Giraffes Would Make Good Firemen

Re the last blog (First and Last Traverse of the Fireplace): I’m going to offer my next-door-neighbour this ‘lost’ photograph of a headless giraffe, to hang in place of his missing chimneybreast. Look at the legs. They have all the ballet-grace of a Degas. And anyway, this ‘lost’ giraffe is the perfect replacement for a stone fireplace. I’ve counted 227 stones on the fireplace, and I’ve counted 129 patches (is that the right word for them?) on the giraffe. Now the giraffe’s lower-legs are blurred (he’s moving out of the picture), but that works in our favour, as there must be more than a hundred or so tiny patches beneath each knee. But all is not lost. If you count the number of dark stones on the wall of the barn in the background – only counting the stones as dark as the dark patches on the giraffe - the figure comes to 98. Add that to the giraffe’s 129 and you have a total of 227, the same amount as the number of stones that make up the fireplace. Giraffes would make good firemen, too.