It’s that time of year to get your legs out; a bit of a problem for some, if not all of us. This year legs have become my obsession - fat ones, thin ones, muscley, or even stumpy ones. Last year it was stomachs. It’s not that the stomach obsession has disappeared - rather that I have added legs to the list. It’s summer, and we Brits have only a few weeks each year to really flaunt it.

With this obsession, however, has come a shocking realisation that my legs look kind of old. I catch myself gazing at young brown legs in awe. Stupidly, when I had legs like that, I hid them under trousers - I guess I was shy. It seems that something extraordinary happens to knees when you pass 30. I’m not sure what exactly it is - but I don’t like it.

When I was deciding on a wedding outfit last week I craftily opted for a longer silky dress bought in Ibiza last year, rather than the short LK Bennett option. This was my one wedding of the season and I was determined to look as fabulous as possible.

If my legs weren’t going to do it, then my hair had to. I booked into the new funky Cobella salon in Selfridges. :image:Cobella has just opened and everyone’s talking about their wacky gadgets. The massage chairs I found cut off all your circulation and caused serious agony to lower calves – watch that! Cobella even have personal laptops with internet access. The excuse "I’m in the hairdressers – can’t talk" won’t rub anymore.

Runar, the creative director, told me that I was in desperate need of a “sassy fresh look”. He is Swedish and has mastered those persuasive turns of phrase that encourage a leap of faith. Pointing to his colleague (below), we agreed it looked great on her. Mmm - I must have different kind of hair - two weeks on it has turned into a messy mullet.

:image:Weddings can either wash over you, barely touching any emotion at all, or make you blub away throughout the whole service. Last month, at my best friend’s wedding, I was a wreck - it felt like a funeral the amount I was crying - and it got embarrassing as no one else was quite in the same state. I guess it was the end of our single chats together - an end of an era. I didn’t once compare my singledom with her coupled radiance. Promise.

Some friends are complacent about weddings - they go to so many, dotted around Europe, each one grander and finer than the last, that they sound weary, the spoilt things finding it all a bit of a drag. Not for me - these days it’s a real privilege to go to one and I get terribly over excited.

Being put on the singles table at the dinner either means sitting next to Great Aunt Betty or Little Cousin Sally, aged 7. Most often I am put between two gay guys - that’s if I am lucky – otherwise its other single girls. This time I put in a large request to be sat in between men with two eyes, two arms and two legs, if at all possible. They didn’t need to be good looking, intelligent, amusing or fun - just scientifically classed as a homo sapiens. Miraculously I had a single guy on my right and a lovely sensitive married man on my left. He had five children and pointed to his wife laughing away merrily at another table - with a 23in waist! Stunning the way some women manage it; serious respect.

It’s always the single women who look like they are having a wicked time on the dance floor - which by the way they are - but it’s difficult to have the patience to compete with territorial dance moves aimed at warding off potential predators. Check out www.women.com for more helpful tips on weddings.

The best solution is to go backstage - as it were - and hang with the real people. Drinking Guinness behind the scenes with the waitresses and barman at this particular Irish wedding was the preferred pastime for one particular single friend of mine - nothing like burying your head in the sand.

Salvation of the Week: George’s head massage at Cobella - great for the imagination.

What's your salvation? E-mail xanadu@thetimes.co.uk

Xanadu is a pseudonym

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