Melissa Kite

Melissa Kite

The National Trust delinquents strike again

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

I’m gypsy and proud

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

My medical embarrassments are my business and no one else’s

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

The truth about Surrey’s obsession with horse masks

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

Why I finally succumbed to my musclebound osteopath

‘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

Crunch time: why has Walkers changed its salt and vinegar crisps?

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

How can we feed our horses when there’s no hay?

‘We’re closed for lunch,’ said the farmer, sitting behind the counter of his farm shop with a scowl on his face, not eating anything. ‘Well then,’ said the builder boyfriend, ‘I’ll come back.’ And the BB went off to have a bite to eat at a nearby caff, where he texted me the news that

Just how far will the NHS go to get me jabbed up?

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

Why do hygienists self-sabotage?

‘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

Jonathan Dimbleby, Katja Hoyer and Melissa Kite

17 min listen

On this week’s episode, broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby reads his diary (00:55), journalist Katja Hoyer reports on the German Greens and their poll surge (06:25) and Melissa Kite on why she’s perfectly happy to stay in the country this summer (12:05).

How not to walk a dog

Watching a woman driving a dog past my house like a carthorse is just another ‘new normal’ of lockdown. This moron had two long ropes attached to a harness around the body of her huge dog and was trying to steer it along the village green by long-reining it from behind as though it were

The ugly truth about natural horsemanship

The rope riders came down the driveway slowly, their horses veering this way and that, side to side, forwards a few steps, then backwards nearly as many. It took them an hour to trespass from the bridleway that crosses the top of the drive and make their slow, dangerously shaky course between the paddocks full

Why I’ve gone right off the police

‘Welcome to Victims First. Please leave your name and number and we will return your call. Beeeeeeeeeeeep!’ I had rung the number given to me by the police to pay my fixed penalty fine for not having an MOT. This £100 I was trying to pay was coming out of an increasingly tight household budget,

Anil Bhoyrul, Lionel Shriver and Melissa Kite

18 min listen

On this episode, Anil Bhoyrul starts by asking if it’s racist to wonder what colour your child’s skin will be. (01:05) Lionel Shriver is up next, and says the West has used China’s totalitarian tactics to suppress Covid. (05:05) Melissa Kite finishes the podcast, and describes her encounter with ‘obnoxious Surrey battleaxes’. (14:15)

Lockdown is making a criminal of me

‘Have you had your jab, Margery?’ said one Surrey lady to another in the queue for take-away coffee at the chintzy, shabby chic coffee shop. ‘Oh yes, I’ve had it for my country,’ said her friend. ‘I just can’t understand these people who won’t have the jab. I mean, how selfish…’ I looked at them