Today I took the kids out to fly a kite, because the forecast predicted wind and we have a big empty field across the road. We own two kites. I broke the first one by losing a seemingly fundamental fibreglass stick after we’d had one of my top parenting moments ever flying it, so I bought a new one shaped like a dragon.
This seemed like a brilliant idea, until the dragon was swooping dangerously overhead and 3 let out a shriek of pure terror.
This is the kite in question. I sort of see what he means.
Like most people, I’ve spent my whole life dreaming of flying, fantasising about exactly how it would feel to have the solid earth drop away from my feet. It was only as I started to develop Starminster that it occurred to me that flying would inevitably be challenging, and even terrifying at times. But there’s no doubt that it would also be joyful: sublime in a way that humans don’t often get to experience. Today I felt a scrap of what I imagine that feeling to be, with the wind and the sun fierce and strong against my eyes and the kite tugging against the end of a gleaming string.
Megan Hopkins 