Melissa Kite

Sometimes I think it would be easier if the government deducted a set amount from my bank account every month to cover ‘incidental stealth taxes’. Sometimes I think it would be easier if the government deducted a set amount from my bank account every month to cover ‘incidental stealth taxes’. I’ve noticed that it is less painful to pay your gas and electricity bills by direct debit, so I’m thinking some sort of ‘minor traffic infringements’ standing order might be a good way to proceed.

‘You can’t get better than a Kwik-Fit fitter. We’re the boys to trust!’ I remember the TV advert well. When I was a child, the sight of the dancing men in blue overalls made me look forward to being old enough to drive a car so I could go to the cheerful cockney geezers to get my flat tyres seen to. A sequence featuring a boy in blue twirling a young girl around the depot floor particularly convinced me of the essential goodness of this organisation. The lyrics were stirring stuff (I’m not so sad that I remember them; I looked up the advert on YouTube): ‘Every Kwik-Fit fitter has to go to school, we teach them all they need to know, each little golden rule...

‘Ring us when you get lost and we’ll come and get you,’ was the reaction of the gamekeeper at the farm where I keep my horses when I told him I was going on a trail ride with three female friends. ‘Really,’ I said, ‘just because four women are going off on a riding holiday does not mean we’re going to get lost and need a man to rescue us. We can read maps, you know. We’ve got a compass. And a TomTom.’ ‘Right you are,’ he said, giving me one of his deadpan looks. Which was unfair, I thought, because we were very well prepared. We packed all the required elements in our saddlebags, including the map and directions from the trail riding company.

Have you noticed how no one gets tired any more, they get one of those frightening fatigue syndromes? Post-viral, chronic, adrenal, muscular, neuro-cognitive...It’s terrifying. I’ve lost track of the number of parties I’ve been to where one of the guests has suddenly announced that they’re really excited to be out because they’ve been in bed for the past six months. (It’s always six months. Never five and a half, or seven.) And before the Alliance of Fatigue Sufferers accuses me of insensitivity, I must make clear that I’m not denying these debilitating conditions exist.

Every so often I like to visit the ‘service’ centre of Lambeth Council, mainly because if I’m feeling down it is good for a laugh. So proved to be the case on my annual outing to renew my residential parking permit, surely the highlight of the season for appreciators of vintage left-wing madness. When I arrived at the fabulously well appointed building in otherwise totally neglected Streatham, it was virtually empty. Only three people were sitting on the designer seats in the waiting area, and, what was more, there were eight members of staff sitting behind a long row of gleaming desks. Eight servers to three customers is the sort of ratio even Lambeth could not fail to turn to its advantage, I thought, as I settled myself in for a medium wait.

What I want to know is — what’s easy about it? EasyJet, I mean. I’ve just used it to go to the south of France and I’m struggling to accept that ‘easy’ best describes it. I haven’t been on a budget airline for a while but I well remember the era of package trips when going on holiday meant queuing for hours to check on to some battered old charter plane called SunTours or GoldenFly, so I’m not a total novice when it comes to no-frills flying. It’s just that for years now I’ve been enjoying this golden age of cheap air travel which means you can usually get a perfectly reasonable British Airways flight to most places. But this summer I couldn’t get from Gatwick to Nice on BA so I decided to try easyJet.

I’m not exaggerating. There used to be a lovely big Books Etc on Victoria Street where you could lose yourself for an hour and find all sorts of unexpected treasures: while browsing in the sports section there I bought a copy of Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand, which had me in tears after ten minutes. But when I went to where Books Etc had once been the other day, I discovered that it had transmogrified into something called Oliver Bonas. This sounds like the sort of place that might sell dog treats but in reality it was not nearly so useful.

‘It’s not all about you, you know.’ Where did this nonsensical phrase come from and how did it enter into common parlance? I had a boyfriend who used to say it regularly, with particular vigour during times of crisis. I would arrive back from a trip to the Middle East bursting to tell him about how I’d passed out on a Hercules jet in 120 degree heat and been revived by the head of the British army and he would huff and puff and say, ‘It’s not all about you, you know.’ I had a similar run-in with a girlfriend recently.

On the basis that nothing is simple any more, I knew that renewing my passport was going to be a feat of mental and emotional endurance. However, I had not expected it to turn into an image consultation with the world’s most insulting women. One of them, I hasten to point out, was a machine. A passport photo machine. Have you been in one of these recently? It is a breathtakingly rude piece of equipment. I remember sitting in a photo booth the last time I got a passport and having no more interaction with the strong arm of the state other than being told to adjust the stool up or down and press the button when I was ready.

I can’t help it. When I look through my front window and see two super-cool-looking young black guys dressed from head to foot in Nike screaming obscenities, it quickens my pulse. I can’t help it. When I look through my front window and see two super-cool- looking young black guys dressed from head to foot in Nike screaming obscenities, it quickens my pulse. I’m sorry, it just does. No doubt I will be taken to the Equality and Human Rights Commission just for admitting that I find such a sight interesting and exciting. Maybe I need to get out more. In any case, on this occasion, I came out of my house to see what the commotion was. It turned out the pair were jumping up and down and screaming: ‘Rat! There’s a rat! It’s massive! Aaagh!

For nearly a year now, I’ve been promising my father I will brave the BT call centre to order him broadband. He knew that what he was asking me to do was a far greater thing than any father should ask of his daughter, so when the day finally dawned for me to make good on my pledge he volunteered to sit down with me as I made the call. Perhaps it was a good thing that we went in together, for within seconds of dialling the eighth circle of hell on speakerphone we were clinging to each other in sheer terror. Something called Talk and Surf was £15.99 a month for 12 months, but also, somehow, £7.49 for three months then £14.99 for the rest of the 18-month contract, or possibly it was none of those things.

The following conversation with Lambeth council pest-control unit took place a few days before a fox attacked two babies. I had rung them to ask for advice about how to control the hordes of foxes roaming my street like hoodies. As I reported last week, the initial signs of a sensible response were not encouraging. Then an animal warden got in touch. Let’s call her Kelly, for she had a cheerful, suburban name a bit like that. ‘We don’t remove foxes,’ said Kelly, ‘but we give advice about how to deter them. If you’ve a family of foxes living in your garden, I can send you some information.’ ‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Do you mean to tell me some poor sods have whole families of foxes living in their gardens?