Costly charges

While J. Alfred Prufrock measured out his life with coffee spoons, I prefer to chart mine with the daily passing of one hundred pounds. Hence, and though there must be many ways to evaluate one’s existence, I feel my days are best quantified as follows:

Monday: Scented candle, £16; bottle of moisturiser, £30; horse physiotherapy, £50.

Tuesday: Train ticket, £3.80; food shopping, £40; petrol, £55.

Wednesday: Congestion charge, £8; lunch with a friend, £35; dinner with a friend, £60.

Thursday: Car MOT and service, £119.

Friday: Horse x-rays, £110.

And so on. I grow old …I grow old …I shall go into overdraft and then fold.

But I know what you are thinking. There are items here which look a bit extraneous, items of equine expenditure which cannot be put down to the everyday cost of normal living. Let me assure you, if you are a single girl who raises animals instead of children this is all perfectly humdrum. While my married friends complain of little Johnny needing braces, or Olivia having grommets fitted, I find myself coping with a faint but worrying lameness in Tara’s back legs.

And, unlike my friends with children, I cannot get my darling’s needs sorted out free on the NHS. Nor can I gossip endlessly about them on Mumsnet. Forgive me, therefore, if I unburden my anxieties here.

The horse physio turned up at 8 a.m. on Monday, my day off — all busy working mums need one — and rang me while I was still in bed: ‘I’ve looked at her on the straight and in circles and she’s a bit lame in the right foreleg. She’s also stiff in her back and hind legs. Do you want me to release her pelvis?’ There is no answer to this gobbledygook.