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Chapter 239
The Bricks

Funny things bricks. I remember the Tate Gallery before it got all modern on us. When we were just about knee high, there was a huge controversy about one of its exhibitions. The Bricks. A pile of bricks. None of us were ever big art people with a capital a, but we did subscribe to the concept of art being whatever you can get away with. We also liked the idea you could fool some of the people some of the time. It was not for nothing that our favourite film was The Rebel, the one with Tony Hancock in. So we liked the idea of the controversy about The Bricks.

Bricks. What do you think about when someone says bricks? No, please don’t say Pink Floyd and The Wall. If there was one thing that was guaranteed to get us going it was the likes of Pink Floyd and the classic rock acts. We hated lots of things and lots of people, but we really hated dinosaurs. The only ones ever worth mentioning were the ones in Crystal Palace park. They were great. But the rest of them? Pah. Your Pink Floyds, your Led Zeps, your Eagles, your Supertramps. Dinosaurs. We were totally against them. We were supposed to wipe them out, and start all over again. We were meant to have replaced their solidity and certainty with our strangeness and chance. But they’ve persisted down all the days. Desist, we say. Kick over the statues, as someone once said.

There’s a nice story about bricks. Before I share it, just by way of background it is worth mentioning that The Fair One once put in some time doing a temporary clerical job for the local health authority. Their offices were based in a wing of a then very much open and very imposing Victorian mental hospital, which was an education in itself. This was before all the care in the community stuff. We used to listen to some of the stories, and we’d wonder exactly who it was that was meant to be mad. Like the story one of the top administrators told everyone. He and some of his colleagues. They were having a board meeting. Heavy going. The door opens. A patient comes in. Climbs on to the board table. Does a quick tap dance. Gets down off the table. Curtsies to one and all. Leaves the room. Not a word has been spoken. Nary a word was spoken afterwards. Just some shuffling of papers and clearing of throats. As the top administrator said to anyone and everyone, there wasn’t a soul in that room who hadn’t secretly longed to do something like that. Quite.

There’s another story our Fair One loved to tell. It was a particular favourite of The Redhead’s family. This has a certain significance, as you will see. Anyway, this story. It was about one of the more stuck up administrators. An accountant, of course. He was completely charmless. I assume he was good at his job, but no one liked him. His peers or the patients. And they had some fun with him. A group of patients got together. They lifted his horrible little car and moved it to a new parking space a few feet to one side. Now he was one of those creatures of habit who parked his car in exactly the same spot every day, so he knew something was up. Anyway this went on for several days. He’d roar up, park his car, and tootle off to play with his figures. Later in the day along came the patients, lifted his horrible little, and moved it to a new parking space a few feet to one side. Fantastic. This went on for a good few days too. And our charmless number cruncher was doing his nut, while everyone else was having a good old laugh, at his expense.

Anyway, The Redhead’s family loved that story. I’m certain too it was at the back of their minds when there was a fresh skirmish in an ongoing turf war in the world of contractors, construction and highway maintenance. A rival firm that was really getting the goat of The Redhead’s family was poaching people, paying premiums if they defected, and that sort of thing. Casual labour is one thing, but there’s always a call for skilled specialists and supervisors, and The Family could ill afford to lose some of its trusted lieutenants. After one particular high profile defection, The Redhead’s da decided to have some fun, and arranged for rather a large delivery of bricks to be removed from a site the rivals were preparing, and for the bricks to be placed elsewhere. Petty? Perhaps. But it taught us some valuable lessons.

When The Redhead’s da told us with a huge grin what The Family intended to do, we thought he was mad. You can’t just do that in broad daylight, we said. Oh can’t we now, asked The Redhead’s da? Don’t you boys know by now that when you put on a donkey jacket and a hardhat you becomes invisible? And he was right. A lorry, a group of workmen, a pile of bricks being loaded. Who would give it a second thought? Naturally no one did. And as befitted The Family’s sense of fun, they just went in, loaded up the bricks, and moved them a mile or two downtown to an area of wasteland where everyone suspected apartments for yuppies would be built at some stage. So, again, nobody much would think too long and hard about a delivery of bricks on that particular piece of wasteland would they? Smart.

In certain construction circles the disappearance of the bricks was a big deal, and it made for an amusing footnote in the local paper, but strangely enough the new location of the bricks didn’t really register on anyone’s radar. Bricks are bricks. Another valuable lesson from The Family? Indeed. If you’re wanting to be hiding something, then stick it somewhere so obvious no one will notice. The shocking thing was that some local folk were helping themselves to some of the bricks from the wasteland. Ah the spirit of free enterprise. Well, when we realised what was happening The Redhead decided we should have some fun of our own before it was too late. Why don’t we, he asked, capture the spirit of Carl Andre? We looked at each other, then at The Redhead. Carl Andre compadre? Yeah, remember the guy with the bricks. Right, we said. Look, we can use some of the bricks to build a sculpture or something, said our Redhead. Oh we can, can we? And how exactly are we going to do that, we asked?

Daft question really when you realise the family our Redhead came from. Practical people they were. Next thing we knew The Redhead had ‘borrowed’ the necessary from The Family, allocated tasks to us his loyal labourers, and before we knew it he’d built a nice, well, I suppose it was a wishing well. And in The Redhead’s wonderfully twisted logic a wishing well somehow symbolised hope and was sort of associated with Frank Sinatra singing Three Coins in the Fountain. You know, which one will the fountain bless? That one. His da’s favourite song. One his da would sob his heart out to, on a good day. So the wishing well. Well, we had to admire his handiwork. Especially his crowning glory. A gnome. Borrowed from The Family’s stores. Seated on the wall of the well. Dangling his fishing rod into the waters. Hoping to be blessed too, no doubt. What was it we said about art being whatever you can get away with?

There were bricks left over. We made good occasional use of these. I say occasional, but we were actually quite disciplined. A brick a day to keep the blues away. A brick posted daily to one of the horribly all pervasive multi-national combines taking over the world. Very kindly they all seemed to have freepost addresses, where postage was paid on receipt. Now I have no idea how much a brick a day cost these combines, but it kept us amused. A brick with a card. A card that said: Make bricks without straw. Signed The Outside of Everything. I wonder what became of those bricks? They were probably turned to gold, knowing the ways of the world. Our wishing well is now long gone of course. Replaced in no time by apartments, which now have paint peeling on the outside. Not sure what conclusion to draw on that particular wall.

© 2008 John Carney
Illustration © 2008 Alistair Fitchett