Yesterday I was treated to a most uplifting sight (pun slightly intentional). Just along the beach from where we were staying, a man had set up a collection of kites. These were not just your ordinary child's kite, or even the amazing stunt kites, but kites that almost told a story.

One collection started with an igloo. Can you call it a kite when it's pegged down to the ground and children can crawl inside? But it was full of air and if the wind dropped, then so too did the igloo, (right on anyone inside at the time). Attached to the igloo flying higher and higher were a larger than life-sized walrus, a seal family, a polar bear with cub and finally an Orca swimming through the air fifty feet above the beach.

That was only the start. This chap had a giant black and green gecko, a skewbald horse, a whole family of turtles. Angry Bird and Tweetie Pie were soaring with a Beagle puppy. Gromit flew a plane with Wallace clinging onto the back and over it all, an enormous rainbow arch of coloured kites flapped with joyous abandon.

People were walking down the beach talking about it and so we went to have a look. We thought it was some kind of kite flying festival or competition, but no; it was just one man who has spent the last twenty years collecting kites and now just sets them up and flies them for his own pleasure and for that of everyone who comes along and sees them.

It's great to have a passion. We all know how interests and hobbies make the dark days more bearable, but how lovely to have a passion that brings so much simple joy to others. Of course, yesterday happened to be perfect weather: but apparently he comes and flies them in the snow too! I'm guessing that's a bit more of a personal enjoyment rather than a shared one.