Melissa Kite

The last time I bought a set of tyres in south London I came away not quite knowing whether I had just been asked to become a jihadi bride. Of course, it was only the merest suspicion. If I had had hard evidence I might have gone to the police. Or I might not. These days, one is likely to get done for a hate crime if one complains about a member of the opposite religion. If I had gone to the police what would I have said? ‘Excuse me, I’ve just had a set of tyres fitted to my Volvo by a man who tried to persuade me that IS fighters don’t deserve the bad press.’ Would I have sounded hysterical, or delusional, or just plain prejudiced? And what was my suspicion based on? Not that much.

My upstairs neighbours are terribly nice, but too naive to be allowed to renovate their flat in peace. The two brothers in their twenties bought the apartment together and are doing it up, I suppose, because they hope to sell and divide the spoils so they can buy one flat each. Such are the struggles of the younger generation to get on the housing ladder, and their efforts are laudable. They are young, idealistic and full of enthusiasm. However, it would be much easier for all of us if they would listen to me when I try to explain to them that doom lies around every corner and nothing is more certain than that things can always get worse.

After the £1,100 quote from the vet in London I drove down the A3 and out the other side of the Hindhead tunnel in search of affordable healthcare for the spaniel. On the Surrey-Hampshire border, I found a well-recommended vet who had been in practice for 40 years and appeared to be still engaged in the treatment of animals for a small amount of money above the price of the labour and materials, claiming his reasonable costs back from the insurance rather than making the client pay up front. He was past retirement age and clearly only practising for vocational reasons: a genuine fascination with veterinary medicine, a deep love of his job, and the satisfaction of curing much-loved pets.

If these speed awareness courses get much more entertaining and informative they might become a dangerous incentive to break the limit just to get on to them. I qualified for my second one by doing 35 in a 30 at night in a strange place. Being lost and mercilessly tailgated as I crawled along a pitch dark country lane, I turned right to find a place to pull over and before I realised I was in a residential street, a camera flashed me. Two months later, I was one of 23 people sitting in a faceless office suite inside a multistorey car park in Guildford with Janice, let’s call her, in majestic command of a laser pointer and a PowerPoint display.

My attempt to have a small cyst removed from the spaniel was always going to be fraught with difficulty. My vets are in a posh area of London and have a name that sounds like a multinational reinsurance broker. This is because similar amounts of money go through their books. To save their blushes, let’s call them Simon Fleece and Associates. When I call, the line rings a few times, then there is a pause before it begins to ring again in a different tone. When it answers, a girl says: ‘Simon Fleece and Associates answering service how may I help?’ My formerly friendly local vet is now so big and money-grubbing it has a separate call centre to take overflow calls, I realise. I am very, very scared.

When in India, I always appal my highly educated tour guides. They despair of me, as they drag me round the cultural sights, trying to force education and refinement into me as I lounge about on the walls outside temples soaking up the atmosphere. This trip was no different. My guide had come to pick me up bright and early from the Hyatt in the business district of Calcutta where I had been staying for a three-day economic summit. I had arranged for a further three days of what the tour operators refer to as R&R before I headed back to London. India is one of my favourite destinations but I am a lazy so-and-so when it comes to sightseeing. All I want to do is wander about watching beautiful women wash clothes in rivers. Then a Bengali drummer in the evening and I’m set.

All disputes are now a clash of rights in which both sides compete to see who has the greatest claim to the backing of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. I’ve realised this because the other day I took on a road resurfacer who I caught fly-tipping debris and as the ensuing row almost came to blows I contemplated what would happen if the police were called. In the matter of Kite v. Surrey Tarmacker, I wouldn’t like to call it. On the one hand, I’d have a possible gender equality claim, and a very tenuous shot at a disability complaint based on the fact that I can barely think straight most days on account of my midlife crisis.

‘Start at the back and try to pass as many horses as you can,’ said the trainer, as we stepped on to the all-weather track at Lingfield. It was only a practice gallop but I couldn’t have been more excited if I’d been lining up for the Gold Cup. Darcy had been loaded on to the lorry that morning with eight other horses for an outing to see if any of them happened to show signs of what the trainer calls blistering speed. Unless your horse has blistering speed you can forget going ‘under rules’.

‘Sadly, the world is filled with apathy,’ said my friend, as we looked at our sad little list of conscripts to the cause of fighting left-wing lunacy in our local neighbourhood. He’s right. But I can’t help feeling, as I enter another year of what will surely turn out to be non-stop trouble, that a bit of apathy would do me good. My problem is I suffer from the reverse of apathy. I’m too bothered by everything. I can’t stop objecting. I need to sit back and learn how not to give a damn. The apathetic masses must have much lower blood pressure than me. And a lot more friends. When I look back on 2015 it was one tiresome principled stand after another. I took a stand against house-building on the green belt. I took a stand against HS2.

A boyfriend’s for life, not just for Christmas. It’s no good me getting myself a nice cuddly man with whom I can wade through the snow, roast chestnuts and ice-skate in amusing bobble hats. Because then I am going to be responsible for that boyfriend for a very long time. I should know. These creatures need feeding, they need coddling. They need endless amounts of fuss, and care, and attention. A boyfriend can’t be left in the house for longer than four hours at a time, or I will come home to find he’s been lying in the bath all day and has managed to use up £200 worth of hot water. He can’t be trusted around food.

