Belgravian

LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

The

Forget the popes, the Battle of Britain and winged Hussars; Polands latest export comes on wheels with a bag of cosmetic wizardry and a tale that makes Odysseus look like a bit of a wimp.

breathless Dr Kubicka answers the door three minutes after I ring. It had not been an instinctive indolence that had stayed her; she had not been tardy escaping the gloopy morning torpor that ensnares us all around sunrise. No, four hours earlier she had been at Warsaw airport. Four minutes earlier she had entered her house. The doctor is a very busy bee. Few Westerners are required to grow up fast. I can still remember the chastened feeling that descended on the male crowd as a visiting Pastor, Mark Driscoll, declaimed in stentorian cadences down the road at The Royal Albert Hall. The theme of the biblical-scale castigation was how we were all living out absurdly extended adolescences and that we had to take responsibility and grow up into real men. This has never been a problem for the young Barbara Kubicka. Born into a period the Polish still ominously label the state of war, she was just three years old when her father died. Failing to recoil from diving into the emotional deep end, I autistically prod her over whether this had resulted in incapacitating grief or something more positive? Well, although Im sure I didnt see it like this at the time, it definitely gave me a drive. Buffeted by pressure in all directions, Barbara became immersed in her native Roman Catholicism and battled with anorexia however it was not her faith but rather a boy and a passion towards cars and racing that saved her. Unfortunately relationship politics soon resulted in the two competing with one another but, not a girl to remain satisfied in entertaining merely one passion, medicine still sat squat in the foreground of her life. I hated it, she confessed to my surprise. There was just too much; too much medicine to learn. But I refused to give up. As her friends socialised at university, the bookish Barbara busied herself getting educational tunnel-vision. Her only fleeting relief provided by a part-time interior-design degree. This is where Barbaras story could have ended. A few months before her finals rolled round, her rally car rolled too. It was only the fact my six-point belt wasnt attached properly, after an earlier incident in which I had to push the car that saved my life, she notes. Taking account of my knitted brow at the news a safety malfunction saved her, she elaborated: I was thrown out of the car when I should have gone round with it but if I had, well, Id be dead right now. Anticipating a catalogue of misfortune to follow, Barbara stuns me with a declaration that my time in hospital was probably the best day of my life. Refusing to treat the accident as the final millstone on a thick necklace of calamity, the episode mercifully inflicted itself upon her as a form of catharsis. Shrugging off a Catholicism she felt was theologically irreconciled to and Leaving a mother and boyfriend who insisted on rooting her in marriage, she decided to up sticks and off to a medical internship in Brazil via London. She leafleted in the Big Smoke to make ends meet for a few months. This was great physical and psychological exercise, she

Taestem nieniet idic tem nim eliqui re re ventem nus eum nobitibus, soluptasit

says, justifying what must have been tolerable only because there was a bright Brazilian light at the end of her pamphlet-strewn tunnel. However, fate struck again this time in the form of a bust Brazilian flight company. Barbara was stuck in London. Nooo! I gawp, slightly mawkishly but genuinely frustrated at the twists in her story. So I went round hospital to hospital asking how I could get into the British medical system, she recounts. So how long were you emailing them for? I ask. No, no, no. I walked round every single one. She has a way for making you feel a tad decadent. Finally a hospital yielded its secrets and after finishing university, Barbara made her way to Ealing hospital. It was the worst hospital ever. I laugh, entirely inappropriately, at her deadpan commentary. I wanted to cry. I wanted to go home. It was only my friends support that stopped me. Soon enough she found herself head of a nightshift. On my first night I had to certify a death. I could not understand all the language properly let alone handle all the responsibility piled on me because they lacked senior staff. They clearly liked her however because before long she was at West Middlesex hospital whilst studying at Paris to specialise in aesthetic medicine. Swiftly moving up the medical chain she went from Harley Street to Harrods, became a medical director in Tunbridge Wells, and started her own practice in Belgravia, before setting up her current surgery at Clabon Mews. Somewhere along the way in this dramatic ascent Christ had been lost to Barbara. Roman Catholicism had sat far too heavily on her, obscuring the light. But all the frothier options, from Buddhism to New Age self-help, lacked bite. One day hiking up a mountain for the human-trafficking charity A21 Kilimanjaro no less Barbara asked another woman where all her positive energy came from: Jesus, Nicole had answered. Oh no! Barbara exclaims, throwing her arms up, Ive tried that! Thats what I thought initially anyway. But as the days glided by and she saw how all the other Christian women were with every one Christ seemed to permeate her through the orthopraxy of the faithful. This all sounds rather dramatic and negative! Barbara laughs, but sometimes you need to accept things as they are and make sure you keep focus on final destination not little sacrifices on your way to make sure the big dream stays alive. God put amazing people on my path to make sure I have strength to be my best. I am really blessed. Indeed bouncing around on an oversized sofa, made even more gigantic behind her tiny frame, she looks about as deflated as a basketball. And racing was never an escapist jaunt she reminds me. Did your levels of concentration turn it into a form of meditation? I push her. Yes, like that but Id call it worship, she says correcting my theology. Yes, I felt higher, felt closer to God almost like it was a form of prayer.

T with he platitud the Kin very pu she sen Sh earthqu blendin she say afterno drive.

(drbarb

Illustration: Russ Tudor

B E L G R AV I A R E S I D E N T S J O U R N A L

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