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Yes, it's coming to a calendar near you this week: it might be the one day in the diary to note down the birthdays of Kevin Keegan; Labour MP Meg Hillier; comedy actor Simon Pegg; and also the incumbent Bishop of St Albans, but what else does 14th February mean in general? Just another day to someone like myself these days, or simply commercialisation gone mad? Only 45 days into the year and most of us have gone stark raving mad. At least in 1971 the United Kingdom was a lot more focused on going decimal with one day to go, and BBC 1 had D-Day Minus One in the 1971 answer to the 1980s EastEnders Omnibus' slot - I wonder how Valentine's Day had been affected by that change in that year? In "celebration" of Valentine's Day this year, I thought that I would have a closer look at how I see this so-called annual "event".
Isn't it interesting how society and even humanity in general is generally biased towards those who are already in relationships, be it married, engaged, or cohabiting? The same for soap opera scriptwriters - they are simply "love" mad. No wonder there was a massacre on Valentine's Day many years ago. Christmas is not the true acid test of love and relationships; it is seven weeks later during the end of the second week of February. Walking down the High Street and passing Card Factory, as soon as the Christmas stock is replaced at the start of New Year, one sees huge A4 cards placed in boxes with soppy "to my boyfriend" and all that; fluffy and cuddly and plump red heart cushions which say "I love you" on them, and soft toy bunny rabbits, teddy bears and all that sort of merchandise - it almost makes you sick. It is like eating chocolate cake all at once - it is nice but it can be so sickly after a while. What is the average single man in the street supposed to make of that, I wonder? Drown one sorrows with Lucozade (because one needs all the strength one can get) and gorging down Milk Tray until the cows come home?
I am not the Ebenezer Scrooge of Valentine's Day - far from it. To me, love is so precious that it can be too easy for it to slip through one's fingers, and it has done many times in the past. In fact, 2006 was the happiest Valentine's Day of my life so far; only the week before I advertised in a regional newsletter for a "partner", and a woman responded. We got talking for hours and hours and hours, and her parents were mad as she had spent 70 hours on the phone in one month and they had received the latest bill. We were even talking all night long during the early hours of Tuesday 14th February that year; she was doing something that we cannot mention on a family forum like this - and by the early hours I felt that I had known her for years. I was at my computer, and so I had let my fingers do the "tap dancing" on the keyboard and emailed her a Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue poem, changing some of the words so it would rhyme with her name, and posted it during the early hours. After one of the most exciting nights of my life (and I didn't even feel tired), I made a beeline the following day to go to WHSmith and get an "almost belated" Valentine's Day card for her, and also an A-Z atlas for her area just in case I might want to visit her. A bit of Girl Power in my life at long last!
So what happened? Sadly, four or five months down the line, she met someone else and that was the end of it, although the irony was, despite her former boyfriends coming and going, we still kept in touch and still talk on the phone now and again, 17 years later, but I have to say that Valentine's Day 2006 was the best one in my life so far. She was just six years younger than myself. To be fair, it was more or less a "telephone pal" thing (a verbal pen pal rather than a written one), and we only met in person twice, but we probably would have met more often had it continued - we did live over 20 miles away and was a completely platonic relationship as we didn't give each other enough time. It certainly wasn't my fault at my end - the number of times I had asked her: "can we get back together, again?" I did feel optimistic, and as we were both in touch as friends, there could be a slight chance, who knows?
The closest that I have had with someone else after that was when I was a member of a national group I was with - someone in Wales I was in contact with by email. She was disabled which also meant that things would be a bit more difficult with communicating there. One year I put a Valentine's advert in her local paper over there, and she loved it when she saw it, and we later exchanged gifts in the post. And her Valentine's Day card actually arrived in the post on 14th February one year - probably the only time that I ever remember receiving on on that day - putting Sundays aside, I noticed that in recent years, the postman hardly ever delivered anything to my address on 14th February, not even bills or reminders. This is why I would have wanted to move to Wales; in order to cement a possible relationship with her. It might take two to flippin' tango, but that's only when you are both in the same place.
