Doctor Doctor

On Thursday night, dressed up to the nines (charity shop Prada skirt, vintage Givenchy chiffon blouse, Valentino evening sandals and my Caribbean aquamarine bracelet), I got into a taxi outside my house to go to the launch of Ruth Padel’s excellent new collection of poems The Soho Leopard. ‘Bury Place, Bloomsbury’, I told the driver.

‘Aha’ he said. ‘Now, don’t tell me. You’re going to a do at the Bupa headquarters.'

'I’m what?’

'Well, when I picked you up - and I hope you don’t mind me saying so- I thought that lady’s so smartly dressed, she’s probably just finished off at the Royal College of Obstetricians and is heading to a dinner dance at Bupa’s. Am I right or am I right?' he grinned, his head nodding at me eagerly in the driver’s mirror.

I let him down gently and told him about the book party. He was mildly put out. After a while it transpired that this taxi driver had recently taken early retirement from a successful career as a Scotland Yard detective with the violent crime squad. He could no longer live with the stress, he told me, and had decided to retrain as a cabbie.’ My family say I’m unrecognisable. It’s as if a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders’ he continued. I’m a whole new man.’ I was pleased for him, although his powers of detection had, if I’m honest, rather failed to impress. He grew thoughtful as we ploughed through the angry west end traffic, being cut up by wailing police cars and rakishly angled skidding motorcyclists. ‘I love the peace of my new life’, he said in a sort of reverie.

I was deep in thought too. A female doctor - I pondered the matter - intelligent, caring, sensible, a little severe. I’ve certainly been called worse (a dental hygienist once likened my appearance to that of Celine Dion) but I couldn't help feeling I better get myself some new clothes double quick.

All my life I’ve laboured hard to appear neat, together, trustworthy, efficient and sane, because deep down, I suppose, I have had my doubts. I’ve never felt very close to this goal, to my inner smart lady, because I only have to look at a garment for it to crease and crumple and mysteriously begin unravelling. They way the buttons fly off my cardigans-it’s as though I have a knitwear poltergeist or something. Yet obviously my generally acute self-awareness had let me down on this occasion. Was it possible that my quest for neatness had exceeded my hopes, that I had taken it too far? Rather than being recognised as a mess of a girl putting her very best foot forward, with humour, in her glamorous grandmother’s elegant clothes, did I just look boring? This really was tough to take.

The following day I made a raid on Top Shop first thing. I bought a green, brown and grey hazy landscape print skirt with apron pockets and a bow at the front, which was very Anne of Green Gables, a bright red cotton skirt which had Heidi notes and a Lanvin inspired grey pinstripe strapless dress with inverted black pleats to the skirt, which is the nicest garment I have seen all season at any price.

I exited the shop, hugely cheered at my good fortune and elected to keep the green skirt on for the journey home. ‘I’ll give you Lady Doctor’, I thought as I pounded the hot pavement . Lady Doctor indeed! It was disappointing to me that I’d somehow been linked to the private sector too. If I was going to resemble a doctor, I’d far rather be at the heroic, dishevelled, district nursey end of things. Suddenly I spied a sliver of myself in the window of Burger King and nodded approvingly: a country girl, up in town for the day on a bit of a spree. Now that’s more like it, I said.