There are days when I find myself yearning to go fly a kite, particularly clear and windy days like today. There is something so liberating about holding onto that string and watching it climb higher and higher, it makes me feel really free for some reason. Of course, you need some wind (well, I'm full of that but not the right kind) but you don't want it blowing a gale - PARRRPP! A nice gentle breeze will do it though.
I've flown kites most of my life, I've even made kites from brown paper and string just like in the Mary Poppins song (Wowl, Maory Pawppins, bless me soul). You know 'With a bit of paper and string, you can have your own pair of wings' and it really does feel like that although you are firmly planted on the ground. It's the tug of the string I think and the responsive antics (or not as the case may be) of the kite in the air. 'Watch out it's falling!', but then it finds the wind again and up it goes, higher and higher and higher...and once it's up, it's up (no need to mention actresses and Bishops you smutties - arf arf).
Box kites (arf, arf), dragon kites, pocket kites (arf, arf), pirate kites, aerobatic kites, bird kites (arf, arf, corrr), and that old faithful the diamond kite. I've flown them all at one time or another, I love flying (arf, arf). But I'm no stunt kiter (careful how you say that!) - is there a Sid James in the room, we appear to have a bad case of the arf, arfs? Apparently the lift that keeps the kite in the air is caused when the air moves around the kite's surface thus producing low pressure above and high pressure below the wing. Yes, well, the science is all correct and good, but I think the kite string carries your life force to the kite and makes it dance. Yes, I think it's magic but then I'm probably puddled, kinda lost my grip of the string as they say.
I always used to carry a kite in the boot of my car and when I'd had a bad meeting (which became more and more frequent as time went on and I became more stubborn and outspoken and grouchy) I would stop off on the way home and give it a fly (oo err missus - not bloody Frankie Howard now!), usually at some motorway services on the M62 or M40. It always made me feel so much better and after just a few minutes I'd forgotten the meeting and the sad arses who had tried to shoot me down. Shoot me down? Idiots, I fly kites! Yeah, they can all bloody well go fly a kite. That's exactly what I was going to do. But I knew that the unimaginative, sad, buttoned-up buffoons wouldn't. I like that expression - 'go fly a kite'. It's so much more polite than f**k off, but it's just the same thing really, a frank, impolite way to tell someone to go away or to leave you alone. Go fly a kite is so wonderfully literal. If someone goes flying a kite, that means he or she needs to walk away and do one - so stroll on tossers and tosserettes.
So I'm in the market for a new kite for the boot of my car. Not too big, not too heavy, but a good flyer that doesn't need me to run to get it up (arf arf). An old man's kite, the type I can tie to a walking frame and gently tug on (arf arf). Perhaps I'll take out one of my old ones and refurbish it, a new paint job and fancier tail, or perhaps I'll make a new one from scratch. Who knows? But I do know I need to fly my kite once more before it's too late.
So there it is; the noble art of kite flying. If you've never done it then try it, It's uplifting in so many ways (arf, arf).
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