Melissa Kite

By and large, I’m not really sure the world is ready for me to join the steering committee of a community project in Lambeth seeking Lottery funding. It sounds like I might end up punching someone who is left-wing in an argument over how to spend public money. That said, I was mildly inspired when a disused cricket pavilion in my local park went up for tender and some stalwarts of the community started to have worthy ideas for its future use. They approached me to help and so I am considering how I could safely (for all concerned) become involved. I should explain, unless you happen to remember, that the last time I dabbled in activism in my south London neighbourhood, I almost ended up getting lynched.

After I phoned the Aviva call centre for the ten thousandth time, a girl called Adele had to sort it in the end. If she hadn’t, I would have climbed on to the roof of the House of Commons in an outfit made of Lycra, waving a banner bearing the legend ‘Drivers For Justice!’ The poor thing wasn’t too impressed with my hysteria at first. ‘Help me, please!’ I squawked into the phone. ‘I’ve been fighting these people who claimed I injured them when I hadn’t for three and a half years and this week the statute ran out on their claim — not just ran out, really ran out.

Farewell then, Cobham. You were the place I ran to when the metropolis became too much, and urban life overwhelmed me. You were to me a shining beacon of blandness in an otherwise frighteningly exotic world. I loved you and held you in mythical esteem. In times of disappointment, I yearned for you every bit as much as Margo Leadbetter did. ‘Cydney! We’re moving to Cobham!’ I would shout at the spaniel whenever Lambeth Council did something Marxist, which was often. We didn’t ever quite move to Cobham, but we kept the horses there. For nearly 15 years, this gave us a bolthole down the A3 to escape to, from Balham.

The builder boyfriend has a new girlfriend. I suppose he was bound to move on eventually. I just never thought he would move on this quickly. From the day I told him, in the traditional female way, that it really wasn’t working and never would work because of things that were entirely his fault, to the moment I heard he had a new squeeze, I would say it was three weeks tops. She’s nearly ten years younger than me. And, by the sound of it, a deal better off. Good for him. If I could have traded him in for a younger, richer model I might have. But we’ll never know, because I don’t have that option.

Darcy was obviously listening to every word I said. After we got back from the ride from hell, in which she threw the mother of all tantrums, she was very subdued. She stood in her box all afternoon looking sheepish, according to the groom. ‘We haven’t had a peep out of her,’ she said, when I arrived the next day. ‘She looked like she was in a state of shock.’ She was in a state of shock? Holy Moses. What about us? My friend Karl, as I explained last week, had agreed to swap horses with me mid-hack when Darcy starting playing up. I’m not easily scared but instead of going forwards as we started to canter she began rocking on the spot, as if threatening to unleash the most tremendous buck.

All was going suspiciously well with the thoroughbred. I suppose it had to be the calm before the storm. I bought Darcy as a yearling, you may remember, from the builder boyfriend’s mother, who has an eye for a horse and had picked her up in a sale. One day when visiting her yard I saw the little filly peeping over a stable door and got ‘a feeling’. Oh lord, please save me from feelings. After I took her home, she promptly jumped out of her field and landed on a fence post. We had to carry her on to the horse lorry to get her to Liphook equine hospital because she wouldn’t walk a step. Of course, once you have carried a horse on to a lorry to save its life you are bonded to the animal indefinitely.

My request to see my medical notes was granted in the end. I honestly don’t know why I wanted to see them, really. I’m just one of those people who suspects the worst of the state, and other large organisations, so if I get the chance to have a peek into what they’ve been up to behind my back I take it. This was my second Subject Access Request. The first was of the RSPCA, who I got a tad suspicious about after writing several critical articles and attracting weirdly sour-sounding complaints from them in which they claimed I was only criticising them because I was a supporter of hunting. That put my back up slightly. So I demanded to see everything in their possession that mentioned me.

My request to see my medical notes has sparked all-out panic at the GP surgery. ‘What do you mean?’ said the receptionist who answered the phone when I called to ask. She sounded even more furious than the time I rang to ask if I could possibly have an appointment to see the doctor. On that occasion, she affected her best Lady Bracknell impression, ‘The doctor? You want to see the doctor?’ ‘Well, yes if it isn’t too much trouble,’ I spluttered, as she audibly bashed her keyboard in ill-disguised rage at my impertinence. On this occasion, she was horribly icy. ‘I mean,’ I stammered, ‘I want to see my medical notes, as the law entitles me.’ ‘The law?’ she said. A haaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaand-bag!

Never add up your insurance premiums. I just did and the annual cost of all of them came to more than the cost of most man-made or natural disasters. That means there really isn’t any point to any of them, statistically speaking. The problem is I’m an insurance junkie. I’m a born cynic, a pessimist, a worrier. Someone only has to ask if I have ever thought what would happen if... (insert improbable but horrendous mishap: the dog ingesting a rare kind of lungworm, Russian separatists misfiring a rocket at eastern Ukraine that lands on my roof) ...and I’m ready to sign on the dotted line of any kind of lunacy. I’m a sucker for the promise of safety, security ‘and the peace of mind of knowing that in an emergency you and your loved ones...

