Happy Valentine’s Day

Will you be mine?

It’s sickening when you’re single, and let’s face it, it isn’t much better when you’re attached. But it isn’t the idea of V-day that makes me shudder, it’s the way that the media takes it and rams it down our throats.

*Yawn*

This morning, I woke up and didn’t give a second thought to which saints’ day we were supposed to be celebrating (hang on, did Saint Valentine even exist?). I turned on the television, as I do every morning to wake myself up a bit, and unfortunately ITV was what I was watching the evening before – so GMTV was what I was woken up to this morning. From what I could see, the whole program was going to focus on 50 couples renewing their wedding vows in Blenheim Palace. This I did *not* want to watch at 7.20 in the morning – not some z-list band singing love songs, surrounded by couples gazing into each others’ tearful eyes… pass the sick bucket this way please.

Explanations

This would all probably be different if I had my own other half to gaze adoringly at over a candlelit dinner tonight, but I don’t, so it isn’t and you’ll just have to read my rant.

Breakfast

So, I switched over to the BBC – warm, friendly and reliable – Natasha and Bill, aaah much better. Bombings in Iraq, squabbles over the engagement of Charles and Camilla and the odd person emailing/texting in their views that we can all chuckle over while eating our cornflakes. Not a heart shaped item in sight. Fabby.

Safe at work

I made it all the way to work without hearing another mention of St V. Open up firefox, homepage defaults to Google – so I’m left staring at a heart made out of roses, cleverly constructed in place of the first ‘o’. Then, on to read my emails at GMail – they must be more ‘loved up’ over at GMail HQ – they’ve gone with cute red hearts flying out of the ‘M’-evenlope. It’s all very sweet.

*Buzz*

Delivery guy comes through the main doors with a massive bouquet of flowers – all women in the office quietly hoping it is for them – he swooshes past everyone and continues upstairs. You can feel the womanly atmosphere sink and turn green. Yes, I was jealous of whoever received them.

Lunch

When you work in Sh*tewater (Sheerwater) you don’t have many options for lunch – crusty cafes in West Byfleet, warehouse sized supermarkets on the way to Croydon or dank pubs in which ever direction you choose to travel in. So for a change, we drove into Woking. It’s a dump at the best of times, but we were only going there for food, not the stimulating culture or awe-inspiring scenery. We ended up in the food court in the Peacocks Centre, containing fast-food chains and 1 place you could get some non-artery-clogging lunch. The food was nice, but I was put off by the half-hearted attempt of trying to make the place look romantic (ok, so this would be a mammoth task for anyone – we’re talking chav central food court). I’m sure it looked nice this morning, but now all that was left was crinkled, ripped and stained white paper tablecloths and 2 drooping, tiny red roses in a plastic vase. Pure class.

In Conclusion

So that is why I hate V-day, all the fake romance, red hearts and fluffy teddies. I like it because it’s a day you have an excuse to have a nice meal out, dress up and generally fawn over your other half. I also like the original reason for V-day which is to send the person you fancy an anonymous card tentatively asking:

Will you be my Valentine?

Love from ?

xxx

The sender gets nervous as soon as it hits the bottom of the postbox, then the wait – did they receive it, do they know who it’s from and what will their response be? The receiver… well I wouldn’t know as I’ve never received a secret card (can you hear the miniature violins?). I can imagine though and I hope that it gives a lot of pleasure knowing that you are loved by someone.

Posted by Emma Sax

February 14, 2005

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