Photo © David Gillanders

Brick

Roddy Woomble

1982

In the summer of 1982 I lived in a town called Cournon d'Auvergne in the middle of France. My parents owned a Volkswagen camper van and we'd idle away the weekends and holidays driving around the French and Swiss Countryside, stopping and setting up camp wherever we felt like it. I was six years old. It was the perfect way to spend summertime.

The van was compact and slept the whole family. There was a tent that attached onto its side, giving us extra room and somewhere to sit if it started to rain. The tent was heavy and clumsy to put up and always worked my father up into an aggravated fluster. Often the ground was hard and getting the tent pegs into it was even harder. Somewhere along the way he had picked up an old red brick to help him hammer in the pegs. The brick travelled with us in the bottom of the tent bag, and became an integral part in setting up camp. I took an instant liking for battering tent pegs into the ground with the brick. I was in charge of brick's other job too, which consisted of him being tied loosely to the bottles of milk and lemonade so that they wouldn't float away when we left them cooling in the river. ... (continues)