Treedom

Where I grew up was where they made bricks. Before my actual time. The soil upon which I grew up on was described as "that stiff retentive clay which possesses the very negative virtue of being best adapted for the making of the bilious yellow bricks that have rendered the whole of suburban London dingy and dispiriting'. That's where I grew up. On brickfields. More brick than field. Fields holding up the Estates made out of bricks from the very land they smother. Before my actual time bricks was everything where I grew up. Barges brought rough dust from London's dustbins down the canal to my home town. London's rubbish-dust was then sieved for the properties needed to make the best bricks. They worked in gangs, the brickmakers. Summer gangs. Brutal work. Exhausted the land. Must be hollow down there. Anyway along came gravel, the not so hip byproduct, the industry killer and that was the end of the bricks.

Growing up I swam in gravel pits and I climbed trees.