Be My Valentine

Did you get any Valentine's cards yesterday? Or a gift? Or a meal at a posh restaurant? Or all of these?

Well, some of you will have embraced the occasion and showered their loved ones with gifts or flowers, after all when you order flowers online it’s very easy to add some chocolates or a bottle of something fizzy or even a little toy rabbit clutching a heart, which is meant to be lovable but is actually quite sinister if you think about it.

A click here and a click there and it looks like you give a damn. Job done. Unfortunately the present Mrs Hayward is aware of this ruse so I have to make more of an effort.

Let’s be honest, we all know it’s a money making scam by unscrupulous card manufacturers and devious florists but it’s personal choice whether you join in. Some couples will say that they don’t celebrate it as they don’t like being told when to be romantic. To be fair you’re not being told to do anything, it’s just a suggested day for such activities, a bit like Easter but without the chocolate eggs and crucifixion stories. Having said that, St Valentine himself was supposedly beheaded so at least it’s a traditional celebration involving someone being executed. We’re a grim bunch when you think about it.

If you decry Valentines Day as a tacky marketing ploy then that’s up to you, it doesn’t really matter. So long as you cast the runes of romance on occasion then that’s fine, you carry on. Nothing to see here.

Then of course there are the singletons. I’ve been you, loudly declaring how I don’t care about such fripperies and yet secretly hoping that a card from a secret admirer would drop through my letterbox. Oh, you’ll say you don’t want one, and you’ll never let on, even in the face of constant questioning and mild torture, but deep down you do. We all do.

When I was a single man I would have loved to have received a Valentines Card from some mystery lady but I have to face the facts that it didn’t happen to me. Well not since I was 8 and, to be honest, I knew who it was from. No, it wasn’t my mother before you ask, it was from a girl in the year below me. Her name was Kate and I’d once had to fight another boy for her hand in Country Dancing. It didn’t do any good on that occasion, I was always a rubbish fighter which was why I stopped becoming embroiled in fisticuffs soon after this incident, and she still chose to dance with him. Mind you his parents ran a pub and he allegedly knew Worzel Gummidge so he was quite a catch.

Being single on Valentines Day can be an appalling situation but at least you can just ignore that it’s happening. Unless of course you live with other people who are in a relationship, then you have to witness their happiness which feels both nauseating and deeply unfair when you’re not loved up yourself.

When I lived in a student house, for the first couple of years I had the downstairs front room as my bedroom, where the front door was. People didn’t use it as such, that would have been weird, but the letterbox was there and so on 14^th February each year I would be laid in bed trying to shake off the inevitable hangover when I would hear the letterbox click. I’d glance over and see a collection of red envelopes on the floor and I would let out a sigh. Seriously, it was heartbreaking to hear.

I’d pretend that they weren’t there and, in any case, even if they were there was nothing for me. Why would there have been? It was madness to consider anything else but I’m a glass half full kind of guy when it comes to affairs of the heart and so I would find myself going against all my student instincts to stay in bed until at least lunchtime and saunter over to the door, bend down to pick up the cards, glance though them, sigh once more, and wander out into the lounge so as to fling them on the coffee table before retreating back to my room to contemplate why I was so unloved. It really was a tragic situation.

What I came to realise was that it didn’t matter, you can still enjoy it. Go and buy a cake with a heart on it, enjoy a Valentines themed ale, and spread the love. If you have no-one to love then love yourself. No, not like that, I mean in a more spiritual and enlightening way so put the fruit bowl down and return that sink plunger back to where you found it.

For me and Mrs Hayward, we choose to celebrate Valentines Day as it’s any excuse to go out for a few drinks and buy each other amusing gifts. Just don’t take it too seriously, after all it’s just for fun.