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Kiting
By JL Bogenschneider
Kiting was inspired by Lucia Noguiera’s video-installation Smoke, which was filmed in Berwick-upon-Tweed, featuring: …the sound of kites flapping in the wind… manipulated by an old man... the outline of [his] body against the sky and the graceful language he creates… a response to the town’s “unique character.”
“The most important thing,” Mr Askcombe said as he deftly handled the string, “is to remain in control.”
Sam looked up at the kite with his hands in his pockets. The wind was high, although it wasn’t too cold even out here by the reach. Not for him anyway, he was used to the cold, used to being outdoors. He liked it a lot; he wished the other children, the ones from the nicer houses for the nicer families, would play out as much as he did. Although in order to play with the other children he would have to be friends with them and making friends wasn’t a thing that he was very good at. Mr Askcombe was his friend, he supposed, mainly because he didn’t seem to mind when he – Sam – followed him round. When Sam had gone to the park that day, Mr Askcombe was waiting for him. “I’ve got something to show you,” he said, holding out a mass of string and fabric. “Have you ever flown a kite before?”
The problem with Mr Askcombe – if there was one at all – was that he tended to forget Sam was there sometimes. Sam had stood watching him for over an hour without once getting to have a turn at flying the kite. The thing was, Mr Askcombe was really good at it and Sam didn’t mind so much; in fact, he quite enjoyed it, watching him make it dip and dance and sway in the wind. He had sort of flown a kite, once before, a few years ago. He and his dad had driven to a festival, a couple of hours from where they lived. His brother was supposed to have been coming too but he had announced, in a lofty air, that that such things were childish and he wouldn’t be joining them. Sam hadn’t cared because that meant it would be just him and his dad and his dad had always seemed to like his brother the most so it would be nice, he had thought, to spend the day together, just the two of them. His dad had been in a foul mood throughout the journey because of his brother not coming and the weather had been wet and miserable – not kite weather. A man tried to teach him how to fly a kite but Sam hadn’t been very good at it. His dad bought him an expensive kite of his own to make up for the day not turning out so well and for being in a bad mood earlier but Sam accidentally left it behind somewhere which put his dad in an even worse mood on the way home, so it wasn’t a very good day at all, in the end.
“Look at that! Look at her go! Isn’t she bonny?” Mr Askcombe’s words burst into Sam’s thoughts. The kite seemed to have taken on a life of its own; it was fairly flying through the air, diving at impossibly fast speed, dashing toward the ground before swooping up at the very last second, climbing higher and higher, describing delicate circles before shooting off in another direction. It was, Sam thought, beautiful, the contrast between the wild antics of the kite and the small, precise movements of Mr Askcombe’s withered, wrinkled hands. “D’you want a try then?” the old man asked.
“In a minute,” Sam replied. “I like watching you do it.”
Observation – the art of the innocent voyeur – was Sam’s preferred state-of-being; to remove oneself from the situation and be able to view it from above, from below; to be without, not within. As a young child, his dad and brother arguing, sat at the table, face smeared with pureed greens, his tiny developing brain would view the scene with himself as separate from the others as an audience is from a play. Since his brother left the year before, the arguments were fewer and he hadn’t had to remove himself at all except for the nights when his dad kept him awake with his racking sobs, barely concealed by the paper-thin walls between their rooms.
“Come on, son, your turn now – don’t let me be having all the fun, eh?” Mr Askcombe’s guttural voice interrupted his thoughts again. The kite was still high in the air and the old man’s arms were holding the string out to him. “While the wind’s still blowing,” he urged. Sam stood in front of Mr Askcombe and took hold of the string. A strong breeze tugged at the kite and a length of string slipped though his fingers. He tightened his grip and looked up open-mouthed at the red diamond high above. “Steady your legs there, keep them straight,” the old man advised. “Feed it though your right hand and control the length with your left. If it gets too high, pull it a wee bit.”
Mr Askcombe’s arms hung loosely around Sam’s shoulders and he guided the boy’s arms up and down, swaying with the wind. As Sam grew more confident, the old man withdrew and stepped back, watching his silhouette as it fought delicately with the flitting shadow on the ground. “That’s it! You’re getting it now, lad!” He slackened his grip in one hand, loosening the ball of string, feeling it thread roughly through the other. The kite rose into the sun, dazzling his eyes. “Pull it down now, turn away from the sun; control it, remember!”
