Lionel Richie, The Strand, Embankment bridesmaids, fake tans and marriage - Lynn News Beake Speaks

Jenny Beake writes her weekly Beake Speaks column...

In the words of Lionel Richie who sang ‘she’s once, twice, three times a bridesmaid’ although those are not the lyrics, I can easily say that marriage isn’t for me.

Mainly as white makes me look a little washed out and whenever I fake tan it just goes wrong. I once fake tanned at the last minute to go for a night out in London to a glamorous nightclub on the Embankment.

I slathered the ‘what I would not call medium brown’ once I had my dress on. Just filling in the gaps of my flesh that could be seen, missing a big line up the back of my leg. It wasn’t even dry when I left the house to run and catch the train on a warm evening.

Those heady days of summer in London and going out in The Strand. My ‘tan’ melted en route as I left tanned smears across the seat and windows on said locomotive.

As I reached Charing Cross to hop down the steps to the Embankment in my high heels and blue body con dress, don’t ask, the tan on my upper body had wiped off.

My legs were now a different colour to the rest of me and I had started to look like the three colours of neapolitan ice cream. Pink at the top, white in the middle, brown legs.

Now also slightly sweaty and meeting my gorgeous friends who are effortlessly chic I skipped in, sweating, melting and discoloured.

The eight foot door man had the cheek to ask me for ID as if, at that moment, I didn’t look like a mad overly golden 40 year old. I said to him, now listen here sonny, does this look like the body of a 17-year-old? To which he promptly agreed and let me in to the red carpeted dive.

My friends are so used to my life being a long time of tragedy and comedy that they didn’t mind. They just accept me as I am.

My friends who, I might add, were laughing quite outrageously at me and one said: “I’ve never met anyone like you before Beakie.”

I have never forgotten those words she said. It is the reason I need to never worry about getting married. My ever so patient partner and my friends accept me as who I am.

Individuality is not a problem. Independence can also be retained within the right relationship. Women and men can be happily not married. All my married friends are divorced or just, you know, bored.

So why, being so happy and running through fields of daisies with my ever so patient partner, is marriage not for me?

Because, if I ever wore white, that fake tan is never coming out.