Dear Sir,

Good Friday and Easter are fast approaching and they bring to mind my memories of an area we, as children, called Kite Hill.

Kite Hill was actually the very large yard of the Jennings Family of Government Gate. It sat overlooking North Shore on one side and the City of Hamilton on the other. Kite Hill was the most important area of the close-knit neighbourhood of Government Gate during the spring months of the 1950s and 1960s.

By 7am on every Good Friday morning, during the Fifties and Sixties, the air over Kite Hill was buzzing with the sound of Bermuda-made tissue-paper kites soaring in the sky. For weeks before, the air was filled with the anticipation of the day that would be following. And it all involved the most efficient planning by young people.

The weeks of anticipation included periods of experimentation when all the neighbourhood children practised their building and flying skills with boxies — rectangular kites they made with dried fennel stick foundations and lined with brown paper grocery bags.

My father's carpenter shop was in the neighbourhood and therefore became one of the convenient resources for brothers Tread, McNeil and neighbour Munro to cut and supply kite sticks for all the friends and cousins of the neighbourhood. The sticks would become the frame for the creation of the traditional-shaped tissue-paper kite or the tissue-paper roundie.

Although the girls had a say in the colour schemes, the boys of the neighbourhood were the ones mainly designated with carefully planning the geometric designs the kites were to take; and they did it with scientific accuracy. With the same accuracy and acuity and their natural artistic talent, tissue paper was so meticulously cut and pasted so that it seemed to have naturally evolved from the pine kite sticks.

Bermuda-made tissue-paper kites need cloth tails, and the unofficial neighbourhood competitions required the best kite and kite flyer to have just the right amount of tail to suit its size or for the longevity of the flight or to enable them to soar above the rest. That was the responsibility of mama. Mamas had to have a yearlong plan to save whatever old cloth she could. If she failed, then some of her good sheets would mysteriously disappear for the season.

The perpetrators of the disappearances were willing to suffer the consequences of their misdemeanours for the sake of perfection. Another mystery was the disappearance of the sharpest kitchen knife. Again, a tool was needed to make a slit in the top of the kite stick for the string to run through. Consequences followed if the “tool“ didn't as mysteriously reappear.

On Good Friday, from sun up to sundown and often beyond, between quick breaks to run home for hot-cross buns and codfish cakes, the happy, joyful children and teens of Government Gate could be found, in complete delight, flying colourful, home-made geometrically designed tissue-paper Bermuda kites on Kite Hill. On that day there was to be found a combination of younger novice flyers along with those who considered themselves experts in the art as well as those involved in friendly but serious competitions.

The Kite Hill memories are good memories. Those same Good Friday activities were replicated in neighbourhoods around the island. It was the standard of how we, Bermudians, celebrated one of our honoured holidays. Neighbourhood “Kite Hills” are rare today but maybe, just maybe, not lost for ever.

Hopefully the buzz of Good Friday that could be heard all over the island, all day long, can, once again become the sign and reminder of the everlasting joy, peace and goodwill towards one another that we all desire.

Happy Easter season!

CHERYL-ANN GRIFFIN

Hamilton parish