YOUR ATTENTION GENTLEMEN, PLEASE… Depending upon what time you’re reading this, you have half a day (or less) to prove your undying affection for your Significant Other.
Should it be already post 4pm, it’s too late to post the card you have neglected to buy – and anyway, all the nice ones will be gone. Also, you have no mission getting a table in a decent restaurant unless you booked it six weeks ago and florists are already down to their last destined-to-die-in-the-bud overpriced red rose.
Only the mature male of our species can walk through a shopping mall every day for a calendar month oblivious of its eye-watering décor – a riot of strident scarlet and fluorescent pink, pulsating neon hearts, teddy-bears in shrunken T-shirts and rank upon rank of risqué remarks – and remain undazzled by the strobing glitter of jewellers’ window while failing utterly to get the message.
Take no comfort men, from the fact that resourceful women, long and wearily inured to the annual forget-ery of their Life’s Partner, will already have sourced and purchased some little standby trinket, knick-knack, item of clothing or footwear, which she will produce on tomorrow’s happy morn, trilling, “Look what you bought me for Valentine’s Day.” You will heave a sign of relief – but don’t be lulled into a false sense of security. She’s disappointed in you. Your serial negligence may be grudgingly forgiven, but rest assured, not forgotten and will indubitably be upcast in the next domestic spat.
Example: “You didn’t forget Valentine’s Day when we were courting, did you?”
Trust me, I speak from experience. The late Loving Spouse, most generous of men and the epitome of loving kindness, once belatedly presented me with a familiar-looking Valentine. Inside he’d written, “Last year’s card. Sentiments unchanged.” I sought solace in a rather nice handbag I’d thoughtfully laid by for the occasion.
Apropos of nothing, gentlemen, should your Valentine gift choice run to the electrical goods, a Dyson hairdryer or GHD straighteners are very acceptable; a kitchen gadget is not.
There are of course, people of principle who distance themselves from the whole cynically exploitative, vulgar, commercial ‘con’ Valentine’s Day has become, built on grandly extravagant but ultimately empty gestures designed chiefly for the benefit of single people, still trying to impress each other. Lord – who’d willingly go back to that painful period of re-inventing oneself afresh for every new romantic encounter, knowing in your heart the other person is doing the same? The miracle is you ever discover ‘the one’. You may have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince.
With familiarity, the nature of love changes and with it, priorities and values. Used to solitude, one of the hardest adaptations I faced in legal coupledom was the near-constant presence of somebody else. How soon charming little idiosyncrasies turn to major irritations.
Perhaps the greatest gift in a permanent relationship is to cultivate a kind of benevolent tolerance, preserve Sunday manners and retain the ability to surprise and delight. There’s many a woman who’d sooner have someone put the bins out without having to be reminded, pick the towels off the bathroom floor or stop whistling tunelessly when she’s trying to concentrate, than any number of rose bouquets. There’s many a man feels he’s wasted half a lifetime waiting for a woman get ready to go out, or not respond to a simple question with another question.
And here they all are, the tidy pairs in best bib and tucker in the fancy restaurant, this mixum gatherum of couples, because “it’s what people do on Valentine’s Day” – the loved-up youngsters joined at the hip, feeding each other with forks; the new parents, hollow-eyed with sleeplessness fretfully texting the babysitter; the forty-somethings, she peeved-looking, he bored, busy with their separate iPads; the ‘fifty-years-wed and never a cross word’ couple, (“don’t have the steak dear – not with your dentures.”) Each with their own invisible graph of fulfilment.
Tomorrow, I’ll be reading that old Valentine again with its reassuring message “- sentiments unchanged”.
