Streatham Kite Day
The 12th Streatham Common Kite Day was a great success. The weather was good, although the wind could have been better – being from the north-east it came over the crest of the hill which made it very gusty and turbulent.
We had hundreds of visitors to the festival, due partly I’m sure to the live interviews with Bob Colover and myself on Radio London’s Lesley Joseph show on Sunday morning.
We’ve had people travel from as far as Devon to come to the kite day in past years, but this year we had a group of fliers who’d come from Thailand to show off their beautiful Chula and Pakpao kites. The Chula is the male kite. It has three bamboo barbs attached to its line for snagging the Pakpao female kite. The Pakpao is quite small and fragile. It is highly manoeuvrable and flown with a long tail with which it attempts to snare and tangle its male opponent.
Some of the invited guest fliers had pulled out at the last minute, so we were a bit worried that we might not have enough going on to fill the arena, but in the end everyone mucked in and there weren’t too many dead spots.
It was nice to meet Mike Slocombe of Urban75 after having been an admirer for several years.
You can see more photos of the day at the Streatham Kite Day Gallery or my Flickr account.
