Melissa Kite

Melissa Kite

How I fought the urge to panic-buy – and won

‘Get me Heygates on the phone! I need that order of pony nuts now, damn it!’ It was like a scene from a disaster movie, only at the country store. The owner’s son was yelling at staff. The car park was a seething mass of battered 4x4s. Men with walkie-talkies were corralling the panicking horse

The badlands of rural Surrey

The most exciting place on earth I have ever been to is the village where I live. And I don’t think I’m boasting to say that I’ve been to a lot of exciting places: Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza strip, Egypt, Korea, Crossmaglen, the Somerset Levels at high tide… My favourite dateline

How I fell out of love with the BBC

One of the many technological things I don’t understand is, how come I’m paying to watch television? I know why I used to pay. I used to switch on a box in the corner of the room and marvel at the choice of three quite interesting programmes and something slightly racy on Channel 4. It

Is it possible to have a touch of coronavirus?

Nice of the NHS to send an advisory text about coronavirus, because I was wondering. Is it possible to have a touch of coronavirus? If so, the builder boyfriend and I suspect we may have had it, and fought it off. Out of nowhere, I suddenly felt like I couldn’t get any air into my

The Edition: can the UK and EU bridge their Brexit gap?

41 min listen

Next week, the trade negotiations between the EU and the UK begin in earnest. But in the days ahead, the positions set out by both sides are so far apart that the negotiations can only be heading towards an almighty row. James Forsyth writes in this week’s issue that it’s better if they get this

The pros and cons of robot vision

Being told I am now both short-sighted and long-sighted feels like someone is playing a very bad joke on me. I would say I’ve always been as blind as a bat but I don’t want the Bat Society to complain. Lately, every time I go to the optician a different practitioner has what feels like

Dogging on our doorstep

Some might say it was a typical over-reaction on my part to erect hidden cameras at the horses’ field. First the theft from the barn of some broken old horse rugs, then the stolen feed, then a load of fly-tipping in the gateway, making it impossible to get in or out until the council came

What has Mr Benn got to do with horse insurance?

‘Time to begin your adventure with Mr Benn!’ said the letter that came through my door, in a big loopy red font, beneath a picture of a smiling, waving, bowler-hatted Mr Benn. And this would have been fine had I been a five-year-old whose mother had sent off for a box-set of classic Mr Benn,

How to catch a thief

My tech guy Andy appeared on the doorstep in a puff of smoke. I had just texted him to ask if he was still coming and as I typed the words I heard his footsteps outside. I raced to the door and opened it to find him standing, wizard like, amid a cloud of vapour.

How my new pony swept me off my feet – literally

‘This is the one I was thinking of for you,’ said the lady I might feasibly call my mother-in-law, in spirit at least. We were standing in her stable yard in a dingley dell corner of the south of England which is frozen in time. After driving down a winding track between well-tended paddocks, we

The strange case of the everlasting bonfire

The bonfire burned and burned, choking out black smoke, and when my headache got so bad I could barely see straight, I decided I would have to look into it. I say this at every year’s end: I am so tired of fighting. I sometimes wish I could lose this supernatural gift I have for

Real life – 28 November 2019

She was a trade union activist, she told me. She wanted a second referendum. Well, they all do. I’m starting to think that none of them got out of bed on 23 June 2016. The pink tinge to her hair alarmed me from the start. I have often said that there is a certain type

How you can tell the gender of a thief

My attempt at being Columbo was only taking me so far. In solving the mystery of who raided the barn, I was going round in circles. All I knew was that the thieves took a weirdly useless assortment of items, including four wrecked horse rugs, a broken lunge line and a wheelbarrow with a completely

The strange case of six missing horse rugs

The night after the fireworks display the barn was raided and our horse rugs were taken. Good job I’ve watched a lot of Columbo because I was able to quickly rule out a reprisal attack for us disagreeing with the fireworks. I believe I can categorically prove it was nothing to do with that, although