Talking of doing things for the first time, have you flown a kite recently? It's cool! No, really, we all had great fun. And although it's not technically a first for me, today was the first time I'd ever flown a full-on stunt kite.

You know, being a parent is fantastic - you get to do loads of childish stuff that you might've missed out on in the past AND claim you're only doing it for the kids!!).

Today was a very windy day - although the weather guy on TV called it 'blustery' - either way, as far as I was concerned, it was kite flying weather - so the four of us (ma famille), headed for open space with our new stunt kite.

It was windy! Our kite flying time amounted to only 10 minutes but it was F-U-N! I learnt two valuable lessons too.

Lesson number 1. Kite flying should not be done alone.

As we made our way to a good launch site, we passed a lone woman trying to fly her own kite (it looked very similar to ours but a bit funkier and definitely more expensive) but without luck. During the period of our flying time, I glanced over to see how she was getting on but it appeared to be a catalogue of failures and I did notice her checking out our soaring piece of coloured cloth more than one occasion. Although I did feel a little sorry for her, my wife very accurately pointed out, "you'd have to nail your kite to the ground not to get it to fly on a day like today". She was right - the hapless kite flyer didn't need pity - she needed a helper to throw the kite into the air, just like I had.

Want to fly a kite? Take a friend!

Lesson number 2. If you're having fun, your children will have fun.

Laugh, run across a park or common with your arms stretched out like an aeroplane, squeal at the sight of your kite at the end of half a mile of string and your children will squeal with you, delighted that you too are enjoying what they are. Ok, ok, so my 10 month old daughter just looked out from below her woolly hat and above her woolly blanket with a cold red nose wondering when the hell we were going home for milk, but her big brother had a great 10 minutes. Well, he had a good 10 minutes actually - he wanted to go back to the car park so he could walk through the giant puddle in his new wellies.

OK - it would appear that I had a great time flying a kite.

What a selfish pig!

(I hope it's windy tomorrow too!)

heh heh heh.....