原创 Dancing merrily around a volcano

When I was a young boy -- say around six years old circa 1963 -- my mom and dad and I would go to the seaside for a week in the summer every year. We were accompanied by my Uncle Eric ("Bing"), my Auntie Joyce, and my cousin Anna, who was (and still is) a year older than yours truly.

My Uncle Bing was an incredible artist. He was a master at almost anything he set his hand to, including sketching, painting, and sculpting in both wood and stone. With regard to painting, although he did have the occasional foray into oils, his watercolors were absolutely breathtaking. I'm currently visiting my mom and little bro' in the UK. I'm writing this column sitting at my brother's dining table. As I look up, I can see three of Bing's watercolors on the walls. My wife (Gina the Gorgeous) and I also boast some of his pictures in our own home.

Bing was a man of great and interesting enthusiasms. I remember when he took up astronomy and decided that the only telescope worth its salt was a reflecting model, which uses mirrors, as opposed to a refracting instrument, which uses lenses that can cause chromatic aberration (the failure of the differently colored light rays to come to a common focus). Furthermore, Bing determined that the only mirrors that were good enough for his telescope were ones he ground himself, so he spent countless months sitting in the shed at the bottom of the garden grinding and polishing his mirrors.

I also recall the time when Bing became enthused with yoga. When we were on the beach, with Anna and myself running around making sandcastles, and mom, dad, and Aunty Joyce reclining in deckchairs, Bing would be "standing" upside down on the sand balancing on his head while performing the Sirshasana (Head Stand) yoga exercise for up to 30 minutes at a time. It has to be said that this was exceptionally helpful when it came to locating and identifying our family group amongst the throng when returning from a plunge in the sea.

Sadly, Bing passed away a few years ago. This year my Auntie Joyce turned a very spry 90 years old. In an exchange of emails around her birthday, one of the topics that arose was a type of camp stove called a Sirram Volcano Kettle, of which Bing used to be a proud owner. Now, this wasn't a rinky-dinky little kettle intended for backpacking -- this was a manly-man kettle intended for serious tea and coffee brewing activities.

 

Here's the way it worked. First of all, the outer shell -- as seen above -- is like a huge double-walled aluminum thermos flask. Observe the "spout" pointing up and to the right. Before we set out to the beach, Bing would pour 1.6 liters of water into this and then seal it with a cork stopper (1.6 liters is about 2.83 Imperial pints or 3.38 US pints).

When we arrived at our destination, Bing would twist this outer shell and lift it away to reveal a steel base upon which rested another aluminum container as shown below. This second container held a further 1.6 liters of water (we're big tea drinkers in England).

 

Lifting away the inner container left the steel base standing alone as depicted below.

 

The next step would be to flip the steel base over as seen in the image below. Observe the hole in the bottom -- this is where the air enters when you fire-up the beast.

 

Bing would now crumple up a few sheets of his daily newspaper and stuff them into the base, and then place the outer shell on top of the base as shown below. This was the point where Anna and I were dispatched to scavenge for twigs and slivers of driftwood on the beach.

 

When we returned, Bing would set a match to the newspaper and start feeding our twigs and driftwood into the hole in the top of the stove. The reason this stove has "Volcano" in its name is that flames roar out the top like a miniature jet engine. You would not believe how hot this gets and how quickly the water boils.

Now, if you are used to taking your vacations in places like the American Gulf Coast, you will doubtless have quaffed many a cool drink or ice-cold beer, and you may be just a tad puzzled as to why one would covet a boiling hot cup of tea or coffee on the beach. Trust me, if you ever spend a week basking on an English beach, you too will favor hot drinks -- the hotter the better -- especially at the height of what we laughingly call the summer. In a similar vein, the fact that the Sirram Volcano Kettle is almost totally impervious to the effects of wind and/or rain is also tremendously advantageous when you are holidaying in England.

My mom, little bro', and I went out to visit Auntie Joyce yesterday. After a rather nice pub lunch, we returned to Joyce's home to spend the afternoon quaffing tea, munching chocolate cake, reminiscing about days gone by, and listening to Auntie Joyce regaling us with a series of naughty jokes (some of them brought a flush to my cheeks... and my face went red as well).

Earlier in the day, Joyce had rooted the Volcano Kettle out of its hiding place in the shed at the bottom of the garden and brought it into the house for us to look at. You can only imagine my surprise and delight when she asked if I would like to have it for my very own.

This really is rather special. It's a treasured artifact from my childhood. I mean, we're talking about a kettle that is more than half a century old, that's still in the prime of its life, and that looks almost as good as it did when it was young (much like myself, now I come to think about it).

Sad to relate, this beauty is too large for me to pack, and I’d look silly carrying it on my knee for the 8-hour plane ride home (it would clash with my Hawaiian shirt), so sometime today or tomorrow I'm going to ship it to America. After it has arrived, whenever I'm sitting on our back deck at the weekend relaxing and reading a book, I'm going to brew up the water for a cup of tea or coffee using my Volcano kettle and spend a few moments reminiscing to myself about the happy days of my youth.