Quick confession: we still haven’t decided on which model of woodburner to insert into the fireplace in the main living area of Corner Cottage. It’s not like we haven’t continued researching the possibilities – which are numerous – but various issues have contributed to an ongoing state of indecision.

So in the meantime, it’s open fires in the hearth every night. That huge delivery of logs has ensured sufficient fuel for a nightly conflagration that ensures a nice cosy atmosphere – and another minor obsession for your faithful author.

Believe me, it hasn’t escaped me that a dominant theme of this blog seems to be various kinds of obsession: weeds, painting the bathroom, finials, banana bread . . . there’s a tendency to focus minutely on things that probably don’t warrant it. It’s a good way of creating rationalisations for doing fun stuff: that there’s a deeper meaning to things – if you really, really look at them.

So given that there’s a nightly fire to be laid, it follows that some overthinking is in order. In this case, we know that for all-night heating, a couple of very large logs slowly cremating themselves in the hearth is the answer, so it’s all about how we start off: what arrangement of kindling and small timbers will produce a bed of coals that will sustain this process?

As I mentioned, our initial attempts were of the boy scout ilk: a tepee-like structure, built around a small ball of crumpled-up paper – little twigs on the inside, getting progressively larger toward the outside, with sufficient space in between for the air to pass through and do its fiery work.

As time has gone on, this basic scheme has done us proud: I’ve massively increased the number and size of the constituent pieces; placed pinecones in the centre to sustain the initial phase of combustion (works well); used sticks and twigs from the garden waste to carry the nascent flames further and faster; and various combinations of bark, pine needles and other naturally-occurring combustibles to sustain and amplify the initiating spark.

But . . . I don’t know . . . after a while there’s only so much you can do with a basic tepee. Whichever way you look at it, it’s fundamentally the same. All the experimentation is really fiddling about with details – the underlying principle is unchanged. It works, but it doesn’t – if you’ll excuse the pun – really light my fire.

So this last week, I’ve been looking on 5pm (which is fire-time) as an occasion to throw conservatism to the wind, turn all those tepee assumptions on their heads, and do something different. What if – let’s indulge in some unfettered speculation here – what if we put the big logs down first?

And then – just spitballing now – we create a stack of fast-burning kindling in the centre, which would collapse inwards, creating a concentrated bed of pulsating embers that would keep the big chunks going? Something like this?

This we called the Ziggurat of Fire. The outer edifice comprised a criss-cross of reasonably robust dimensions, with a secondary kindling structure inside not unlike the boy scout tepee. It burnt really well, but due to the robustness of the cross-members, steadfastly refused to collapse in on itself, delaying the creation of the requisite bed of pulsating embers until quite late in the evening.

I was also worried that the collapse might occur in such a way that the embers spilled out all over the wooden floor – initiating a conflagration on an altogether larger and more expensive scale.

So the next night, a modified version emerged. We didn’t name this one – but the idea was to better control the collapse within the confines of the hearth, using smaller and faster-burning pieces of kindling. In addition, four central pinecones would provide the initial burst of flame, ensuring rapid and evenly-spread ignition.

And I’m happy to report that it all went pretty much exactly as planned. As it happened, we had something of an impromptu dinner party (Ottolenghi’s Rice Kofte – ohh my) and it gratified my pyromaniac heart that people were drawn to stand with their backs to the fire, gently toasting their buttocks, as the conversation flitted hither and thither.

This is all very much work in progress, of course. While all these rectangles and triangles we certainly create the requisite open spaces for healthy combustion to occur, they’re a bit aesthetically severe, don’t you think? Some curves would be nice. Let’s see if picking through the woodpile tomorrow may reveal some bendy logs that lend themselves to a more organic structure . . . I’m thinking gothic flying buttresses (but please don’t even mention Notre Dame).

Too much time on my hands? Whatever gave you that impression? This is absorbing, critical stuff. That woodburner can wait a little longer, as far as I’m concerned, until my work here is done.