LIZ JONES: In which I’m a pariah at a wedding

I am at a wedding at the end of the summer, as the bride has told me many times in her many, many emails. Call it the August Bank Holiday!

I’m the only guy in black and the only woman without a partner, except for someone named Ethel. Oh god, I should have dug up David 1.0. It’s the pitying looks

I can’t stand women who left twenty stone behind decades ago. Carrying worn-out everyday handbags; one even has a Lidl bag for life. Wearing ballet pumps and tights. Panty! In late summer!

Their husbands are even worse. One told me how much they spent on a gift. Seriously, if you’re over 50 and don’t have a Smeg toaster yet, you’re doing something very wrong.

The church service is long and somber. I keep thinking, “I bet they’ll be divorced in two years.”

The flowers make me nauseous. Everyone is rightly wary of me. I’m slightly upset by the cobblestones while in Louboutins bought at Browns on sale.

Ah, this is why you need a man: someone to hold on to when the handrails run out. I realize I’m dressed for a funeral, a bit like the aging supermodels on the cover of September Vogue.

The reception will be in the bride’s parental home, a former parsonage. The newlyweds have children, who have not stopped screaming. And then the worst happens. I get my heel caught in the tassels of a carpet and my head flies forward.

Thank God I don’t drink red wine and wear Skim underpants. I can see the super busy mom brain thinking, “Hmmm. I should have worn ballerinas.’

There is no meal at the table, only snacks. How do you juggle a flute, your clutch and food? Why am I a pariah as a vegan? No, I’m sorry, I can’t eat it if it’s been on the same plate as a shrimp, are you crazy?

We are led to ‘the terrace’. I think, ‘Why is her father gardening at this hour?’ It turns out he’s setting off fireworks.

I can’t wait to escape. I think of my square pillows in my hotel, Thyme. Breakfast.

As I try to order an Uber, I think about all the weddings I’ve been to. One at Claridge’s, which was so boring I left to go shopping on South Molton Street. The bride sat me on a table with her cleaners.

My niece’s wedding in Edinburgh. I wore the pink Suzannah London from head to toe. I gave my niece my grandmother’s platinum engagement ring.

But I never made it to the main course when David 1.0 started arguing. He texted me the C-word of the apartment I paid for.

My school friend’s party at the yacht club in Burnham-on-Crouch, when I sat next to a sex offender who followed me to my car! I remember shouting at him: ‘I’m in a borrowed Dries van Noten. It shouldn’t get dirty!’

A wedding in the Peak District, when my then husband booked a B&B with a plastic shower containing minibars of Imperial Leather soap.

The groom really left him in the shade by showing off a hand-printed, bound book of his poems at the wedding breakfast, expressing his love for the bride.

My husband then pressured the proceedings by whispering to me that the groom had “had sex with a man – both ways.”

My own wedding. Worst of all, for sure. I spent the night alone and went downstairs to have breakfast. Everyone was having a great time at my expense, and when I tried to sit down, no one would get up.

Anyway, I’m going back to my nice hotel room. Take off my spidery eyelashes. Expand the Skims underwear. Take off my shoes.

This is the best part of getting dressed, right? Releasing the breasts from a bra, like cows going out to pasture after a long winter stuck in a barn. And then my phone vibrates. And the bad mood disappears as easily as taking off my dress.

‘Hi. I’m at Soho Farmhouse. How far are you?’