Sam did as he was told and turned to his left, guiding the string over and under invisible obstacles in the air. A drop in the wind caused it to fall fast, before catching an updraft and flicking up again. Sam imagined the invisible trails the kite left in its wake and admired the graceful, intricate paths that they traced; whenever an aeroplane flew overhead, toward the airport many miles away, he stopped whatever he was doing and would stand, slack-jawed, head tilted, following the vapour trails until they faded away. He hoped one day to become a pilot, to create the lines in the sky himself.
Later, after the wind had dropped, he sat alongside Mr Askcombe on a bench. The old man had brought a brown paper bag with crustless sandwiches and Craster kippers wrapped in paper. As Sam ate, Mr Askcombe poured coffee into the plastic cup of a Thermos and rested it on the wooden slats next to them. They sat together, watching the traffic trundle down Dock Road. Years ago, barely on two legs, Sam had managed to slip out the front door and stumble down the short path that led to the gateless border between the yard and the main road. He had been seconds from being wandering into the path of the oncoming traffic when his brother – in a rare moment of sibling sensitivity – dragged him kicking and squealing back indoors. His parents had had a huge argument about the suitability of the house for the children; his mother wanted them to have a place with a garden, with a fence, but there was no way, his dad had said, they could ever afford anything like that.
“Have y’ not got a brother?” Mr Askcombe questioned, chiming in with his thoughts; for a moment Sam thought he’d been thinking aloud. “Are there not two of you?”
Sam sipped at his coffee. It was milky with lots of sugar. His dad drank his coffee black and Sam had never liked the smell or the taste of it but he liked it the way Mr Askcombe made it. He would have coffee with milk and sugar all the time now, he decided.
“Ran away,” he replied, in between mouthfuls.
“Ran away?” Mr Askcombe repeated. “When? What for?”
“Last year. And don’t know. Just… went.”
“What’s your ma think about that?”
Sam thought carefully. “Mam doesn’t live with us n’more. Went ages ago.”
“I’m sorry,” said Mr Askcombe, after a pause. “I didn’t know.”
Sam didn’t mind. He liked how Mr Askcombe didn’t know much about him. He still remembered the weeks and months after his mother had left; the jokes and bullying he’d had to put up with.
“D’you miss them? Y’ ma’? And y’ brother?”
Sam nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “I suppose so. Yeah. I’ve never really thought about it.”
There was a brief pause between the two before Mr Askcombe spoke again. “I miss Mrs Askcombe.”
Sam halted mid-sip. The idea of a Mrs Askcombe had never occurred to him. He swallowed the coffee that was he was swilling around in his mouth. “Did she leave too?” he asked.
“You could say she did. All of them did. My family, I mean.” Mr Askcombe shifted his weight around the bench. “The children left as soon as they were old enough. Not much for them here, I suppose…”
Sam sensed Mr Askcombe drifting off on one of his rambling reveries. The thought that a person might want to – or even could – leave a place because there ‘wasn’t much there for them’ struck him. It could explain why both his mother and brother had left. When Mr Askcombe had brought them up in conversation, he’d realised how much he thought about them without really being aware of it. He supposed he did miss them, even his brother. The wind ruffled his hair; it was picking up again. While the old man talked, he thought about where he lived, looking over the view from where he sat, observing the shallow skyline. He looked to his right where the squat silhouette of the disused factory units loomed over the far side of town, and then to his left, his gaze sweeping across the rooftops of the terraces over to the skeletal port where large containers were shipped in and out and Sam decided that he quite liked where he lived. He liked the landscape, its familiarity; it was home.
Coming to, he found that Mr Askcombe had finished talking and was fiddling around with empty paper bags and plastic cups. The shade of the sky suggested that it was time to go – he didn’t have a watch, nor could he tell time if he did – and he stood up. “We can do this again if you like,” Mr Askcombe said. “Next time the wind’s up, come and get me.”
Sam said goodbye and began walking down the hill, toward home, toward the shallow skyline. Ahead, darkening shadows worried the streets, the onset of the evening fading the town out. The wind blew harder again, stronger. Behind him the sea washed hard against the rocks and looking back he could see the outline of Mr Askcombe and the kite; the string invisible and the diamond circling crazily against the backdrop of the October sky.
