Having heard that people were camped out at Teston on the Thursday night fuelled my panic that the August Teston Kite Festival was going to be standing room only, so yesterday we arrived shortly after 11am to find that the early birds were John & Danny who arrive early anyway, and Colin who’d got there at 11pm. I awoke feeling surprisingly chirpy (bearing in mind the gutful of ale I’d had the previous night) to find I’m seemingly missed 90% of the previous evening’s washing up. As I scrubbed, I looked around the field, and it seemed to me that there were less people than last time. I needn’ have panicked.

Breakfast was soon devoured, and then in true kite festival style, the day was pretty much squandered sitting around watching the kites, playing “Blokus”, drinking beer, and generally slobbing around.

All too soon the day was done, and the evening staged a barby which was scoffed by over twenty of us, and then we staged a birthday bash for the four birthday girls. As the night closed in, after a quick bat-hunt, telescopes were brought out and the moons of Jupiter were watched, before staggering off to bed around 1am.

I awoke again feeling surprisingly chirpy (bearing in mind the gutful of ale I’d had the previous night) to find I’m seemingly missed 90% of the previous evening’s washing up. After the obligatory morning of “Blokus”, in a novel break with tradition I flew a kite. Apparently one of the kite companies has several thousand of the kites pictured above that they are unwilling to foist onto the public for the very good reason that the kites don’t actually fly. Following bombing the normal people several times, an extremely long launch got a flight of just over a minute. There were a lot of opinions being tried out to make the thing fly, but for some reason my suggestion (to fly it as a two lined kite as God intended) wasn’t one that was tested. It would have worked, too!

As a lot of people had to work on Monday, the day was spent saying goodbye to a good many friends, and I felt the place was somewhat depleted when we sat down to a smashing tea of Fajitas. I then made sure all the washing up was sorted this time, and we sat round a roaring fire to watch the predicted meteor shower. I must admit it was something of a disappointment. If you see one shooting star, you really have seen the lot. And if anyone tells you that the meteor shower is at it’s best after 2am, don’t believe them.