have happened!'

Our mistake was that we had just offered mum and dad an Italian dinner of spaghetti and meatballs!