Kites

I’ve flown only three kites in my life. My stepfather bought me the first. I remember seeing him from a window approaching our little mews house off Bond Street, clutching it furled in its packet as though his life depended upon it.

The previous day he had overcharged an electric plane sent for my birthday by my other father, the one left in America following a youthful marriage that didn’t pan out. The walk to the launch took us past the barley-twist facades of Mount Street and Allens the butchers (alas, no more) whose soft light, sawdust and warm meaty air I always recall pooling the pavement on autumn trudges home from St George’s primary school. From the centre of Hyde Park the plane hopped jauntily onto the breeze and kept going until it crossed Park Lane, rose above the hotels and swanky showrooms, resolved into an agitated dot, and disappeared.