of kites, kids and tangled string

Oh, the fun we've had today!

Our local Market town of Royston held it's kite festival today and, just for the hell of it, we went along, (actually, I'd been secretly planning it for days, good old fashioned fun and I love it!).

The 'aging maternal embodiment' came along with me and the wife as, like me, she has a love of silly things like kiting. So clutching my bundle of assorted flying-flotsam and wearing a five-year-old's grin we set off on the trail to Royston Heath. There's a long tradition to our kite festival, so they say!, this is the first time I've ever managed to get off my butt and go, but it's gone on now for many years and the Heath is a great place to go, even just for a stroll out to look at the wildflowers that reside there.

Despite the typical British-summer's day looming over the dark horizon of the golf course there was a huge turn out of kiting fools with, at one point, well in excess of a hundred kites of varied form sharing the skies together, not always in total harmony!

For my part I had fashioned a pair of 1.7m stunt kites into a twin-stack and dominated as much sky as I could hold, still with said five-year-old's grin firmly ensconced on my face!, while the wife and mother snatched what sky they could with my two mini pocket kites and a bloody great fish!

The day was awash with everything from the smallest tissue-paper slips on cotton threads to bloody great 7 & 8 metre traction kites dragging full-grown men through the air and down the hill on their arses, a sight much enjoyed by all who love to see cocky-bastards come to an ignominious end!

All was a picture of fluttering beauty, giggling joviality and family happiness, proper old stylie!, and only slightly marred by the unfortunate incident of my rather thugg-like sky-hogg of a kite colliding with the teddy-bear-parachute-launching kite flown by a lovely old couple. They'd done their bit on the display field, for the crowds of eager children wanting to see their beloved cuddly toys plummeting earthward on a totally inadequate parachute, and were just having fun with their own teddy when my awesome speed and radical steering caused my kite-strings to catch them by suprise as they sent the poor unfortunate bear aloft yet again, the upshot was that I hurriedly steered away before they could trace who was at the end of the offending strings leaving their kite torn, turned upside down, and decending at pace to earth. After inspecting the damage their only option was to pack the poor thing away and sit back fuming/sulking. I did give a call of 'sorry!', but I think it may have fell on dead ears. My karmic payback was to find, on grounding my own kite later on, that tension had taken it's toll on my nice new lines and I was now the proud owner of the worlds biggest birds nest! So much for that pair, I now await the arrival of 500m of nice braded line from Hong-Kong, via Ebay, of course!

So, I say to you all, if you've get even the slightest chance to get yourself out on a field with a kite, please, for the good of your soul, do it! Kites are cheap, check out Ebay, (other kite suppliers are available in the real-world), and buy yourself a good, clean, traditional bucket of damd good fun! You wont regret it for a moment.

As soon as I manage to work out how to do it I'll add some links to sites you can get your fun from.

All the best to each and all.

Question; Why do people drive for miles to get to a gym just to run a few miles on a machine that's bolted to the floor, and pay to do so?