Melissa Kite

‘I need an ambulance!’ yelled the builder boyfriend into his mobile phone as the cyclist lay bleeding from a head wound. ‘What’s that, luvvie, you want to order a chicken dhansak? You mustn’t bother the emergency services with that sort of thing, dear, it’s very inconvenient and could cost lives…’ This was a sarcastic approximation of what the ambulance service operator said to the BB, which he paraphrased with much artistic licence when he relayed it to me an hour later. I was at home when I got a text message from him to say that a couple of cyclists had trespassed on to the farm where he keeps his horses, a daily occurrence.

‘What are you going to put on my head to protect me?’ said the man outside the barber’s shop to the bemused looking barber. The builder boyfriend had been standing in the queue for a while and when he got to second in line, as the man in front was asked to step inside, he found himself delayed by a curious argument. ‘What do you mean?’ said the barber, who was wearing a visor, gloves and apron and was more than in accordance with the regulations. ‘I mean,’ said the man, who was one of those arch, self-satisfied types the builder boyfriend finds it all too tempting to make fun of, ‘I mean, what measures are you going to put in place around my head to protect me from Covid as you cut my hair, hmm?

‘Are you seriously telling me you would rather meet up on Zoom than in reality?’ I asked a friend as we got stuck into an argument about the future of our existence. ‘Well, it’s all we’ve got,’ he argued. No, it really isn’t. But how to explain to people who refuse to stop being locked down that lockdown is, to all intents and purposes, over? I get the distinct impression that a lot of people have so thoroughly enjoyed sitting on their backsides doing nothing — sorry, I mean finding themselves and getting in touch with their inner child and being close to nature — that they don’t want it to end, ever.

My friend turned up wearing a snorkelling mask, beneath which she had tied a bandana around her mouth. On her hands were crinkled latex gloves that looked like they had seen better days. She removed the mask once she had got herself settled in the garden. Needless to say, she had brought her own refreshments. ‘How long have you had those gloves on?’ I asked her. ‘You do know they’re only any good if you change them after everything you do?’ ‘I know, I know!’ she snapped, lifting her bandana to take a suck at her vaping machine, or crack pipe as I call it, disappearing into a haze of stage smoke, like a magician mid-conjuring trick. ‘It’s so nice to see you!

‘Have you met the man who keeps his horses in this field?’ said one silver-haired lady to the other, as the pair stood by the gate of the builder boyfriend’s smallholding. ‘No, but I hear he’s not very nice.’ ‘He’s an oaf. He won’t even let us walk our dogs through his field.’ This vignette was captured on one of the game cameras we have dotted around the fields where we keep our horses. We’ve captured thieves in the act of loading up feed, fly-tippers in the process of dumping rubbish and we’ve now found out what the locals think of us. The BB was flicking through footage when he came across the two well-dressed ladies having a chinwag on the footpath and decided, on a whim, to play the video.

Opting out of organ donation was one of the hardest things I’ve done in a while. I don’t mean the decision was hard. There’s no way I’m donating my body parts to the state. The hard bit was completing the online form and getting the NHS to accept my decision. If you didn’t notice, the law changed on 20 May so that everyone over 18 must fill out a form if they do NOT wish to be carved up after death. If you don’t submit this form, your organs automatically become the property of the state and, once they’ve taken the bits they need, your relatives get to bury what’s left. Many will say how callous I am to point this out as being in some way wrong and thus deny a child, potentially, the chance of life from a transplant.

The two horses looked like they had never seen anything like it. They had wound up in a dark car park renowned for the practice known as ‘dogging’ after being found wandering perilously close to the M25. A jockey who just happened to be passing — ahem — was holding on to them as the usual nocturnal customers of this beauty spot carried on doing what they do. The police were out in force, busy trying to solve this baffling crime. We arrived after getting a call from a neighbouring horse owner warning us that horses in our area were loose. After racing to our fields around 9 p.m. to find them all peacefully grazing, our fences and gates intact, we set about joining a group who had gathered to help.

We went on our first outing, to the beach at Littlehampton, but I’m not sure it was as stress-relieving as it could have been. We kept getting into trouble with the two-metre-ites. These are the people who are using the two metre rule as an excuse to be damnably rude. We packed a picnic and put the spaniels in the car with our beach mats and swimming things. We stopped at the filling station in Dorking to pump up a tyre and as the builder boyfriend saw to that, I went into the shop and got myself into trouble. I picked out some goodies to add to our picnic — a giant punnet of strawberries and some pork pies. He loves a pork pie does the BB. With this armful of items I headed for the counter.

