Glenn Patterson: Belfast, a brick and the G8 summit

Late last year I had an invitation from the Fermanagh Writers to conduct a workshop in Enniskillen. After much debate, we agreed on 15 June. A couple of weeks later David Cameron announced that the G8 summit would be held in the Lough Erne Resort on the outskirts of Enniskillen on 17 and 18 June. After more discussion, the Fermanagh Writers and I decided to go ahead as planned. After all, wasn't it one of the ideas behind the choice of location for the summit to show that Northern Ireland was open for business?

I spent the day before the event preparing – I would do Jeffrey Eugenides's Middlesex, an extract from The Odyssey and one from The Third Man. Just before I left the house it occurred to me I might need something more. I grabbed Ciaran Carson's Belfast Confetti from the shelf. I texted the organiser, Ken, from the bus: "Daft question, but is there any chance you could lay your hands on a brick?"

Security was evident, but not obtrusive: a roadblock about a mile out of Enniskillen; two tooled-up police officers at the bus station; a few more Land Rovers than might be expected on a Saturday afternoon, but no ring of steel, at least not in the town centre. I was a little disappointed. I had been joking with friends the night before about my going to Enniskillen: imagine all that security for me. What do they think I'm going to do – divulge the secret of fiction?

I got to the venue. There were the 18 Fermanagh Writers; there was the brick – a local brick, said Ken who had brought it, from Fivemiletown. I set it upright on the table in front of me. I did Jeffrey Eugenides on Middlesex, I did The Odyssey and The Third Man. I still had half an hour to go: I'd been right, I did need something more – I needed the brick.

I asked the writers what they could say about it. The responses were more interesting than I'd had in the past. They mentioned materials (cement), texture (roughcast), style (no "frog" or trough for mortar), size (about six inches I had hazarded, for the first time in my life underestimating: it was nine inches), but they indulged in a bit of free association too. One man told a story about a building site he had worked on – two tanned young brickies, and a grumpy old fella on the cement mixer. One woman said the brick reminded her of one of her previous husbands, which sentence, we all agreed, was a story in itself.

Ken informed us that the brick was a reject: he had taken away a load of them once when he was building his house. And The House of Rejected Bricks, we agreed, was possibly the best title any of us had ever heard.

Finally I opened Belfast Confetti and read Ciaran Carson's take on "Brick", a three and a half page prose diptych, the first part an exploration of the word, its cognates and its peculiarly Belfast usages (half-bricks are an ingredient of the rioter's "Belfast confetti", from which the book takes its title), the second part an autobiographical vignette of a childhood spent building miniature cities with his friend Noel.

I lifted the brick from the desk. Any time you think you have nothing to write about, I said, remember this brick. Remember what happens when you bombard it with questions, what it yields up. And that was it; the workshop was over. And of course the Fermanagh Writers made a present to me of the brick. "Let's see how far you get with it," one woman said as we stepped outside. A police car passed. Not a flicker.

Back at the bus station the G4S security man did look at me askance, but said nothing. I had misread the timetable and was an hour early for the bus back to Belfast. I was carrying a nine-inch brick. It was heavy. I decided to stay put. At one stage I parked the brick behind a bench while I went to the toilet. The G4S man looked at me more suspiciously when I walked by without it, more suspiciously still when he passed me sitting on the bench a few minutes later, brick once more on my lap. As the bus pulled in, he approached me. "You might have trouble getting your travelling companion on," he said, not unpleasantly.

"It's a prop," I said, "for a workshop. It's from Fivemiletown."

He shrugged. "It's between you and the driver."

I took out Belfast Confetti just in case, but the driver wanted only to see my ticket: all in order. I sat in the last but one seat, the emergency exit for extra leg-room. Security had grown much more visible. Incoming traffic was backed up on the approach to the town. We passed a convoy of Land Rovers, passed a layby where 20 or so PSNI officers stood around waiting to move up. We passed a filling station with half a dozen large black vehicles, windows tinted, in the forecourt, an even larger black vehicle at their centre, even darker windows.

"There's someone, now," said the man behind me to his (animate) travelling companion. "That's definitely someone." As though he was no one and none of the rest of us anyone either. ("You have a brick," the same man said to me as he got off in Dungannon. "From Fivemiletown," I said, and he gave me a wink.)

My wife had texted to say the police were out in force in Belfast too. We had agreed she would pick me up from the Europa Bus Centre. Besides the G8 and its attendant protests, there was a big Orange parade in east Belfast where we live: roads were closed, local buses diverted. I stood inside the doors of the arcade leading to the station, looking out for the car.

I was holding the brick in the same hand as my phone. I watched a foot patrol, four officers strong, pass south along Great Victoria Street, glancing into bins, into taxis. Ten minutes later, I watched them pass along the street in the opposite direction. A moment after they passed the arcade, a man and woman and their pre-teen daughter came in off the street. The man stared at me, at the brick.

I stepped out on to the pavement and as I did I saw the man talking to the foot patrol, which was turning around, coming back towards me. The officer with the machine gun strolled over, insofar as anyone with a machine gun slung across her midriff can stroll.

"Is it the brick?" I asked. "It is the brick," she said. I told her it was a prop. I told her it was from Fivemiletown. One of the other officers had gone round behind me. "It's a prop," she called to him. I looked over my shoulder. He didn't look as though he was buying it. I turned back to the officer with the machine gun.

"I've been using Ciaran Carson's 'Brick'. You set this on the table at the start and ask people what it is then you read 'Brick' and suddenly it's more than just a brick…"

"The power of education," she said.

"That's right."

She looked at me, weighing all this up. "You're not a protestor then?"

"I'm a writer," I said.

A single nod of the head: clearly the two things in her mind were mutually exclusive, which is one of the more dispiriting aspects of this tale. Over her shoulder I saw our car. I left her talking to the man and woman and their pre-teen daughter. I got into the passenger seat.

"What's with the brick?" my daughter asked.

"Long story," I said.