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.
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