Dear Saint Valentine

 

Today is your big day. 
A day which, I cannot help but notice, is supposed be a celebration, and make us buy presents and cards, not unlike certain other festive days, but which  doesn’t offer the benefit of a day off work.   

I’m afraid it’s a celebration that has long been banned in our house.  We had to ban it,  because every year it ended up in one person getting into a sulk.  And it was almost always me.

The year before we banned Valentine’s Day, many, many years ago now, when we still lived in the big smoke, I completely ignored your special day.  At the last minute, as I walked to the bus stop, I changed my mind, did a quick pit-stop in the nearest shop, and bought a card that I hoped would make His Nibs smile. 

In those days, he was always home before me, simply because he has always been far better at getting up in the morning and going to work than I have.  In our city-based days, I liked to get up as late as possible, thrash myself around the flat for a few minutes panicking, and run to work at the last second. 

Not surprisingly, where I work, we are not encouraged to arrive and leave when we like, and if I arrive to work late, I get to stay late and make up the time. 

So on this particular Valentine’s Day I was heading home reasonably late.  I wasn’t worried about missing a bit of our Valentine’s night, because neither His Nibs nor I are inclined toward romance. 

I arrived in the door of our flat, the lights were on so I knew His Nibs was home.  When I opened the door, I was almost hit in the jaw by a large bunch of flowers.  It was always the same with us.  I think that the previous year was when I bought him the lovely designer aftershave, and he had absolutely no idea it was Valentine’s Day. 

His Nibs obviously hadn’t forgotten the sulk I went into the previous year, and was so eager to make up for it, that he leapt toward the door with his arms full of flowers the second he heard my key in the lock.

I was standing there hoping that there was something in my handbag that would serve as a present equivalent to a large bouquet of flowers, when the card was produced.
It was not a massive horrible padded one or anything, but it was definitely very romantic.  I read it carefully, touched, of course, but at the same time thinking of books, CDs etc I had recently bought wondering if I could pass any of them off as a present for him.  I came up with nothing. 

And eventually I couldn’t put it off any longer.  I pulled his card out of my bag.  The inside was more or less indecipherable, because I had written it on a moving bus.  The outside, sadly, had glitter dripping off it, had a cartoon character on the front, and had the unfortunate Valentine’s message “Show me your sausage, big boy!”

His Nibs looked at it, tried to smile bravely, and completely failed to hide his true emotions.

His true emotions couldn’t have been clearer, actually, and very much leaned toward
 
“I can’t believe all the giving out you did last year, not to mention all the threats, and now you turn up this year with this shite” 

I apologised, and told him I had assumed we were giving up on all this caper after last years’ drama, but that I was happy to make him a nice dinner to make up for it. 

Sadly, all we had that could possibly constitute a dinner was tuna and pasta and the type of sauce that comes in a packet, and has to be mixed with milk.  His Nibs is not fond of tuna.  Not fond at all.  So we spent Valentine’s night sitting there, him pushing tuna around his plate and trying not to look as sulky as he felt, me hiding behind the not insubstantial flowers that had been given pride of place on the table, deeply ashamed.

The following morning we decided that Valentine’s Day is a complete load of old nonsense and that we were now finished with it forever, we’d suffered enough.

Just to be sure there’d be no confusion, a couple of years later, when Valentine’s Day fell on a Sunday, I asked His Nibs, a week in advance, whether it was safe for me to completely ignore it, or whether he would, if I did that, turn up with a card.  He answered, quite gamely I thought, that he was happy to buy a card if I was.  So I said

“Well I’m not, actually, if you’re leaving it up to me I think we should pretend it isn’t happening. I think we’ve disappointed each other quite enough with Valentine’s cards over the years, don’t you?”

He agreed, very quickly. 

During that week, it came to my attention that a certain shop was doing one of those specials, twice the usual price, obviously, but with lovely and romantic food such as scallops and rack of lamb on offer, in honour of Valentine’s Day.  We don’t get many scallops around our way, so I went home on the Thursday night and suggested to His Nibs that we partake of the offer, simply because it was there.  He agreed.  The trouble started when we started to discuss which of us would be in charge of preparing the three course feast, for just the pair of us, in our own kitchen, on a Sunday afternoon, when the whole country is awash with tasty pub lunches. 

We both knew neither of us would be bothered, once the weekend rolled around.  So we decided against that as well.  On Saturday evening, just to be sure I wasn’t caught on the hop, I asked him plainly whether he had purchased a card. 

He was obviously confused by all the “will we, won’t we” we’d been doing, and looked very much like a rabbit caught in the headlights.  To put him out of his misery I told him that that year’s agreed protocol was that there was to be no cards, but that I just thought I’d check. 

He relaxed, and offered to go and collect a Chinese, and our Valentine’s celebrations were complete.

I think we’ll leave our arrangement as it is.  I think we’ll leave it to the teenagers, they seem to like it.  They spend the rest of their lives in a well of black misery, it’s nice that they get to come out once a year and swap horrible teddy bears and snog each other in full view of everybody. 

I think we should all just try to be nice to each other.  Even if some of us feel like beating him up with his own boots which he’s left in the middle of the kitchen floor again.

Yours

A Lapsed Romantic