Real life

After a year of affordable car insurance, I knew I had to be in for it when my premium came up for renewal. Nothing prepared me, however, for the quote that came through from Aviva, who I am thinking of re-naming Amorta, or Adversa, which just sounds more appropriate. You may recall that after I won my personal injury dispute with no liability or fault on my record after three years of fighting, I was refunded thousands of the sky-high premiums Aviva had been charging me while the case was going on — because, naturally, they had to assume I was guilty of causing spinal injuries to two members of the non-working classes by bumping into the back of their people-carrier at 5 mph in a traffic queue on Streatham High Road until I could prove I had done no such thing.

If you are the sort of person who enjoys tinkering with a classic car prone to myriad mechanical problems then you really should consider taking up thoroughbred horses as a hobby. After weeks of leg bandaging and foot poulticing, I am becoming a basket case. But apparently there are people who enjoy this sort of thing. They prefer tinkering to riding. I presume they haven’t much appetite for speed, and therefore prefer to spend time with their horse while it is stationary in a confined space. About twice a year, perhaps, they manage to get it to go right and so they enjoy a lovely Sunday afternoon out in the lanes, with people pipping them from behind as they make a holy show of themselves.

Diamonds are for ever. Plumbers take a lifetime. They never finish. No job is too big or small for them to not finish it. All I wanted was a new kitchen tap unit. The hot tap needed a washer fitting but, according to Tony the plumber from over the road, there is no point fitting a washer. It’s more work than it’s worth. The thing to do is to rip out the old taps and fit new ones, which he can do almost more cheaply, but certainly no more expensively, than fitting a washer. Fine, I thought. The old taps are horrible anyway so new taps it will be. Tony got a catalogue from the Plumb Center and showed me the pages of taps, which were all mind-blowingly similar. I chose the cheapest ones and he said he would order, pick them up and fit them.

‘Racing is 99.9 per cent disappointment,’ said the trainer philosophically, as I sat in the yard sipping coffee, waiting for the vet. She arrived in her pick-up a few minutes later and wound down her window. ‘Am I in the right place?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he said, still in sardonic mode. ‘It depends what you’re looking for.’ I leapt up and showed her the way to the far stable, where Darcy was standing on only three good legs. The foot that trod on the screw was now fine and she was sound on it. But then, during a short hack on the common, she had gone suddenly very lame in front.

Darcy trod on a screw. Five little words which, if Darcy was anything other than a thoroughbred horse, might signify nothing more dramatic than a rummage through the medicine cabinet and the application of a plaster. But of course Darcy is a thoroughbred horse. And I did end up mothering equine and not human children. Remind me, please, why I did that? Oh yes, something about me never quite working out how to do life like normal people do it, and finding myself, as middle age bore down on me, only able to commune with creatures possessing four legs. Four very delicate, finely balanced legs in Darcy’s case. An expensive way to carry on one’s emotional life. But we are where we are. Darcy trod on a screw. She had been going reasonably well for her first season in training.

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.