THIS week smoke rose from our chimney for the first time since we moved into our home 12 years ago.

We rejoiced, opening a bottle of wine to mark the occasion.

Living without a fire for all that time has been painful. For each of those 12 years, every autumn and winter, I have moaned and groaned, mourning the lack of the flickering flames, the roar and spit of the fire.

Worse still, we did not even have a chimney breast in the living room, this having been removed by the previous owners.

Every time I saw a house with a smoking chimney I would feel envious and frustrated. Our sooty fire irons, coal scuttle and log basket sat abandoned in the garage.

Our last home - a Victorian house - had fireplaces in almost every room, and in cold weather we lit a roaring fire in the living room. In autumn and winter there are few things more lovely to look forward to at the end of the day than the fire, and not having anywhere to put one was terrible.

I grew up in a home with two lovely open fires. Every autumn my dad chopped huge logs, many of which were fallen branches he carried back from woodland walks.

We had a brick coal bunker which had a small opening in the front where you stuck the shovel. I remember going out on winter nights to fill the coal bucket and heave it back to the hearth.

We roasted chestnuts on the fire and during power cuts - which we frequently had in those days - we heated pans of water to make tea.

My parents still live in that house, and still light both fires in autumn and winter, though the coal bunker is long gone.

My obsession with having a fire prompted a friend to buy me a DVD last Christmas: The Fireplace. The blurb on the cover reads: ‘Hand your partner a glass, raise your own, look each other in the eye, dim the lights, play the DVD….sit down together and talk…while the firewood is crackling, the resin is fizzing and the fire is hissing and roaring.’

It is simply a fire, burning in a hearth - with a crackling fire soundtrack. It was a great gift, and gave us a good laugh, but of course it was no substitute for the real thing, and it made my longing even worse.

With a growing family, we could not afford the building work necessary to have a fireplace installed, yet despite this I continued to collect firewood from skips and wherever else I could find it. To my husband’s dismay, the pile of timber I lugged home outgrew the shed and had to be stacked up outside.

This year, we had finally saved enough to have the work done. Encouraged by friends and neighbours, we opted for an easier-to-install stove - not quite an open fire, but near enough, and, I am told, far more economic, and you don’t have to leap forward every few seconds to retrieve smouldering embers from the rug.

When we light the stove the room is transformed. It is warm and comforting to sit in front of the blazing fire. It throws out so much heat that we have to open the windows, and consumes so much wood that my husband is now glad I scavenged so many logs. We will be needing plenty more.

We love it - but it is an even bigger hit with our cat, who lies along the lip of the hearth, in seventh heaven.