Pass the bucket
Well here it is again. Valentine’s Day. The day on which Clinton Cards can justify its existence and young hopefuls shower their prospective squeezes with sentiments so far outside of their normal range of speech, taste and experience that it leaves one gasping for all the wrong reasons.
There are some beautiful, tasteful cards available, but many are unforgivably soppy or distastefully vulgar. And let me tell you now, if anyone sent me a Valentine that had kittens or teddies on it (unless it was done with a hefty dollop of irony) I would be sick in a bucket – and then send them the card back in the bucket. With a pink ribbon round it.
Better still, make a card yourself, take the time and effort to make something special. The Father of my Children, being an artist, used to paint the most beautiful cards (for all occasions) and I treasure them still because they were made just for me.
But never send a card anonymously. Actually, never do anything anonymously. What’s the point? Give a clue, give a hint, but if you’re too timid to sign it, you don’t deserve them anyway.
better....
Neglectful husbands purchase overpriced chocolates and clichéd flowers in the hope of reviving their sex lives, and downtrodden wives will kill their husbands if they don’t get a card as a minimum requirement whilst hoping against hope that they might just get one from a secret admirer who will take them away from all this. If they did, their husband might actually get laid.
Where is the true romance? Where are the love letters written on beautiful paper in elegant handwriting? Where are the spontaneous flowers given on an un-named day in June because you know he will be delighted? How many times do women buy beautiful flowers for men anyway? And where are the chaste yet passionate moments at railway stations?
Gone to hell in a handcart.
I will share with you my favourite ever Valentine – apposite, direct – received in the 80s when I was very politically active.
Labour is Red
Tories are Blue
But I am a Liberal
Can I sleep with you?
The answer was, of course, …..
deep sigh
We have finally given up buying cards and have mutually decided to ignore the whole thing. So liberating.
When I was young I worked in the art department at Hallmark cards, most of the designs came from the USA but some were created in house, the most tasteful of all being the home-grown
variety.
I do agree with your sentiments.
We don’t bother much with the commercial stuff, but we make lots of hearts for each other, always have. Cheesy stuff like he draws a heart in my coffee froth or I cut his toast into a heart shape, but sometimes bigger stuff too. It’s fun and it doesn’t cost anything. I just love the guy like crazy
You can’t make someone love you, but you can follow them to a place where there’s no cctv.
Romance just hasn’t been the same since the lasso went out of popular use in England.
I got a Valentine’s card, once.
I keep it pressed between the folds of my going-away outfit, gathering dust in my trousseau drawer, next to the Irish bed linen and the embroidered antimacassar set that I am seriously beginning to doubt that I shall ever need.
Sniffle.
Sigh.
If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with. (Stephen Stills)
Annie: Good for you, my romanticism is restored on the basis of your words and I shall stop being cynical at once.
Owl Wood: Bugger the trousseau. Wear your ‘going away’ outfit, use the antimacassars, roll in the Irish bed linen. Live in the Now, man. And stop sniffling.
Not that we’re cheapskates or anything but we’re celebrating Valentines today as everything is reduced – half price flowers, chocs for 50p etc
I do think Valentine’s Day is like most things nowadays, far too commercial. I am bemused that people spend so much on tat, but I suppose it is an excuse to break the ice, if you’re shy. But to particpate as a matter of course in the card giving, dining out b/s is really quite silly in my opinion. Expressions of love should be genuine, spontaneous and not based on a date in a calendar. The simple act of being kind, or thoughtful, as in fixing me a drink, or making supper is surely much more meanigful.