By Izzy and her dad
‘Whooo!’ said the chimney. ‘Whooooo-ooo, whoooooooo’.
‘I didn’t know chimneys could talk’, said Noggin.
‘They can’t’, said Izzy, ‘It’s just the wind making a noise, like when you blow across the top of an empty bottle, or play the flute’.
Now Noggin had done lots of things in his life, but he was only two; and although that means he was fourteen in dog years, he had never blown across the top of an empty bottle; and he hadn’t played the flute, either.
‘It means it’s a windy day’, said Izzy, ‘and that means one thing: kite flying!’.
‘What’s a kite?’ asked Noggin. He was beginning to feel like a little puppy again, there were so many new things to find out about.
‘Come with me and I’ll show you’, said Izzy. They went into the garage, and, hanging on a nail was a yellow diamond shape with a long red tail. ‘That’, said Izzy, ‘is a kite. My kite’, she added, proudly. ‘But we can share it. It’s a bit old, but it is a really good flier’.
Izzy took the kite down and went indoors to get her coat. While she was doing that, Noggin went out to sniff the air, which was one of his favourite things to do. It was very windy indeed outside, but Noggin isn’t one of those silly dogs who, when the wind blows, thinks someone is pulling their tail and then spins round and round until they get all giddy. No; being a West Highland Terrier he knows a thing or two about windy weather, and so he turned his face to the wind like an old sea-dog, and sniffed all the different scents that were rushing on the breeze until Izzy came out again.
Together Noggin and Izzy walked down the path to the common, and then up the hill to get the best of the wind. Noggin held the kite while Izzy unwound the string, and then, when everything was ready, he let go of the kite and Izzy ran as fast as she could. The kite caught the wind and it shot up into the sky, so Izzy stopped running and unwound lots more string until the kite fluttered way up above their heads.
‘Do you want to hold the string, Noggin?’ Izzy asked.
‘Yes please’, said Noggin. Izzy carefully put the reel of string in Noggin’s mouth.
‘Hold tight, it’s really pulling hard’, she warned him. How the kite pulled! But Noggin held on, growling at the wind and pulling on the string as it tugged and the kite danced amongst the clouds. One time a strong gust of wind dragged him across the grass, while another lifted him off the ground so that he floated for several metres before coming down again. ‘Gheeee’, said Noggin (which is what ‘Wheee’ sounds like when you’re holding something between your teeth –try it).
‘Can I have a go, now?’ asked Izzy, hopping from one foot to another with excitement.
‘Es’, said Noggin, which was the nearest he got to saying ‘Yes’. So Izzy took the string, and pulled on it. It was as if the kite was a fishhook and had caught the sky; the wind tugged at the kite, and twisted it, and jerked and shivered it, but still Izzy held on. The string sang in the wind as the kite cut to the left, then to the right, twirled and fell, soared and dipped, until Izzy’s hands began to hurt a little. Then, without warning, the handle stopped pulling and the string fell slack; the kite, rather than pulling at the air, floated on it, getting further and further away, it’s long tail sliding sideways through the air. For a moment, Izzy didn’t know what had happened; and then she realised –the string had snapped! She felt a hard lump rise in her throat, and her eyes went prickly and warm.
‘The string’s snapped, Noggin!’ she cried. ‘What are we going to do?’
Now you may not know this: but Noggin never gets flustered. He always keeps calm whatever happens, except when the postman pushes too many letters through the letterbox at once. So he tilted his head, cocked his ears and put on his ‘don’t talk to me, I’m thinking’ face. ‘We’ll go and look for it’, he said. ‘Keep an eye on where it goes!’.
Noggin and Izzy stood and watched the kite as it drifted high over the common, across the road and above the trees on the other side, before it fell slowly somewhere in the distance. ‘Let’s go!’ shouted Noggin, racing across the common. Izzy ran after him. ‘What an adventure’, Noggin called back over his shoulder, ‘Keep up!’
Izzy ran as fast as she could across the grass. Very sensibly they both stopped at the road and crossed carefully, because as Noggin said, it’s better to take care and lose a kite than to get run over. Soon Izzy and Noggin were slithering along muddy paths and splashing through puddles in the wood. ‘This is fun’ Izzy shouted, nearly forgetting about the lost kite.
Suddenly Noggin dived off the path into the bushes. ‘He must have seen the kite’ thought Izzy. She tried to follow, but there were lots of brambles and she couldn’t get through, so she went back to the path. ‘Noggin’, she shouted. There was no answer, so Izzy walked along the path for a while. ‘Noggin’, she called again: still no reply. Izzy knew that Noggin knew the way home from the common just as well as she did, so she wasn’t worried, even if it was beginning to get a little bit dark. ‘Noggin’, she called one last time. This time there was a bark in the distance, so Izzy hurried on along the path; she called again, and heard Noggin barking, much closer now. It was getting quite dark, but suddenly Izzy saw him, his white coat standing out through the trees. He was standing under a tree in the middle of a clearing.
‘Have you found the kite, Noggin?’ Izzy called.
‘Ah, er, no, not exactly’, Noggin said, as Izzy caught up with him. ‘I, er, forgot about the kite, you see. I’ve been chasing this squirrel, and I think I’ve got him cornered in this tree’. Izzy looked up, and saw a squirrel sitting above them on a branch.
‘But what about the kite?’ said Izzy, sadly.
‘Oh, I expect that’s gone’, said Noggin, looking at her. As he did so, the squirrel saw its chance and raced down the trunk of the tree, across the ground and leapt up another tree.
Noggin raced after it, with Izzy running behind. ‘Noggin’s probably right’, she thought, ‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever see my lovely kite again’. And although she felt a little bit sad, she soon cheered up: because squirrel chasing seemed quite fun, too. Suddenly Noggin stopped. ‘Oh bother!’ he said, loudly.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Izzy.
‘That squirrel’s got away: I can’t see him anywhere, can you?’ said Noggin. Izzy looked up into the branches and twigs overhead. She couldn’t see a squirrel; but… what was that? It looked like…
‘Noggin’, she said, ‘I don’t know about the squirrel, but I think you have found something –look!’ And there, hanging in a tree was Izzy’s kite. Izzy tried to grab it, but it was just out of reach.
‘If you hold me above your head, I might just be able to get it’, suggested Noggin. So that’s what they did: Izzy reached up, holding Noggin round his tummy, and Noggin gently gripped the kite in his teeth.
‘Oh, thank you, Noggin’, said Izzy, when the kite was safely down; and she gave him the biggest hug ever.
‘Oh, it’s nothing’, said Noggin. ‘After all, what are friends for?’
One of the best parts of every day is when the postman comes. He usually comes in the morning, and Noggin always makes a special point of greeting him, very loudly, and with enthusiasm. The postman puts all kinds of exciting things through the flap in the door, but this week, he brought something very unexpected. Noggin and Muffin were there as usual when a big brown envelope popped through, and they could hear something coming from inside, something that sounded like a voice.
, and they rode on a giant wheel, which is called the London Eye, and they went to the Houses of Parliament, where there is a great big clock, which is called Big Ben. They saw a big red double-decker bus, and they took lots of pictures everywhere they went. 
But then it was time to go home, so they headed back to the Tube station. They were riding the escalator down, when suddenly Noggin realised that someone was missing.
