Melissa Kite

‘Contact a GP if you’re worried about symptoms four weeks after having Covid.’ That was the NHS quote on the end of a story about Piers Morgan, who was still feeling ill three weeks after getting the lurgy. Me too, Piers. It took the builder boyfriend almost as long to get over it, and his

The woman pulled up in her flashy 4×4 which was meandering along the farm track in that way people have when they have ‘questions’. People in Surrey often have questions as they drive past a farm. For example, I had a gentleman query why the horses were wearing ‘blindfolds’ recently, and I had to explain

The doctor’s receptionist was adamant. ‘If you had not had the vaccine you would have been even more ill with Covid than you are now,’ she said. The builder boyfriend’s father argued back and forth with her for a while, but the conversation went nowhere. His GP wasn’t in the least concerned that he had

The scaffolding pole across the public footpath led to a farcical conversation with the local council. I had been walking the dogs down this well-used path close to where we keep the horses when I discovered that the pole, which is attached to a post on either side of the path and which has been

Since telling the shoot we won’t let them use the land we rent, we have been beset by a series of unfortunate events. It began more than a year ago now, when we first dug in our heels and said there were to be no standing guns in the fields where we keep our horses.

‘Oh, I do so love to see all the lovely pheasants running around the place,’ said the lady walking the Alsatian up the farm track. The huge dog was straining at the leash, pulling her along, but she was trying to stop for a chat with the builder boyfriend as he mended a fence. I

The woman sat alone and stony-faced in the passenger seat of the car as it blocked the road. She was wearing a mask, but I could see that she wore the blankly determined expression of someone who thought they had every right to stop where they liked. Sure enough, the National Trust sticker was on

Exciting news from my father’s cousin in Canada. ‘You asked about our grandfather, there is much to tell,’ he writes. ‘You may be surprised to know that George’s mother was a gypsy. So it seems that we have some gypsy blood coursing through our veins.’ As I read the email, which my father had forwarded

While we were looking forward to Freedom Day, the National Health Service was busy planning something extra special to coincide with it almost exactly. From 23 June, our medical records can be given by our GPs to other agencies and third parties for the purpose of that most ambiguous of all state activities, ‘planning’. While

A saloon car pulled up opposite our fields and a man sat there looking at the horses with a bewildered expression. I had noticed this car meandering along the farm track, driving between the horse fields and stopping every time he came alongside a horse, sitting there for minutes on end. Then he would start

‘You’ll come back when you’re in enough pain,’ said the osteopath as I walked out of his door. That was two years ago this week, so when I walked back through the door he raised his eyebrows and made a face. I had booked online as I lay shivering in bed with pain. Two years

Henry Walker might never have got into the crisp business were it not for the fact that his Leicester butcher’s shop was hit by meat rationing after the second world war. In 1948, when Walkers and Son started looking at alternative products, crisps were becoming increasingly popular — and so they shifted to hand-slicing and

More threatening letters from the NHS demanding I let them jab me up with two Covid vaccinations. Or as the builder boyfriend put it: ‘Now that more people are choking to death on paella getting stuck in their windpipe than are dying of Covid, how are they going to force us to get vaccinated? And

An angry text exchange between me and a former Tory councillor after she lost her seat has got me thinking. During the campaign, I asked this lady if she would like to put a poster in my front garden as it adjoins the village green. Even more to the point, next door to me is

‘You’re meant to be having your dental appointment now!’ barked the receptionist, bringing my lie-in to an abrupt end. Very unusually, I had left the builder boyfriend to do the horses on his way to work and I was lounging about in bed. Coffee at the luxurious hour of 9 a.m., spaniels sprawled on the

Being told by the Tories not to put a local election poster in my window because it will only remind people why they don’t like them has reminded me why I don’t like them. It also put my blood pressure up, according to my newly delivered blood pressure monitor. I strapped the thing to my

Trying to get hold of HRT in the time of Covid is like trying to score crack. Possibly, scoring crack is way easier than trying to persuade your GP to do your annual blood pressure test so you can renew your prescription while the nurse who does the blood pressure testing is socially distancing. I

When the time came for the nurse to ring me to take my blood pressure, the phone simply didn’t ring. I was at the horses doing fencing so I checked my messages to make sure I hadn’t missed this ground-breaking event. But no, there was no voicemail saying: ‘Hello, this is the nurse calling to