Foolishly, I have decided to wear a black satin pencil skirt. I still remember its origin story. Maybe three years ago, I got really into Mad Men on Netflix. Just like every other woman in the world who has ever gazed down at her thighs and felt disappointed, I decided that if I really tried, I could look like Joan Holloway. Around that time, I was sifting through the dregs of the sale at Topshop and couldn’t believe my eyes when I found a Joan skirt, my size, 80 per cent off. I rushed home with it, without trying it on and decided that I’d make it fit. Even if I had to give up bread for a week.

I’m reluctant to admit this, even silently, to myself, but in front of the mirror, the skirt looks good. It’s twenty-first century miracle-corsetry, squeezing me in at the waist and making everything else appear swollen, but smooth.

Once I’d tapped my card, gone through the station barriers and yanked the stupid skirt down for the fortieth time since I’d left the house, I realised I’d made a big—huge—mistake. The fatal, flattering flaw of the skirt is that it’s so tight, it’s impossible to move any joint connected to my hips. It binds my knees together so that my only option, for progress, is to take a series of miniature kicks with straightened calves, allowing me to cover the tiniest sips of ground. Or, I suppose, to hover. My journey would have been easier if I’d done it as a sack race.

Fortunately, my coat covers me from nose to knee. After some slow, frustrating waddling, I rolled the skirt right up and wore it as a pool ring. The good news is that this means I’m on time. The bad news is that I’m boiling hot, my white shirt is soaked with sweat and I have no idea how to hoik everything into place without being escorted out of the building for public indecency. Also, there’s the matter of my own knock-off Louboutins, which are currently nestled in the grubby cotton tote bag hanging off my wrist. Experimentally, I try to pull the skirt down with a short, sharp tug. Nothing doing. I dump the tote and try to use both hands. It won’t budge.

I’m about to step outside and try to sort myself out around the back of the building, away from the eyes of the world’s press, when one of the receptionists catches my eye. She asks if I have an appointment. Isn’t the English language a complex, powerful tool? It’s interesting that in the wrong hands ‘Can I help you?’ becomes the cruellest, least generous question in the world.