When people ask me what I did during lockdown, I would like to give an inspiring answer, apart from growing vegetables. I thought I would write The Real Life Guide to Keeping a Horse, with all the stuff other books won’t tell you. Chapter One, ‘You Will Need’, will give the most realistic list ever published of the items you should assemble before bringing home your new equine friend. Number one item: gaffer tape. I know you’re thinking the farrier comes every six weeks. But in practice most farriers are harder to get hold of than O. J. Simpson on the San Diego Freeway. Thoroughbreds reign supreme in the art of shedding shoes, then demolishing their feet by galloping round their field.

If this lockdown doesn’t end soon we are all going to turn into hairy lefties. I have just cut the builder boyfriend’s barnet, very badly. It is my second attempt, and while the first went rather well, because I approached the enterprise cautiously, this latest one has gone horribly wrong because I got a bit carried away with the clippers. My mother is a hairdresser so I assumed I might have it in the blood. I helped out a lot in her salon when I was a teenager. I can shampoo and sweep the floor just fine. But of course the rest of it requires more detailed training, I now realise. One further complication is that I could not get hold of a set of men’s hair clippers.

The rain showers had a strange and wondrous effect. All the cyclists, joggers and dog walkers that were coming from miles away to take their essential exercise in the countryside magically disappeared. No one we didn’t recognise took any essential exercise in the downpours, but then resumed it when the weather changed. I find this odd because the explanation of the day-trippers for putting their bikes and their backpacks and their hiking equipment and their picnic baskets into the backs of their cars had been that they really, really needed to do that — come hell, high water or Covid. The locked-down inhabitants of towns and cities needed to pedal around the countryside hour after hour, day in day out, so badly that we lot who live here ought to get out of their way.

Without making any efforts in that direction, I now know all about a certain telecom firm’s future business plans. My neighbours are working from home, loudly, with their kitchen windows open. I want to scream: ‘I can’t turn my ears off, and I don’t have a mute function!’ Call me old-fashioned, but if they continue to corporate grandstand at the tops of their voices during laptop conference calls without specifically telling me that everything I’m hearing is off the record, then I’m treating them as primary source material. ‘Guys, that’s confidential. Our ears only,’ one of them keeps shouting through her kitchen window. Why not close the window, as a first step to keeping this company’s logistical secrets secret?

The man was unloading cycles from the boot of his car just as I was about to take the turning for my house. It was the last straw. In the space of a mile and a half drive from field to home, I had passed 79 cyclists. I photographed each swarm as it approached me, pulling over to use the camera on my phone, before anyone accuses me of dangerous driving. At the entrance to the cricket club, a group of three men and a woman in Lycra were standing shoulder to shoulder, bikes propped idle, having a good old chinwag. I pulled up next to them and snapped them through my window. The woman put her hand on her hip and pushed her lips out in a stubborn pout as if to say, ‘What are you going to do about it?’ We don’t have a lockdown in Surrey.

The toad who lives at the bottom of the garden in the pile of bricks beneath the potting table was very happy with his new plunge pool. I made it on a particularly slow afternoon when I had run out of ideas for things to do. It was either make a toad Jacuzzi or darn socks, so naturally Mr Toad lucked out. Before that, I tidied the cellar, going through all the laundry bags full of horse tackle. I sorted and bagged rugs, cleaned and polished bridles, reorganised my ever-burgeoning collection of multicoloured lead ropes, overreach boots and numnahs, and even sorted out all the saddle soaps and boot polishes. From the back windows of the houses around me drifted the urgent sounds of people working from home, barking instructions such as, ‘Listen, guys, we need to nail this issue!

‘Do you want some of the private stuff from out the back?’ said the butcher to the builder boyfriend, leaning forward over the counter and winking theatrically. The builder b winced a little for this was starting to feel like the terrifying scene in League Of Gentlemen when Mr Briss starts selling a mysterious and highly addictive ‘special’ meat to the residents of Royston Vasey. Thankfully, this butcher was only selling private lamb. He revealed his secret stash to the BB because he took a liking to him. The butcher grinned, revealing big teeth between rosy cheeks, before disappearing out the back and returning with an entire side, which he butchered in front of him, offering him as much as he wanted.

The spaniel curled up in her basket with one of my shoes, one of his socks and a packet of biscuits, as if stockpiling. Every time I give her a treat she rushes outside to dig it into the garden. Tucking some essential treasures into her bed with her, she peeped back at me with soulful eyes. Cydney is sensitive. She knows something is up. The other spaniel, big, bear-like Poppy, is oblivious. She’s happy so long as the routine continues. We don’t see people at the best of times. We go to the field in the morning to feed the horses, come back, mooch about the house and garden. That’s our routine anyway. It’s the number of walkers that has changed. They were pouring in their hundreds along the footpaths and tracks until the authorities told people to stop it.