First let me welcome you to my site, and introduce myself. My name is Peter John Linnell, I am the youngest of three children. I was born in 1947 to James Arthur and Gladys Lillian Linnell at Bedford County Hospital.
I grew up in a village called Stotfold in Bedfordshire England. I had a formal education at St. Mary's infant school, Stotfold County Primary school for boys and last but not least Eatonbury.
Whilst on Holiday at Hunstanton Norfolk at the age of about six, I was given a kite by my parents, it was a basic Diamond shaped kite, known as an Eddy or Malay, which is still a very popular kite even today some forty odd years down the line. At the age of twelve my father gave me a Gibson Girl, (for those not initiated into kites, a box kite); which was issued to aircraft pilots, so if they were unfortunate enough to crash, they could use the kite to raise aloft a radio aerial to summon help. I flew that kite for a number of years, but as with many other teenagers, moved on to other things.
I never flew a kite again for 30 years. In the late eighties I moved from my home in Stotfold Bedfordshire to Brighton in East Sussex. As with most coastal towns there was always an abundance of sea breezes, and whilst I had often toyed with the idea of obtaining a kite, I never quite got round to it, that was until I attended a Kite Festival held in Stanmer Park Brighton, in the summer of 1995.
As a result of that visit I came home with a quantity of rip-stop nylon, wooden dowelling and line, after
much sewing together and taking apart and re-sewing, I turned the materials into a replica (well almost) of the box kite I had owned all those years ago. ( See picture left)I still remember the great feeling of satisfaction and sheer delight I experienced, as the kite soared aloft into the sky; I cannot explain in words.
That day bought childhood memories flooding back, seemingly endless days off school during the summer holidays, when I would be out all day long flying my kite, not bothering to go home for lunch. Some days I had to be called time and again to bring the kite down as it was past bedtime, hmmm; what grand days they were!
After that recollection, and the sheer joy of the first flight with my new box kite, I was once more hooked on kite flying.
I went on to build several different kites that first year, and whilst out flying one day, I met up with some other people flying kites, that was when I discovered a local club in the Brighton area solely dedicated to kites and kite flying.
KITES & KITE FLYING PART 1 NEXT
