Building Blocks

I should really have been an architect or perhaps a civil engineer.

In my early, formative years I was always designing or building something, be it out in the garden, in the garage or somewhere in the fields and woods that were within a short bike ride of home.

I was an enthusiastic participant in the usual round of childhood pursuits.

This included making dens amongst the foliage with scavenged and salvaged branches, boughs and debris. The braver souls in my peer group or what we called a gang thought nothing of scrambling up into the lofty heights of big trees to fashion a platform to take a rudimentary arrangement of walls, and partitions under a leafy canopy roof.

For a while our family house was at the end of a cul de sac onto a farmer's field.

In the harvest season we could collect up the loose straw or even better, and after the tractors and balers had left, man-handle or rather struggle with full bound rectangles of stiff, warm and comforting smelling straw to make rectangular strongholds, baddies hide outs or anything at all only restricted in our actions and imaginations by the inevitable and fast approaching bed time. We would be summoned by our impatient Mother's leaving in our reluctant wake a trail of red bailer twine and half chewed corn kernels.

The large agricultural field, as had been pre-destined for many years due to its location on the edge of town, was soon under tarmac roads and rapidly emerging foundation slabs as a large national builder moved in to erect a few hundred houses and bungalows.

Straw and wood were abandoned in favour of good old bricks, foam slag blocks and all manner of materials which were strewn about the site ready for assembly.

It must have been both mystifying and frustrating to the construction workers every monday morning given that each weekend saw the relocation of just about everything not cemented into position, bolted down, or secured in the wire mesh surrounds of the site compound through the activities of the hordes of small children from the surrounding estates.

We drew a line at attempting to start up the dumper trucks and smaller yellow liveried excavators although they did provide quite a playground attraction to be clambered over and of course, fallen off.

One of the younger lads from a posh house up the street, a very quiet and reserved individual was caught by one of the parents, chalks in hand, having written some very rude and obscene comments all over the fresh brickwork of a part built residence. Those who could read it dare not attempt to explain its meaning to those who could not. Suffice to say, he had some issues. I often wonder in what institution or governmental department he ended up in.

Structures in the aforementioned straw and wood, although a bit neolithic and crude, were at least fairly harmless.

In fashioning out of masonry we were entering the realms of health and safety but we were not to know or appreciate it at the time.

Creation of a good bolt hole involved stacking bricks.

We were pretty experienced at bonding patterns not from any study of the art of bricklaying but through hour upon hour of pushing together plastic building bricks such as Lego, Sticklebricks or good old wooden ones.

However, the golden rules of overlapping over each or regular courses necessary to keep the likes of a Lego wall strong were simply discarded or ignored when it came to using the real thing.

The additional factor of laying the bricks on rough and uneven ground did not provide anywhere near a firm base and so after only a few horizontal lines had been laid down there would be a dramatic instability.

This could be countered in theory by erecting further buttresses in brick or shoring up in timber offcuts or delivery pallets. In this way any structure began to not only wobble dangerously but also start to spread out extensively on all sides.

We competed for the bragging rights for the most ambitious structure and there were some magnificent edifices and architectural miracles.

Unfortunately the openings by which to crawl into any internal spaces were narrow and cramped notwithstanding imposing a significant hazard of being buried alive under a dead weight of commons and engineering blues.

The pace of the development of the residential site was remarkable.

As soon as the properties were built the new families moved in and our unrestricted access and blatant abuse of materials was doomed to be short lived.

I remember it as being a memorable time, in actuality just one summer, although it felt like a lifetime.

I look back on that period with affection. I had enjoyed the challenge of working with bricks and blocks albeit at some risk to life and limb. That experience was certainly a factor with the benefit of hindsight to my current career in the built environment which still, on the balance of things, gives me a thrill today.