I have a friend, Bride 2 Be (B2B) whom I have known since I was ten and I love her hugely. We have grown up, grown apart and found each other again.

Together we’ve been naughty, laughed like kids on way too much tartrazine, had our first cigarette together, fought puberty head on, sailed the choppy seas of adolescence, and been through some tough times together.

Now B2B is getting married.

I’m excited for her.

Hugely excited.

Her fiancé is just lovely, her wedding dress will be fabulous, she will look devastatingly gorgeous in it and she has two bridesmaids (me included) who will look resplendent in dusky pink silk. Oh yes, she is going to have the fairy tale wedding in Florence and it will be perfect.

But I think all this talk of holy matrimony may just be addling her brain. You see, even though we are both only 28 and I try to convince myself every day that it’s okay for me still to be single because I’m still young, she has started to act like my pimp. Well that’s a little harsh actually, let me re-phrase that...she’s acting like a worried mother with a single, unmarried spinster daughter who is almost on the shelf. Let me explain...

Not so long ago at her fiance’s birthday lunch at a gorgeous pub in Hampstead, she turned to her cousin and said

B2B: Cousin dear, we need to help PPQ find a man - do you have any lovely single male friends?

He: Errm, yeah I do, what's the brief we're working to?

B2B: Well, just someone who's intelligent and funny and good looking. You know PPQ’ll be a brilliant mother and would make an excellent home-maker!

Whoa there Nelly! Call me crazy but isn’t that the type of thing they used to say in the fifties? I mean, seriously, how am I meant to find a guy with that sort of write up? Surely that’s an instant repellent – a woman who wants to nest and have babies?! Couldn’t she have said that I’m funny, or that I’m mean at table football, love a drink at the pub? Couldn't she have, in the very least, paraphrased Jerry Hall and told him that I'm a chef in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom?!

I shot a worried glance at her, we caught each other’s eyes and then just burst into big, hefty laughter. Because while some people may have thought she was being a little presumptuous trying to fob me off on anyone who would have me, I realised that she just wants me to have a little share of the happiness that she has. And you can't say fairer than that.

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