© JL Bogenschneider
Kiting was first published in The Journal, 26 November 2011
Kiting was inspired by Lucia Noguiera’s video-installation Smoke, which was filmed in Berwick-upon-Tweed, featuring: …the sound of kites flapping in the wind… manipulated by an old man... the outline of [his] body against the sky and the graceful language he creates… a response to the town’s “unique character.”
“The most important thing,” Mr Askcombe said as he deftly handled the string, “is to remain in control.”
Sam looked up at the kite with his hands in his pockets. The wind was high, although it wasn’t too cold even out here by the reach. Not for him anyway, he was used to the cold, used to being outdoors. He liked it a lot; he wished the other children, the ones from the nicer houses for the nicer families, would play out as much as he did. Although in order to play with the other children he would have to be friends with them and making friends wasn’t a thing that he was very good at. Mr Askcombe was his friend, he supposed, mainly because he didn’t seem to mind when he – Sam – followed him round. When Sam had gone to the park that day, Mr Askcombe was waiting for him. “I’ve got something to show you,” he said, holding out a mass of string and fabric. “Have you ever flown a kite before?”
The problem with Mr Askcombe – if there was one at all – was that he tended to forget Sam was there sometimes. Sam had stood watching him for over an hour without once getting to have a turn at flying the kite. The thing was, Mr Askcombe was really good at it and Sam didn’t mind so much; in fact, he quite enjoyed it, watching him make it dip and dance and sway in the wind. He had sort of flown a kite, once before, a few years ago. He and his dad had driven to a festival, a couple of hours from where they lived. His brother was supposed to have been coming too but he had announced, in a lofty air, that that such things were childish and he wouldn’t be joining them. Sam hadn’t cared because that meant it would be just him and his dad and his dad had always seemed to like his brother the most so it would be nice, he had thought, to spend the day together, just the two of them. His dad had been in a foul mood throughout the journey because of his brother not coming and the weather had been wet and miserable – not kite weather. A man tried to teach him how to fly a kite but Sam hadn’t been very good at it. His dad bought him an expensive kite of his own to make up for the day not turning out so well and for being in a bad mood earlier but Sam accidentally left it behind somewhere which put his dad in an even worse mood on the way home, so it wasn’t a very good day at all, in the end.
“Look at that! Look at her go! Isn’t she bonny?” Mr Askcombe’s words burst into Sam’s thoughts. The kite seemed to have taken on a life of its own; it was fairly flying through the air, diving at impossibly fast speed, dashing toward the ground before swooping up at the very last second, climbing higher and higher, describing delicate circles before shooting off in another direction. It was, Sam thought, beautiful, the contrast between the wild antics of the kite and the small, precise movements of Mr Askcombe’s withered, wrinkled hands. “D’you want a try then?” the old man asked.
“In a minute,” Sam replied. “I like watching you do it.”
Observation – the art of the innocent voyeur – was Sam’s preferred state-of-being; to remove oneself from the situation and be able to view it from above, from below; to be without, not within. As a young child, his dad and brother arguing, sat at the table, face smeared with pureed greens, his tiny developing brain would view the scene with himself as separate from the others as an audience is from a play. Since his brother left the year before, the arguments were fewer and he hadn’t had to remove himself at all except for the nights when his dad kept him awake with his racking sobs, barely concealed by the paper-thin walls between their rooms.
“Come on, son, your turn now – don’t let me be having all the fun, eh?” Mr Askcombe’s guttural voice interrupted his thoughts again. The kite was still high in the air and the old man’s arms were holding the string out to him. “While the wind’s still blowing,” he urged. Sam stood in front of Mr Askcombe and took hold of the string. A strong breeze tugged at the kite and a length of string slipped though his fingers. He tightened his grip and looked up open-mouthed at the red diamond high above. “Steady your legs there, keep them straight,” the old man advised. “Feed it though your right hand and control the length with your left. If it gets too high, pull it a wee bit.”
Mr Askcombe’s arms hung loosely around Sam’s shoulders and he guided the boy’s arms up and down, swaying with the wind. As Sam grew more confident, the old man withdrew and stepped back, watching his silhouette as it fought delicately with the flitting shadow on the ground. “That’s it! You’re getting it now, lad!” He slackened his grip in one hand, loosening the ball of string, feeling it thread roughly through the other. The kite rose into the sun, dazzling his eyes. “Pull it down now, turn away from the sun; control it, remember!”
