Those weekend getaways to the countryside are a good reminder of how pleasant it is to shower with hot water, without intervals of ice-cold water, and no lizards on the ceiling. Perhaps we don’t value the comforts of the big city enough. True, the countryside provides a soothing silence in the evenings but, in return, the water doesn’t leave an aftertaste of chlorine and, in general, it appears obvious that everything could do with a good vacuuming. Especially those dusty roads that leave your car looking like a croquette. And of course, there is plenty of lettuce to be found too. I recently discovered something incredible — in places like this, food grows directly in the ground, without plastic wrapping. If a health inspector were to show up here, they would close the plot for lack of hygiene. I came to the country to spend a few hours forgetting about politicians and was greeted with the usual hostility. No hot water, cold worthy of a forensic laboratory, and the wet chimney laughing at my matches. While battling these hardships for yet another year — at least for the moment — I am inclined to answer the question that readers always ask me if we meet on the street: “How do you manage to light the fireplace in your country house in winter”? Making a fire is much easier when you’re trying to do something else. For example, smoking while sitting on a haystack, fixing a short circuit, or throwing butane bottles down an elevator shaft. On the other hand, it becomes a chore when you’re trying to set the fireplace on fire. Flames are fickle. But almost everything in a country house answers to strange whims. I’ve been wrestling with the heater for two hours, unjamming rusty locks, killing poisonous spiders, and giving a heart massage to a mouse lying in cardiac arrest on the living room couch. There’s also a drooling cat by the window, contemplating the scene. And, if my eyes do not deceive me, I have some goats crammed in the front door, nibbling on the grass sprouting between the wood planks. If the thing has horns and talks like Ayatollah Khamenei, it’s a goat. You know you’ve lost control of your cottage when you can’t tell it apart from the rest of nature without the help of a weed-whacker. As a journalist, I experience a particular Freudian pleasure in lighting fireplaces with tons of paper balls made from newspapers. I often use my own articles, which, by the way, burn great. The Good Fireman’s Handbook says that for a real fire to be produced, a combustible substance, a combustion agent, and an activation agent must interact. The price of fuel is always too expensive, so you can substitute it perfectly well with wood. I don’t know what the combustion agent is. Try throwing some hamburgers wrapped in silver foil into the chimney. As for the activation agent, it is usually the fire itself. Hence the old firemen’s manual falls into a philosophical dilemma at this point — does it take fire to make fire? I’m very much in favor of making firewood from a fallen tree. Otherwise, I’d have to go out to the garden and take an axe to the lemon tree and I’m not sure I could set fire to that, with the sap still flowing through its veins, or whatever it is that flows through the tree that Biden runs soymilk through. For a good chimney fire, the ideal is to combine small chipped pieces of kindling with thicker logs. You can use any of Paul Krugman’s fat books as a model for the log size. The rustics say that pine cones help to light a fire. No one has proven it scientifically. It doesn’t matter. I always throw a bunch of them into the fireplace because it amuses me to see how they explode and how the embers jump onto my shirt. And my tailor is delighted with the results of my “city-slicker visiting the country” hobbies. Now they sell fire pistons in the Chinese bazaar (whose clientele is limited to terrorists and chimney lighters). With them, everything burns so easily that you can do without the rest. I don’t use them because I enjoy burning my fingers as I pinch each match trying to get a couple of wet sticks to ignite. I hear on the radio that Biden has decided to set fire to everything in Ukraine and, frankly, I’m thinking of asking him to send one of those cucumbers up my chimney to speed up the process. All these discomforts I type out here, on the edge of the night, are nothing compared to the dawn in a few hours when the awakening sun fills everything with light, and the little birds replace the Twitter (aka X) chirping to wake me up. Seriously, there are real birds here. The kind that chirp, chirp, and can’t be retweeted. No one can find me here, except the surrounding neighbors who are delighted not to find me, and the sheep, who speak a more elaborate language than most politicians. Here we are only interested in what is important: the cheese, the steaks, and the wine. And don’t let the fireplace go out, for God’s sake, or instead of a column I’ll have to send The American Spectator a cold obituary. Mine. READ MORE from Itxu Díaz: Make Government Small Again Ten Priorities for Trump’s New Administration A Long Letter of Condolence to All the Losers The post Escaping Politics to the Serene Countryside … It’s Too Cold appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.