Lighting a bonfire

After clearing a narrow gap of garden, between the extension and the railwaymen's hut - full of loops of ivy, tricksy brambles, young buddleia shoots springing from the remnants of a log store, waist high feathery weeds - Anne suggests I light a bonfire

I have always loved making and lighting fires - as a skinny boy I delighted in striking matches, watching yellow flames dance over dry grass - I especially loved lighting bangers, smelling that strange gunpowder smell - so I screw up newpaper pages, inserting the serious commentaries, reviews and letters amongst the lengths of cut brambles, heaped nettle stems, fallen leaves, torn up shrubs, rosemary branches and leyandii branches cut from the hedge by Max the gardener 

Despite the dampness, the leyandii branches with their potent resin act as natural firelighters - the flames flare up - I keep on laying on the leyandii - but I'm fascinated more by the coiling plumes of smoke - bluish white billows - snaking out of the pile of brambles, nettles and other shorn greenery - twisting in the faintest of breezes - lit up, from time to time, as the leyandii branches ignite, by yellow flags of flame - I can hear cracklings, hissing and then faint whistling from inside the bonfire

I lean on my old rake, looking up at the darkening sky - Anne continues trimming the tangled overgrown rosemary bushes by the french windows - I can see the light of the falling sun, shining through the billows of smoke

The next morning, there's a circle of damp ash instead of a bonfire - but  the ashes under the topmost layer are still dry and powdery, even warm