We didn’t have central heating so to have hot water the fire had to be lit. There was a little water boiler at the back of the fireplace. First, yesterday’s ashes had to be removed and there was a special bucket and shovel for that as sometimes they were still hot and had to be handled with extreme caution.

The grate would be removed and the fire pit would be swept clean - and I mean clean. She had a special brush for that. With years of use a little point had formed on it for getting into the corners. That pit would be spotless and I often wondered was it worth the trouble as it got just as bad when the fire was lit.

Next the rolled-up paper. When daddy got sick with emphysema he couldn’t go far so he would roll the newspapers up very tight for the morning as he sat by the fireside listening to the radio and smoking his pipe. Then a few little sticks on top. You could buy a small bundle for a penny and the “Stick Man” used to go door-to-door.

The coal, it had to be fairly fine to start with. The coal was delivered by, yes, ‘The Coal Man”. The standing order was two bags of coal and a bag of slack, which was very fine coal. This was used to ‘Bank Up” the fire at night. Sometimes it would be still going in the morning - hence the special bucket for the ashes.

Banking was an art in itself as the slack had to be ‘dampened’ (soaked) just right or you could kill the fire altogether and waken up to a cold house.

The coal would arrive by horse and cart and be rushed up to the coal hole by a very black man (covered with coal dust) with a coal bag folded like a monk’s hood over his head to protect his back. The coal hole was on the second landing opposite the two bins and beside the toilet where the gas meter was.

On top of the coal there was always a small hand sledgehammer. Some of the coal had streaks of stone it and had to be walloped at length before it broke.

To augment the coal supply I was sometimes dispatched to the Gasyard pushing an old pram to get a bag of coke. Coke was the by-product from the burnt coal that was used in the manufacture of gas.

You paid the money, got a chit and a man then weighed the coke in a large metal scoop that filled the big coal bag you had brought. He would then put it in the pram for you to wheel home and sometimes it was too much for the pram. It was a great day for me when I was strong enough to take the coke up the stairs and dump it in the coalhole all by myself.

When the fire was lit and the kettle put on, the front step was next.

The tradition at that time was to “Redden the step” and this served two purposes. One it looked nice. Two, everybody else did it and it gave mammy a chance to pass the time of day with passers-by and chat to the neighbors.

This must have been ‘woman’s work’ as I can’t for the life of me ever remember seeing a man do it.

We lived on Sackville Street at the time in a big four-storey house with a green door.