The mole specialist was wearing a pink Chanel-looking suit and pink diamanté shoes. By mole specialist, I don’t mean someone turned up dressed in Chanel to deal with moles on our land. I mean I went to see a top London dermatologist about a mole I was worried about, and when I walked into her office she looked so fabulous all I wanted to do was talk to her about her Jackie O miniskirt and jacket, given a twist with the sparkly stilettos.
Before I could do that, however, she complimented me on my long striped coat. ‘Villa Gallo,’ I said, sitting down in front of her desk on the first floor of a smart building in Chelsea. ‘And can I say, your shoes are divine.’
She thanked me and we chatted on about fashion and then somehow managed to get on to the subject of skiing, and then horse-riding. I was pointing out the similarities between the two, and she was saying how both are complicated as you grow older by your increasing sense of self-preservation. She told me she had given herself sciatica trying to slow up on a recent ski trip.
‘I feel the same. I want to fall less and less. But you’ve got to remember, speed is your friend,’ I said. ‘Same with horses. It’s counter-intuitive but if you try to control the speed too much, you tense up and it causes worse accidents. If you go with the speed you’re more fluid and relaxed…’
‘Ooh, I better look at your mole!’ she said suddenly, for we had hit it off so well and were so enjoying each other’s company that we could have gone on like this indefinitely and ended up in a café on the Kings Road having lunch with no mole looked at.
Aren’t women wonderful? I do like us. People who say men can be turned into women confuse me. You can try to replicate us if you want to, of course, and good luck to you. But anyone who has been a man will, in my view, tend to be more focused on the linear progression of a situation, doing one thing at a time, one thing after the other. Whereas the Chanel-suited dermatologist and I think and feel sideways, and we can do the scattergun effect. Can any man really think sideways, and follow more than one line of thought at a time? I’d like to see it.
In any case, I showed my new sparkly-shoed friend the two-tone mole on my torso and she was able to instantly dismiss it as a skin tag while asking questions about my life in Ireland. She then offered me an all-over body mole survey with her special moley magnifying-glass thingummy, while we chatted about horses some more.
Unveiling my legs, I grimaced at a huge black bruise on one knee sustained a day earlier when Duey the cob, being led back from the field by the builder boyfriend, kicked out at Darcy, my mare, behind him, being led by me.
‘Thank goodness!’ I had gasped, or stronger words to that effect, as I realised I had taken the full force of his back hoof, not the precious thoroughbred, for I’ll settle for a broken kneecap of my own rather than risk the mare’s legs. In the event, my knee turned out to be just battered and, after staggering about nine-tenths lame for a few hours, I came sound again.
The dermatologist scoured with her magnifier for moles around the massive black bruise, an angry red graze, and all the pimply mosquito bites and the scratches from brambles. My legs and arms were like maps of the Malay Archipelago, they were so splattered with bruises and scratches.
‘Let’s face it, I’m a mess,’ I said.
‘You’re enjoying life on the farm,’ she said. ‘It’s great. I wish I was outdoors so often.’
‘But then there’s the sun damage,’ I said.
She looked at every speck and blemish on every inch of me and proclaimed that it all passed muster.
The only thing I had thought suspect was a harmless skin tag, and the only thing she raised a question mark over was an irregular-shaped blemish on my décolletage – I’ve always wanted to use that word – which I had not noticed. But she said she was happy with it and I should just keep an eye on it.
‘I know where you are now so I can always pop back and see you,’ I said, hoping she might offer to exchange phone numbers. She didn’t, but she said she’d email me some sunscreen suggestions.
I was sitting in front of her desk again and as I thanked her, she whipped her iPhone out of her gorgeous handbag and said we would just settle up now. Smart lady. I bet once people know they’re in the clear they start haggling over the bill.
I tapped my card for a not insubstantial amount. Gosh, I thought, this panicking over moles is brisk business. But having passed such a pleasant half-hour with my kind of woman, I could not have been more pleased to pay.
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