When you consider how smokey a newly cut log can be if put on the fire, it is no wonder that were problems with smoke having to be channelled out of prehistoric huts, medieval kitchens and halls.  Those quaint but draughty holes in the roof of their shelters were essential otherwise folk would have choked to death.   These days we are not allowed to put ‘green’ logs on fires or woodburning stoves anymore.  For many years these were the cheaper end of the log market but now they are banned from sale.  Kindling was the way forward when I was a child.  We used to be sent out at weekends into the massive wood behind our house.  We had a special wide basket  that Dad fixed up with his old leather belt, and into that we tossed lots of small branches and fat twigs to be completely dried out in a nice warm workroom until literally tinder dry and then carefully stored so they were nowhere near the actual bombfire itself.