One Sheet to the Wind

Another good weekend, including a friend's 40th birthday barbecue on Saturday, and then a trip to Swindon Kite Festival today.

<3 and I used to go to a few kite festivals, partly to fly kites, partly (mostly for me) to buy kites and things to make them out of, partly to meet up with friends, and partly to just look at the pretty things in the sky. Since the arrival of the Youngling, however, we just don't seem to have got around to it.

Well, a couple of weeks back, <3 spotted that Swindon Kite Festival was coming up and as we had a day more-or-less free, we decided to take a trip. The venue was a little way the wrong side of Swindon for us, so it took up the better part of an hour to get there, and when we did, we found that the wind was a bit feeble and not much was flying.

Still, we had a cuppa with a couple of friends who arrived at about the same time, the Youngling had a ride on a bus on a kiddies' roundabout, and I took the Youngling along to buy her first kite, a "Super Flyer", a wide-tailed delta kite which I knew from experience was great for kids. With this in hand, we wandered over to a spare area of field, assembled the kite and I launched it. The Youngling wasn't too keen on anything other than watching at first, but a couple of minutes later I heard, "My hold it now!", so I dutifully handed over the handle and relaunched. It flew for a few seconds before the wind died and it fell to the ground. My flying companion was, by this point, jumping up and down and shrieking with laughter. So we had another go. Or ten.

After a picnic lunch, we got the kite out again and there was little to stop our little kite nut. She spent more time flying there (with some good flights when the wind allowed) than I could possibly imagined. We are certainly going to go flying again, and soon. The problem is that she now wants a fish kite. And a butterfly kite. And a...