One of the best things about living at Mr. Goff’s place at Greenslopes, was the huge park that was just at the end of our block. It’s vast area with no buildings and wires, making it an ideal place to fly kites. I think the park was the claimed home of some amateur kite flying association as well. When David saw this activity he decided he was not going to miss out on a new experience and so he went and bought himself a “Bird Kite”. Now all I know about these kites is that they are viscous. They climb high and dart around at enormous speeds and I am sure could easily disrupt other kite flying members within a 25 meter radius. Well, I think David had managed to get a few Association members noses out of joint on his first day, because when he came home he said something about showing them. So, the next day he was up early and was busy building a wooden box with a specially engineered wind up handle. He also had along side him quite a few reels of fishing line. By the afternoon he had finished what he had set out to do and said he was off to fly his kite. Curiosity got the better of me and after a while I decided to go down to the park to see what he was up to. When I arrived I could see the usual Members making their air born objects sit there 10 meters in the air for hours with only the slightest of quivering as the wind passed beneath them – marvelous site that! I looked around to try and find David and his kite. There he was sitting right in the middle of the park with his special wooden box and wearing a pretty big smirk on his face. As I approached I said, “Aren’t you flying your kite today” He said “Yes, its up there”. Now I looked up, and up, and up and then I think I saw it. A speck in the sky that did look a little like his bird kite. He then muttered something about a couple of hundred meters of fishing line. I just shook my head and felt sorry for those members who had said something the previous day. All I could think about, as I trundled home, was what the Qantas pilots must have thought as they flew past David’s kite that day. Now one of the down sides to showing up those members what for, was the time it takes to reel in “a couple of hundred meters of fishing line”. So, tea time for David that night began about 8:00pm. But, still I think everyone learned a valuable lesson that day – for me it was never tell David to “go fly a kite”.
