My fireplace in Motovun dominates the ground floor of the house. By comparison with the fireplace I had in Reading, it is an impressive structure. Jutting out of the wall into a large space on three levels, apparently Venetian in design, it is the first thing anyone notices upon entering the house. The bottom of the funnel, the narrow top of which reaches nearly as far as the tall ceiling, is almost as tall as I am, and it is almost as wide as my arms spread out. And so is the low stone base. Which is why I had prepared myself quite carefully for my first dabbling with fire in my new house. As the only hardware store in town did not have an axe I could use to make kindling, which is indispensable with the thick logs I have acquired a short while ago, I bought several boxes of gasoline-suffused briquettes to help me start the fire. Thus I measure my progress in terms of these boxes, which are easily available in several stores here. The first time I used an entire box; the second time I needed only half of it, but I threw the rest into the fire for good measure; the third time I made do with a quarter of a box. To my relief, it took me only five days to learn how to start and keep up a fire. Now I face a much harder problem, though. It will take me a few months to learn how to spread the logs I got over the whole winter.