The post where I decide dressing down is not my thing

Clothes have always been the armour, and accessories & makeup the arsenal, in my personal battle against the world. When I don't dress up I feel a shadow of myself. Once in a blue moon, I’ve been known to cover the Sunday of London Fashion Week in cream Converse and pants but, more usually, you’ll see me on appointments and at the shows in heels, a great coat and a frock of some kind. That’s my look. It’s what works for me.

But at the moment, most of my armour is languishing in a storage container in Manhattan: I was only supposed to be in London for a month.

And then I stayed a little longer, and then a little longer. And now I’m thoroughly fed up with the pieces I have here. Given that I’m spending most of my time in the depths of the countryside, bashing out copy, I’ve stopped trying to think of different ways to work a black dress, and just wear whatever is to hand when I wake.

But I hadn’t realised just how far I’d sunk until this week. Scrabbling around all day, I finally folded myself into my tiny car, drove like a fury down the motorway to London, picked up Miss P and headed to Hackney for Vietnamese supper this evening.

Half way through supper an ex boyfriend walked into Viet Hoa. And I realised I was wearing tights, unlaced sheepskin lined hiking boots, a threadbare Jermyn St mens shirt (my nightshirt actually), a holey grey cardi and my bottle end big black specs. Oh plus an unwashed birds nest on top of my head and a face shining with unmade up virtue.

Why, why, why is it that on the only occasion in living memory that I leave the house looking like a unmade bed that I bump into someone I didn’t need to see?