It’s a natural high, and the Dutch connection.

There’s a saying that your memories should never be bigger than your dreams, although our memories and experiences do shape who we are as individuals. This post covers some of my memories, the now, and (one of) the dreams/aspirations, and all are connected by a strong Dutch thread. Let me explain. I spent the first 19 years of my life in the UK city, and sea port of Hull, or pronounced “ull” by the locals. As a large sea port, there was a strong association with the Netherlands, which was ‘just over the water’. I went to school with a group of second generation Dutch kids whose parents owned Market Garden businesses in the area, and who had come over to this part of the UK before/during/after the Second World War. The geography of the Hull area is actually very much like the Netherlands, being flat and bordered by the North Sea.

As a school-aged kid, I used to work after school and at weekends picking tomatoes, cucumbers and other produce as a part time job at these Anglo-Dutch market garden businesses. At school, the class register would include Dutch last names like; Westra, Schellingerhout and, Brockhuisen. My Father worked for the Dutch company, Van Leer, and there were always Dutch trucks coming off the ferries from Rotterdam. I even went on a Swimming club tour which included several races in the Netherlands. Since leaving ‘ull, I have worked with lots of Dutch people as part of my international jobs, and my last functional boss before I retired, was Dutch. My wife and I used to make the journey from Rotterdam to ‘ull regularly, as we travelled back and forth between mainland Europe and the UK. I’m also a cyclist, which is obviously the theme of this site, and the Dutch are the top of the pile when it comes to cycling culture. So, there’s a strong Dutch thread that weaves its way through my life, and there’s more as well, which I’ll come to at the end of this post.

As a person who thinks positive first, I’m always looking to over-achieve on this, even when I’m feeling less than positive/crap. Images, and not spreadsheets, will do this for me. A good coffee or glass of wine can help as well, but one of the best positive fixes for me, is through my eyes and looking at a really great (to me anyway) still image. A still image is also more powerful than a video as well, because time is frozen in a still image, and we see more detail without the distraction of what happened before or after, as it would in a video.

I’m not on my own here either. Apparently, there is a neuro-chemical reaction that takes place in the brain when either positive or negative images are viewed. There’s a lot of science behind this, which I’m clearly not qualified to explain here. I just know how I feel when I see a great image, and I would go as far as to say that a still image provides a higher level of emotion and nostalgia than a video does, and I remember them better as well. The best photographers look for emotion in an image, because that emotion will trigger emotion in the person seeing it for the first or hundredth time.

So, one of the images that makes me feel really good is seeing a colourful stack of kites flying with a backdrop of blue sky. I’m not on my own here either. In fact, the best view of any kite is usually by the person watching it and not flying it. Kites are usually flown in amazing and beautiful locations, so when a photograph is taken, it looks extra special and stirs up emotions even if the individual hasn’t actually been there, or is not remotely interested in kites.

This image of a (Dutch origin) Flexifoil kite stack makes me feel great!

There’s also another way of creating an image for someone without them actually seeing it, and this (finally) leads me to my point here. A long time ago, as a kid in ‘ull’, I got the opportunity, thanks to my parents looking for creative stuff for their kids to do, to quite literally ‘get on the creative bus’ with a load of other kids. Picture this……a retired 1960s London bus has been bought by a local arts group, had all of its seats removed and painted in bright colours. This was the 1970s, so you can just imagine the type of arty-bright-colours that I’m describing; Bright yellow ochre, burnt orange, sophisticated blues, red, peach and of course, that emerging popular colour of avocado green. Even though ‘dreadful brown’ seemed to be a popular colour for UK cars at the time, it was fortunately absent from this bus.

I think it was in the summer holidays that my parents signed me up for two full days to play on the big, double decker creative bus. It was the kite making day. There must’ve been about 12 kids and we were told prior to getting on the bus, that 6 of us would be working downstairs and the other 6 would be upstairs on the top deck. I edged closer to the rear door of the bus because I was clearly going to work on the top deck and try to get up there first-ish. I did as it turned out. Racing up the spiral staircase at the back of the bus at warp speed, and making sure I didn’t slip and graze my legs on the metal edgings of the stairs, I was greeted with a long table, no chairs and enough stuff to make any type and size of kite.

We were told to draw our kite first, colour it in with a whole range of coloured pencils BEFORE we started construction. This was teaching us kids to develop a plan before just diving in, and which is something I still do today. If you ask any kid to draw a kite, he/she will likely draw that classic diamond shape. I drew a classic box kite to reflect what was going on in the space race at the time. I imagined that my box kite could, and maybe would, fly into space, so it needed to be shiny silver.

I got my picture signed off by one of the supervisory grown-ups, and I was asked what I needed to make it. I asked for two things; bamboo canes and a huge roll of kitchen foil. The rest of it I would think through in a kind of ‘emerging design stylee’. Making something on the top deck of an old bus was really ace, and if I’m honest, would be just as good now, especially if it had a good coffee machine as well. Anyway, the whole day went by at warp speed with every kid making stuff as fast and as hard as he/she could, bouncing ideas off each other and offering critical acclaim to each other, like “that’s great, but do you really think it will fly?”

My box kite when assembled, stood quite a bit taller than me and was far too big to get down the spiral staircase of the bus, so I had to make it in sections and for assembly outside the bus. The following day was to be flying day. As there were no seats in the bus, we all had to be taxied by our parents, or cycle to the site that had been chosen for initial flights. The site needed to fit the criteria for 12 kids to fly their kite creations, which meant lots of space, no trees, easy to spot all of the kids racing off in different directions, and usually well known for being the first place to be windy in the area. The location fitted all of the criteria, except it was on one of the calmest days of the year, which was a bit disappointing.

My design was proven. Box kites flew easily and were even used as radio antenna’s for aircraft pilots who had been forced to land in the sea. However, my box kite, looking splendid in its silver kitchen foil wrapping, and already to burst out of the earth’s atmosphere (on a very long line, obviously) would need at least a 15mph/25kph wind to get it airborne. On this particular day, the wind wasn’t strong enough to fly an unused piece of toilet paper. Whilst there was no wind, there definitely was collective disappointment in the air, so after a big group photo of all of us kids with our colourful kites in front of the bus (which I don’t have a copy of sadly), the picnic was rolled out and games followed. It was a sad moment to wave goodbye to the colourful double decker bus, but I still had my shiny box kite, although we did have to dis-assemble it again to get it into the car.

In total, that box kite was successfully assembled and dis-assembled several times over the next few weeks (which was clearly credit to my design) as we tried to get it airborne, and then one day, it flew. It didn’t fly very high or for very long, and it did crash to the ground in a pile of broken bamboo and kitchen foil, but it had flown! So, If this story hasn’t created some images in your mind, you need to find your own creative bus to make your own kite on, then you’ll know how it feels to experience the same natural high as I did.

A bicycle and a kite. Both provide a natural high.

So, here’s the latest Dutch connection and a bit about one my aspirations/dreams. I’ve got this aspiration to be really good at using a kite to tow me along in a three wheeled buggy, which, whilst being a niche sport, is great fun. I recently met via Facebook, two Dutch people who share the same passion. One is experienced using a kite buggy, and the other, Riks Siemons, runs the Dutch Kite Museum (link below). Riks sent me the latest post about the recent ‘37th International Vliegerfestijn Emmen’, and it showed the workshop that he had run for kids making kites, which looked like the kids were having exactly the same creative fun and natural high as I did all those years ago. In a world where kids and some adults have never known life without the internet and social media, basic creative activities like cycling, making and flying kites and similar experiential activities, are important things that parents and Grand-parents can still initiate with kids.