We few, we happy few. South London-based working cocker spaniel owners, I mean. We meet up on Tooting Common most days to exchange tips for cocker crisis management. The dogs play together as we have our group therapy sessions. Cydney’s best friends are Betsy and Mable, both black with white bibs like her, and then
Wandering along a smart west London street after lunch, I happened upon a little tack shop. I have a strict policy of never passing by equestrian suppliers, as you know. I am quite hopelessly addicted to the smell of saddle leather. The sight of shiny new bridles hanging in a row makes me swoon the
Miraculously, mysteriously, almost supernaturally, I found a man. I’m sorry for not mentioning it earlier but it crept up on me. I didn’t realise I had found him until ages afterwards. I had to have the whole thing signposted in neon, and even then I did my best to drive past it. What happened was
‘She’s a strange one, isn’t she?’ said Long John the spaniel trainer as he put Cydney through her paces. We were in the enclosure in the field behind his house, where he had decided to train Cydney behind ten-foot-high fencing because the last time we went for a lesson we had a bit of a
The Volvo only went in to have a parking light changed but, of course, it ended up being taken to pieces. Somehow, whilst fitting a bulb and then securing the exhaust pipe, which had come a bit loose, they found a leak from an indeterminate origin. It was probably the gearbox fluid, the mechanic explained.
The visit from the accident assessor appointed by the insurance company sent me on a cleaning spree involving industrial quantities of bleach. I spent the hours preceding his arrival subjecting every corner of my flat to a thorough going-over. Then I lit scented candles and brewed fresh coffee. ‘What am I doing?’ I muttered dementedly
Is it too much to ask for the machines in my life to stop ordering me about? Am I reaching for the stars in wanting to be loosely in control of my car, my phone and my laptop, rather than me being at their beck and call? I’m not talking about the odd message telling
The Slobs are alleging ‘soft tissue damage’. I’m not surprised that this is the diagnosis of the doctor appointed by the lawyer pioneering their attempt to defraud my insurance company. The Slobs, you may remember, are the charming couple who claimed I had seriously injured them both when I rolled into the back of them
By the time you read this I shall probably be 40. I say probably not because I am thinking of ending it all to ensure I remain for ever young in people’s hearts. I say it because the way things are going, the event may go completely unnoticed. It may be so ignored by my
‘You don’t have long. That dog won’t be a puppy for ever. Don’t waste this precious time.’ Those were the wise words of my friend Vince when I brought Cydney home. ‘Get out there with her,’ he explained. ‘Walk her in all the big parks. Maximise your pulling opportunities.’ Vince claims he never had so
Do the right thing and the right thing will follow. Right? After my encounter on the Queen’s highway with Wayne and Waynetta Slob, I decided I had better ring my insurance company and warn them that there might be a fraudulent claim. The couple had screeched off from the police station in their shiny new
Hilarious as it would be to say I had a crash on my way to trade my car in for a new one, I’m not entirely sure that was what happened. I was driving very slowly down Streatham High Road on my way to Croydon where the new Volvo awaited me. The traffic was bumper
If 40 was the question, climbing a mountain was not the answer. I don’t know why people go looking for themselves when they approach middle age and I always swore I wouldn’t do it. But then I found myself a few months off the dreaded landmark birthday and off I went up Kilimanjaro. All I
A wise man once said it is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves. I say never go on a trip that ends with you sealing your laundry into vacuum packs before disposing of it like nuclear waste. Honestly, these Kilimanjaro climbers are mental. My own team was dominated by six previously sensible family men
What I know about mountaineering you could write on the front of a postage stamp. But I’m willing to bet Sir Edmund Hillary did not have bright pink, ergonomic insoles in his boots called ‘Superfeet’. I have. I was sold them along with vast amounts of other gear I’m fairly sure must be extraneous by
Sometimes I don’t suspect the world has gone mad, I know it. For example, I took a black cab home from the theatre the other night and, as we passed Tooting Common, the driver wound down his window and threw a handful of raw sausages out of it. I tapped the glass politely and asked
Don’t even ask me how fast I had to go to get to the speed awareness course on time. The rush-hour dash was made even worse by the fact that the letter from ‘the UK’s leading provider of occupational road risk management, driver assessment and training for corporate organisations and speed awareness’ warned me that
Sanity is subjective. It depends very much on where you are. I know this because I spend half my time in south London and the other half in the country. Talking to strangers in the supermarket is fine in Surrey, for instance. In Waitrose, Cobham everyone talks to you. The check-out lady there told me
Stupidly, I left a pile of money on the fridge while I was in Italy and told the cleaner to come as usual. I thought it would be nice for her not to lose the business. But my cleaner is not some fly-by-night who takes money for nothing. My cleaner is serious about cleaning. She
Melissa Kite’s Real Life I’m prepared to do almost anything rather than apply to Lambeth Council for a bulk waste collection. Every human being has their limits of endurance, a line of suffering beyond which they begin to contemplate committing terrible atrocities themselves in order to make the pain stop. It’s just that most people