Just after he'd finished sitting his final O-level, my brother came home and announced that he was hitch-hiking with a group of friends to the south of France. They must have been plotting this for some time, because we lived in a small town outside Derby and the most exotic holiday destination du jour was Benidorm. He may as well have told my mum he was joining the Foreign Legion, because she let out a low moan and collapsed into a chair.
And then, all of a sudden, her maternal instincts kicked in and she spent the rest of the evening sewing false patches on to his jeans. Into these she stuffed single banknotes from his holiday savings - so that if he was ever robbed by some road-raged maniac at knifepoint, he would at least have these secret caches to fall back on. He nonchalantly rolled up his bright orange survival bag and Michelin map of Europe and steeled himself for a few nights' roughing it by the side of the road before the real summer of fun began. I was two years younger, but even I thought he'd taken leave of his senses.
A cloud hung over our Midlands home all that summer, even though it was 1976 and there was a heatwave. And then one morning in late August he floated back into the house after six weeks away, a different person. He'd grown his hair, his sun-tanned face sported a downy beard, and he was wearing a collarless shirt offset by a red neckerchief. He looked a bit French and appeared quite sophisticated even as he related the edited tales of a summer in which he'd seemingly turned feral. He'd been camping outside a big house in a small country town, swimming in the local river, drinking cheap red wine, eating baguettes with saucisson, and helping organise something called a son et lumière in the town.
In that six-week adventure, my brother had crossed another, invisible, border into adulthood, leaving me behind with my childish playthings. When it was my turn to make a break for the summer, I only got as far as Cornwall.
My brother's first big independent trip still strikes me as being pretty adventurous and full of derring-do, even in an age in which some lucky kids have trotted halfway around the globe before they've sat their GCSEs. But, then, Cornwall still seems exotic to me.