Sam did as he was told and turned to his left, guiding the string over and under invisible obstacles in the air. A drop in the wind caused it to fall fast, before catching an updraft and flicking up again. Sam imagined the invisible trails the kite left in its wake and admired the graceful, intricate paths that they traced; whenever an aeroplane flew overhead, toward the airport many miles away, he stopped whatever he was doing and would stand, slack-jawed, head tilted, following the vapour trails until they faded away. He hoped one day to become a pilot, to create the lines in the sky himself.
Later, after the wind had dropped, he sat alongside Mr Askcombe on a bench. The old man had brought a brown paper bag with crustless sandwiches and Craster kippers wrapped in paper. As Sam ate, Mr Askcombe poured coffee into the plastic cup of a Thermos and rested it on the wooden slats next to them. They sat together, watching the traffic trundle down Dock Road. Years ago, barely on two legs, Sam had managed to slip out the front door and stumble down the short path that led to the gateless border between the yard and the main road. He had been seconds from being wandering into the path of the oncoming traffic when his brother – in a rare moment of sibling sensitivity – dragged him kicking and squealing back indoors. His parents had had a huge argument about the suitability of the house for the children; his mother wanted them to have a place with a garden, with a fence, but there was no way, his dad had said, they could ever afford anything like that.
“Have y’ not got a brother?” Mr Askcombe questioned, chiming in with his thoughts; for a moment Sam thought he’d been thinking aloud. “Are there not two of you?”
Sam sipped at his coffee. It was milky with lots of sugar. His dad drank his coffee black and Sam had never liked the smell or the taste of it but he liked it the way Mr Askcombe made it. He would have coffee with milk and sugar all the time now, he decided.
“Ran away,” he replied, in between mouthfuls.
“Ran away?” Mr Askcombe repeated. “When? What for?”
“Last year. And don’t know. Just… went.”
“What’s your ma think about that?”
Sam thought carefully. “Mam doesn’t live with us n’more. Went ages ago.”
“I’m sorry,” said Mr Askcombe, after a pause. “I didn’t know.”
Sam didn’t mind. He liked how Mr Askcombe didn’t know much about him. He still remembered the weeks and months after his mother had left; the jokes and bullying he’d had to put up with.
“D’you miss them? Y’ ma’? And y’ brother?”
Sam nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “I suppose so. Yeah. I’ve never really thought about it.”
There was a brief pause between the two before Mr Askcombe spoke again. “I miss Mrs Askcombe.”
Sam halted mid-sip. The idea of a Mrs Askcombe had never occurred to him. He swallowed the coffee that was he was swilling around in his mouth. “Did she leave too?” he asked.
“You could say she did. All of them did. My family, I mean.” Mr Askcombe shifted his weight around the bench. “The children left as soon as they were old enough. Not much for them here, I suppose…”
Sam sensed Mr Askcombe drifting off on one of his rambling reveries. The thought that a person might want to – or even could – leave a place because there ‘wasn’t much there for them’ struck him. It could explain why both his mother and brother had left. When Mr Askcombe had brought them up in conversation, he’d realised how much he thought about them without really being aware of it. He supposed he did miss them, even his brother. The wind ruffled his hair; it was picking up again. While the old man talked, he thought about where he lived, looking over the view from where he sat, observing the shallow skyline. He looked to his right where the squat silhouette of the disused factory units loomed over the far side of town, and then to his left, his gaze sweeping across the rooftops of the terraces over to the skeletal port where large containers were shipped in and out and Sam decided that he quite liked where he lived. He liked the landscape, its familiarity; it was home.
Coming to, he found that Mr Askcombe had finished talking and was fiddling around with empty paper bags and plastic cups. The shade of the sky suggested that it was time to go – he didn’t have a watch, nor could he tell time if he did – and he stood up. “We can do this again if you like,” Mr Askcombe said. “Next time the wind’s up, come and get me.”
Sam said goodbye and began walking down the hill, toward home, toward the shallow skyline. Ahead, darkening shadows worried the streets, the onset of the evening fading the town out. The wind blew harder again, stronger. Behind him the sea washed hard against the rocks and looking back he could see the outline of Mr Askcombe and the kite; the string invisible and the diamond circling crazily against the backdrop of the October sky.
© JL Bogenschneider
Kiting was first published in The Journal, 26 November 2011
