First and Last Traverse of the Fireplace

I followed Perec’s advice, but I didn’t expect to make the first and last traverse of my next-door-neighbour’s fireplace. I’ve lived next-door to an unexplored climbing wall – slept a brick or so away from virgin rock – for years without knowing it. And to think all this time I’ve been pulling (on a bar) in my hall, I could have just popped next door and hung on my neighbour’s wall.  But it’s gone now - the firewall - I had to help him dismantle it, stone by stone. Degas’ The Ballet Rehearsal hangs there now.

I wonder, would it be perverse to blow-up the fireplace traverse – life-size - and paper my sitting-room wall with it (on the other side of the wall on which it once really existed), like a mural? And why not, I smoke a lot? I rather like the idea of a fireplace leaving home - moving house. But looking at it now: I don't think so. The rubber-gloves suggest surgery. The removed chimneybreast looks too much like an operation for throat cancer.