‘Hello, Vodafone customer s..., can I h...you?’ This is typical, I thought. I’m ringing to complain about them charging me £137.08 for one phone call to directory inquiries and I can’t even hear them properly because the mobile reception they provide me with is so rubbish. ‘Hello? Can you hear me?’ ‘Y... I can h... you fine!’ ‘Well, I can’t hear you very well. Wait a minute...’ I got up from my desk and went to the front of the house, near the street. ‘That might be better. Can you still hear me?’ ‘Yes, I c... ... you fine!’ ‘Oh, never mind. Look, I want to ask you again about this phone call to 118 000 you’ve charged me £137.08 for.

‘Orange 1-1-8 thousand how may I help you?’ said the cheerful voice. Carefree as you like, I asked for the number for Sky customer services to report my parents’ broken digibox. This was back on Christmas eve morning. I had been walking the dog around Kenilworth Castle when my dad rang in a panic saying the Sky box had broken, and, well, we had rather hoped to watch some television over Christmas. So I took it upon myself to sit in my car and make a phone call to sort it out. But when I searched Sky’s website on my iPhone I could not find a number for customer services. I found numbers for all sorts of other things including ‘Report a deceased account holder’, but nothing at all for living account holders with deceased Sky boxes.

My iPad is dead, that’s what’s wrong with it. The plumage don’t enter into it. But since the blasted thing fell off its perch last November, it has somehow run up crippling excess data charges. At first, I could think of only two possible explanations: either my iPad was pretending to be dead, while secretly downloading movies it personally fancied watching, or the phone company was overcharging me. All I could say with any certainty was that the iPad had been lying on a shelf, insensible, unchargable, un-switch-on-able throughout December, and then I got a bill showing that during this period of total inactivity it had apparently racked up more charges than it had done in the entire two years I was using it.

My ponies may be psychic. I think they are communicating with each other telepathically. And before you call me delusional, let me tell you I have witnesses. It has happened three times now. The first time, I had taken Darcy on her first hack alone without Grace. Normally, a friend and I ride the pair of them out together. But on this occasion I had decided to get Darcy used to doing things for herself. I should explain that the two are very closely bonded. Despite being much smaller in stature, Gracie is a mother figure to Darcy because they were turned out in a field together when Darcy was growing up.

Clearly, I am going to have to report my broken mop handle to the authorities. It has been sitting outside my house for seven weeks now and the binmen have made clear their intention never to touch it. I understand there is such a thing as bulky waste. But truly, the mop handle minus its mop head with its business end broken so it cannot be reattached to another mop head refill is not at all bulky. It’s just a broken mop handle. I put it out with my wheelie bin in the hope that common sense might prevail. Naively, idealistically, I thought the binmen, or whatever they prefer to be called nowadays — refuse disposal technicians, waste and recycling coordinators — might take pity on me. Hell, I would go so far as to say I had a dream.

Every accident that happens to a horse is a freak accident. Rule number one. Once you grasp that as a horse-owner you are on your way to understanding the nature of the bind you are in. When Gracie went suddenly lame on a routine hack a few years ago, you may remember, it turned out she had trodden on a piece of old animal bone, which pierced the soft part of her foot. The bone fragment travelled upwards, turned right and sliced into her flexor tendon. The head surgeon at Liphook equine hospital emerged from his operating theatre that night to declare that the chance of an injury like that was ‘many hundreds of millions to one’. Holding the two-inch-long piece of bone fragment in a test tube, he declared himself well and truly impressed.

Draft and save. That is as good a New Year’s resolution as any. Never send an email or letter in anger. Always leave it a few hours. Sleep on it if you can. You know it makes sense. The same goes for notes through doors. I know this because I have been experiencing some intermittent next door neighbour noise. First, it was incessant dog barking. I went out of my house and peered over the wall of my neighbour’s house and, sure enough, sitting on the back of the sofa in the window was a pretty little dog barking his head off. ‘Sshhh! There, there, doggy. Don’t worry,’ I cooed at him, but he went on woofing. And so I shouted, ‘No! Be quiet! You mustn’t! Bad dog!’ He looked at me a little shocked, and stopped barking.

The countryside is all very well so long as you know you can leave it. Funnily enough, exactly the same can be said for the town. I realise I have spent the entire year trying to decide whether to sell up and move from London to the wilds of Surrey. Or stay put in Balham. I’ve spent more evenings on Zoopla than can possibly be healthy. And now I think about it, I guess the reason I have struggled so hard to make a choice is that town and country are dependent on each other to produce their own special magic. I cannot enjoy the country unless I know I can leave the mud, muck and gossip behind and escape to London. And I cannot enjoy London unless I know I can run away from the liberal lefties, abusive cyclists and endless box junctions to find solace in the mud.