Marco Polo

20 minutes on the pony, 24 hours in bed.

My grandfather who penned the book ’An Introduction To Polo’ under the pseudonym ‘Marco’

My grandmother, Edwina Mountbatten, a rare moment on the polo pitch

I am always trying to find a sport or passion that might ignite a little fire in my kids. The boys will fight it out on a pickleball court but Domino seemed less inclined to pick up a paddle so when her school offered polo she began to play. My heart leapt with joy, as my grandfather had been so passionate about it he even penned the book ‘An Introduction to Polo by Marco’ David’s heart sank with despair, this is not an inexpensive sport.

Relief to be off the pitch, perhaps?

We decided to take the short flight to Florida for a few days where Domino could do a bit of training to see if this was going to be her fire.

Everything fell into place nicely - I would go with her, get a quick skin cancer checkup, she would ride, and we would stay with Simon Doonan and Jonathan Adler, who would obviously have a sensationally inappropriate fun house.

The house proved to be exactly that – so inappropriate so fun. LSD needle worked cushions, glittery Shrooms posters, boob vases ‘partout’ as Jonathan would say. He speaks franglaise. I have never ever enjoyed a job more than when he and I hosted Bravo’s ‘Top Design’.

Fast forward 15 years to this week. My skin cancer checkup was not as speedy as I thought, my chest apparently was alive with some aggravated sunspots that needed zapping right away and when I say zapping in that light easy breezy way I don’t mean it. There was nothing light or breezy about this zapping. And then Domino woke up the following morning saying she felt a little sick, “it’s just nerves” I said, “let’s go”

All saddled up with stick in hand Domino was cantering around the pitch with her dynamic good-looking Argentinian instructor Nic Roldan (interestingly when you google him, which obviously I did, it says under ‘personal life’ simply: he has 6 tattoos!) when suddenly I next looked Domino was off her pony crunched up in a ball being ferociously sick. And she didn’t stop for the next 24 hours. 20 minutes on the pony, 24 hours in bed.

I drove her back to Simon and Jonathan’s and took her straight upstairs and lay her down. In the calm following I ambled around the room feeling desperate that our plan had fallen so badly apart. I noticed a little list of house rules sitting on the table called Les Basiques; Don’t touch the AC it said ‘unfortch we like to sleep in a tundra’ I put on a sweater and carried on reading, basically don’t get run over on the way to the beach, it’s a busy road and kind of implied that run-over guests were annoying guests. A final point was that whilst construction was going on they were hyper-conscious not to track dirt around the house. All valuable points I thought, just as I was reading this I smelt something odd, I lifted my foot to see a large patch of horse poop stuck to the bottom of my pink Penelope Chilvers cowboy boot.

My chest was on fire, Domino was green and now there was shit on my shoe which I had tracked through the house.

Tonight, in London, I am co-hosting with Jonathan, the opening of his new ‘bigger, even better store’.

Have a look if you are in town. 91 Pelham Street.