Go on, they said. Go on a date. Let your friend fix you up with a nice eligible man. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Try something new. Be open-minded. Give it a chance. What’s the worst that can happen? I’ll tell you what’s the worst that can happen. It started with me trying to get to his place to meet him. In my head, the 150 miles between us made it a non-starter but the wisdom of well-meaning crowds was that I was being a boring old stick-in-the-mud. Go on, they said. Give it a go. You never know what it could lead to. Well, I’ll tell you what it led to. I stopped overnight at my parents’ house near Coventry. How could even I louse up a journey of a few miles from there to Leicestershire?

‘You lot are a disgrace! Chasing after defenceless animals on horseback!’ The bearded anti was on his mountain bike on a bridle path and so strictly speaking he ought to have given way to horses, according to the Highway Code, rather than blocking their path and shouting at them. But let’s leave that aside. The main problem with the angry cyclist’s diatribe was that he was yelling animal rights abuse at Britain’s oldest drag hunt, proudly not killing anything for 150 years. A few weeks ago I reported that I found it baffling that the sabs had been out to thwart the Surrey Union when it was legal trail hunting. And a few of you wrote in to point out that a lot of hunts still accidentally kill foxes.

I got on a bus. Well, I wasn’t to know, was I? I just saw a bus stop by the Science Museum and thought, ‘I know, I’ll get on a bus.’ That’s how long it has been since I’ve ventured on to the London roads. Since driving became unfeasible due to congestion charging, I’ve been getting the Tube. I’ve thought about buses, but before credit card swiping the drivers would never let me on. I suppose I shouldn’t refuse to get an Oyster card because I don’t want the state to know where I am. It’s a foolish protest, but it’s my protest. However, the other day I was suddenly possessed by the urge to travel above ground.

By the time you read this I will have delivered my long-awaited speech to the World Horse Welfare annual conference in the presence of the Princess Royal. I say ‘long awaited’ not because I have some inflated sense of how important I am. But because I have been working myself into a right old lather about it. I was perfectly fine until the organisers sent me a few emails with useful information about the conference themes and asked me out for a coffee to discuss my speech. ‘Agh!’ I thought. ‘Why are they asking me what I’m going to say? I have no idea what I am going to say. But more to the point, why do they feel they need to ask me?

A letter has arrived summoning me to parents’ evening to discuss Cydney’s progress. Yes, I am aware that Cydney is a dog. But it seems that my vet is not aware. Or if he is, he is doing a good impression of pretending she is entitled to the same checks and balances the state affords children. ‘Dear Miss Kite and Cydney (Byrecoc Cinemon Jonquil),’ began the letter. I called the spaniel to heel as I read, telling her, ‘Cydney, you better listen up because you’ve got mail.’ ‘We have noticed,’ the letter went on, ‘that it is soon time for you to come in to the surgery for a visit.

‘This is a two Voltarol day,’ I thought, as I popped another pill and settled into the bath after Darcy’s first hurdling session. Well, three Voltarol if you count the one I gave to the young jockey who parted company with his horse at the first hurdle just in front of me. He knelt on the ground wearing a stoical expression as he cradled his arm. He has been doing this since he was 15. When he is older he will be able to tell his children, in all seriousness, that he went to the school of hard knocks and the college of crashing into hurdles. ‘If there are bones sticking out,’ I thought, because the jockey tea room talk about injuries nonchalantly suffered is always luridly laid on for my benefit every time I nip in for a cuppa, ‘then that’s it.

Devotee of the old ways though I am, I can just about understand why a misguided animal lover might oppose fox-hunting. If you enjoy eating KFC while pretending the chicken you are eating hasn’t suffered, then it follows that you will worry about the feelings of a fox who would rip the same chicken to pieces if it were kept in nicer conditions. It doesn’t make any sense, or help animals, but it is something sentimentalists do. I cannot begin to understand, however, why such a person would oppose pretend hunting. I can grasp perfectly well why one would have to sneak around if one were hunting foxes. But I’m struggling with the concept of sneaking around as one doesn’t hunt foxes. Hunt saboteurs? Yes, I see that. Sabs trying to thwart a pretend hunt?

The young lad behind the counter of the betting shop looked at me askance. ‘This horse is 200–1.’ ‘Yes. I know.’ He leaned over the counter and lowered his voice. ‘Have you had a tip?’ I looked around me to see why he was whispering. ‘No.’ He stared at the betting slip. ‘You’ve had a tip, haven’t you?’ ‘No!’ I insisted. I really hadn’t had a tip either. I was betting on a horse I had just seen being loaded into a lorry in the yard where Darcy is busy becoming a racehorse. I got so excited seeing, for the first time, one of my horse’s stablemates going out to the races, to be ridden by her trainer, no less, that I ran down to the Coral and put a fiver on the nose.

‘The last owner who tried to ride his own horse got tanked,’ said the trainer, looking up at me as I perched on Darcy, knees nearly up to my chest like a pixie in the racing saddle. ‘After three circuits he threw himself off into the muck heap.’ ‘I get the picture,’ I said, running my gloved hand against Darcy’s neck. ‘Please, look after your mother,’ I whispered to her. She was perfectly calm beneath me. Because I raised her, I have always felt like I can trust this horse with my life. I was about to find out exactly what that meant. It is all very well trusting a horse you have raised from a yearling while cantering her around the woods. It is quite another when that thoroughbred has grown into a gleaming racehorse.