Melissa Kite

‘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.

At least two insurances are going to have to go, as I grapple with fear of penury, I have decided. My health insurance is looking increasingly pointless, because I never use it. I just keep it going because I daren’t stop it. And I think the same can be said of my ‘Being A Cool Person’ insurance. If you have never heard of the latter, it is also sometimes referred to as ‘membership of Soho House’. I have had it for donkey’s years but I never avail myself of it. I used to use it a lot in my heyday, when I could party with the best of them. Back then, I could drape myself against a bar with a mojito without looking absurd.

After pulling out of my flat sale and U-turning on the idea of moving to the Cotswolds, it took me a while to realise why. But there is a reason I can never seem to find what I’m looking for. No matter where I go to house-hunt for the cottage of my dreams, nothing is ever right, be it in Cobham or further along the A3 or, giving up on the south east altogether, in the Cotswolds. And the reason is not that I am a hopeless flake. The reason is that I have not really been looking for a place in Cobham, or Ripley, or ‘down the Hog’s Back’, as tempting as that may sound, or, more exotically, in a village on the Surrey-Hampshire borders, or even in Cameron Country just outside Chipping Norton. No. I realise now I have not been looking for a place in a place.

‘Are you afraid of falling over?’ asked the bored young radiologist, as he started filling out the forms. I had been recalled to St George’s Hospital to have a bone density scan. I must explain that the issue of whether or not my bones are disintegrating has been somewhat tinged with hysteria ever since I managed to get myself told off by an Oxford professor for not taking HRT. I rang her to get a quote for an article I was writing about yoga and why it might be helping me through the menopause. One minute I was looking up a revered expert on physiology in the Oxford University experts’ directory. The next minute a really scary woman was barking down the phone, ‘Well, I don’t know anything about yogaaaah...

Exciting news. We might be expecting. I say might because I haven’t done a pregnancy test yet. I thought about doing one then I thought, what the hell, I will leave it to fate. If it happens, it happens. If not, I will look on the bright side as it will save me a lot of bother. Actually, it was the other way around, if I’m honest. My first reaction was total panic, then I thought, if it happens I will look on the bright side. It will be nice to hear the patter of tiny paws around the place. Oh, didn’t I say? It’s Cydney who might be expecting. Not me. Lordy, no. I’m well past that. But Cydney is in her prime.

‘Yes, you can report it, but it’s going to take ten minutes to go through the process,’ said the oppressively cheerful bureaucrat at Surrey Police when I rang to tell them about my stolen saddle. After the first 30 seconds I could see why. She kept asking me to verify that I was all right — still coping, still breathing, still pumping blood around my body — after every sentence. For example: ‘I just need to take your name and address. Is that all right? I need to open a file and log your personal details. Is that OK?’ ‘Yes, fine,’ I said, before telling her my name and address, which prompted a lot of tapping. ‘If I go silent… then it’s just because… I’m typing. Is that all right?

On the basis that I might need a new boiler soon, I thought I had better sell the London flat and move to the Cotswolds. Fine, so it wasn’t just the gurgling noise coming from the Potterton Performa. I had been pondering my place in the world, which is never a good thing for a person of my nervous disposition to do. The break-up with the builder boyfriend; the escalating cost of keeping three horses in Surrey; the liberal leftie south London neighbours regaling me every time I leave my house with the words ‘Isn’t Jeremy Corbyn wonderful?’ — it was all making me feel perfectly unstable, as if a big move was the only thing for it. I can’t be doing with this madness, I thought. I need to sell up and go somewhere quieter, saner and less expensive.