Robert Samuel from East Germany, Photo by Cecilia MacaulayFor so long I have desired this, and its finally happened.
A man of excellence, strength and impeccable taste turned up at my house, and with his bare hands and brawn re-laid my bricks. My regimented, bored bricks.
The first day he tossed away the bluestone steps, and layed a delicately fan-shaped array of finely chiseled bricks.
Then he went to they gym.
Bricklayers shirt.
The next day my mate Frank the Creative turned up with a lend of all the right tools, and my landlord did something landlords are not usually known for, but that's just because there's a trick to it. After seeing the quality of Robert's stairs volunteered money for the materials.
When Permie Paul Bonjoirno visited and saw the action in the garden, he commented "It does my head in seeing a German lay bricks. Aren't they're meant to be busy making Mercedes?"
He's a high-tech brickie though, and found a way to video-skype me while adjusting the brick patterns, while I went to teach balcony gardening in Queensland.
Each day photos like this would turn up, asking
"Are my curves okay?"
Robert, your curves are great.
30s Argentian wrought iron chair, christmas lillies, one white brick, all on currents of brick swirl.
Fanning and swerving, placed as if a former dental technician had laid them.
As was the case.
A prize for the best caption for this photo of Robert, Rugsy the Norwegian Forest Cat, and the beer I told him was appropriate for brick layers.
About RobertRobert is a vegetarian. For him carrots are something like water, I've never seen such capacity for eating carrots before. He likes to do things perfectly, and happily. When they are less than perfect in his eyes, he just pulls them out, says 'I'll try again', and does it over.
By day 7 he decided 'Cecilia, no more changes', and worked like a he was striking the fear of God into those bricks. Then he finished, and the beautiful smile, the joyful chuckling returned. He likes pink, likes flowers, and likes talking about his next girlfriend. Not his ex girlfriend, his Next Girlfriend - he met her on the internet, arranged for falling in love to happen while he was wwoofing down here in Australia, and will meet her in real in a few weeks.
I hope she adores him as much as we all do.
About bricksThis old dude, typical eccentric New Zealand style, spend a few decades of his life collecting discarded broken bricks, and layed them in these organic, flowing shapes, block after block till the whole street was awash with wild swirling bricks. It was the highlight of my visit to Christchurch a few years ago. By then the fashionable people had moved in, trying to borrow the eros, the vision that this old fellow had, energizing him every every day, never fading.
I caught it.
Here's the 'Before' photo of my back courtyard. The dinner table had just been brought sensibly back inside, leaving a chess game of extra-guest stools, on the seriously unimaginative, yet very nice bricks.
Why are bricks great? Well, unlike concrete, they let rain soak into the ground for the plants.
But the best reason is that you can haul them home, for free.
When I made the
Elwood water catching Garden, I was left with a pile of lovely bricks nobody would buy, or even take for free. I drove around the neighbourhood looking for piles of bricks, and asking the rennovation gangs that put them there to if they would take my bricks off my hands. Instead, they tried persuading me to take their own expensive-to-dispose-of bricks off Their hands.
Just go for a cruise, get a big man with a van, and a swirly brick dream can be part of your life too.
Thank-you New Zealand for the inspiration, thank you Robert for the strong mind and spirit, and thank you Lon who's cooking kept Robert going. Thank you Graham the landlord, and Frank for the brick cutter.
Like raising a child, it takes a whole village to get your bricks swirly. But if the desire is strong enough, it happens.
