The perfect Valentine’s Day gift…

You’d be a balloon to fall for it

The day for all lovers is looming. I can tell because every time I set foot in a supermarket I am greeted by a wall of red and pink stuff. Stuff that is mostly shiny but, occasionally and more troublingly, furry. 

Apparently, we are supposed to buy gifts for our spouses and make them special sexy suppers, wear frankly alarming sets of frilly underwear and, obviously, have earth-moving, screeching orgasms (together preferably) for what’s left of the day. Jeez, I’m so glad it’s been made clear for me. 

Didn’t we just used to send a card and be done with it? Clearly if you had ambitions in someone’s direction, then St Valentine could help make your muse at least aware of your existence. But for the rest of us, what’s the point? 

Really. If tend to have the kind of sex that has the neighbours phoning the council’s noise abatement officers, then you don’t need Tescos to tell you that Feb14 is a red, hot date for you. 

And if your sex life runs to lengthy bouts of imaginative and athletic couplings then good for you, you’re unlikely to need any help from the bright sparks at Morrison’s who put the Valentine’s tat on the same aisle as the baby stuff and gardening supplies. Which, as it goes, is the nearest any supermarket has come to describing the essential journey of a human life…  Sexual origami, arrival of family, sneaking out to the garden for some peaceful pruning – life in a nutshell.

Equally, if the spark has settled to a cosy (Friday night, if there’s nothing really good on the telly) kind of glow, then heart shaped crockery or a teddy bear with a pink bow isn’t really going to change matters. 

Not, of course, that there’s anything wrong with extravagant bunches of red, velvety roses… at any other time of year. I’d be quite cross if the Panther paid the inflated mid-February prices. It would be better if he chose any other day of the year to surprise me with some blooms (if you see him, feel free to remind him of this). 

And if his romantic soul found itself stirred to action, the last thing either of us would want would be to be wedged into an over-stuffed restaurant choosing from the same menu as the dozens of other couples round about. Love is about feeling special, not overhearing the pair at the next table discussing whether magnolia or duck-egg would be better in the hall. 

All of this begs the question: Who is the Valentine’s Day crap for?

If the newly in love and at it all the time couples don’t need it and the ‘of course I love you but the cricket/football/Archers is on’ couples don’t care, who’s left? The desperate and pathologically unimaginative, that’s who. And it won’t work for them either…

Realistically the only people getting a hard-on out of St Valentine’s Day are the retailers. The businesses that have somehow managed to persuade normally sane people to part with far too much cash for what… for the promise of some sensational sex, to demonstrate a deep and committed devotion, Lord knows…

The perfect Valentine’s Day gift does not exist. The best way to honour the saint is to do the loving stuff all year round, unexpectedly and without spending stupid amounts of money. (Note to Panther, that’s not the same as being tight and not spending anything.)

Bah humbug. Happy Valentine’s lovers everywhere.