A year after my platonic relationship, along came the speed dating episode where myself and this woman had incorrectly matched up with each other; I didn't tick "date" for her, and I believe that she didn't "date" for me either. I gave her the benefit of the doubt, and when I eventually caught up with her on the phone, the call lasted just two minutes before her putting the receiver down on me. After around half an hour, (which gave me reasonable time for dry my eyes from being upset and in order to properly compose myself after the previous phone call), I phoned the speed dating organisation who said that they had not made a mistake, and that the woman had changed her mind. Really? How comfortable to know that after how upset I was, (and they could tell that I was from how I sounded on the line...) Six years later I tried again with another speed dating event night whixh had been ran by another unrelated organisation, but I might as well have been the Invisible Man there.
I would personally recommend not advertising for love if it costs too much - save your money, and certainly don't use services that uses Premium Rate telephone numbers - that is a no, no - one for my Room 101. I have been interviewed and have asked my views about love and relationships over the years which I am more than pleased to take part in. And I spoke to a researcher from the Channel 5 version of Blind Date that Paul O'Grady was involved in a few years ago, giving a verbal timeline of my own relationship failures, and probably half-boring her to death in the process. I have to say that I did feel better talking to someone about then, and "getting it off my chest" on the umpteenth occasion. I always seem to keep reminding myself of Article 12 of the Human Rights Act 1998 - and that I have a right to marry and found a family.
If you are married, or even engaged and cohabiting at this moment in time, just be thankful for how lucky you are - even a social worker would sometimes make a great substitute for a partner as I sometimes feel. At least love means "nothing" in tennis.
Isn't it interesting how society and even humanity in general is generally biased towards those who are already in relationships, be it married, engaged, or cohabiting? The same for soap opera scriptwriters - they are simply "love" mad. No wonder there was a massacre on Valentine's Day many years ago. Christmas is not the true acid test of love and relationships; it is seven weeks later during the end of the second week of February. Walking down the High Street and passing Card Factory, as soon as the Christmas stock is replaced at the start of New Year, one sees huge A4 cards placed in boxes with soppy "to my boyfriend" and all that; fluffy and cuddly and plump red heart cushions which say "I love you" on them, and soft toy bunny rabbits, teddy bears and all that sort of merchandise - it almost makes you sick. It is like eating chocolate cake all at once - it is nice but it can be so sickly after a while. What is the average single man in the street supposed to make of that, I wonder? Drown one sorrows with Lucozade (because one needs all the strength one can get) and gorging down Milk Tray until the cows come home?
I am not the Ebenezer Scrooge of Valentine's Day - far from it. To me, love is so precious that it can be too easy for it to slip through one's fingers, and it has done many times in the past. In fact, 2006 was the happiest Valentine's Day of my life so far; only the week before I advertised in a regional newsletter for a "partner", and a woman responded. We got talking for hours and hours and hours, and her parents were mad as she had spent 70 hours on the phone in one month and they had received the latest bill. We were even talking all night long during the early hours of Tuesday 14th February that year; she was doing something that we cannot mention on a family forum like this - and by the early hours I felt that I had known her for years. I was at my computer, and so I had let my fingers do the "tap dancing" on the keyboard and emailed her a Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue poem, changing some of the words so it would rhyme with her name, and posted it during the early hours. After one of the most exciting nights of my life (and I didn't even feel tired), I made a beeline the following day to go to WHSmith and get an "almost belated" Valentine's Day card for her, and also an A-Z atlas for her area just in case I might want to visit her. A bit of Girl Power in my life at long last!
So what happened? Sadly, four or five months down the line, she met someone else and that was the end of it, although the irony was, despite her former boyfriends coming and going, we still kept in touch and still talk on the phone now and again, 17 years later, but I have to say that Valentine's Day 2006 was the best one in my life so far. She was just six years younger than myself. To be fair, it was more or less a "telephone pal" thing (a verbal pen pal rather than a written one), and we only met in person twice, but we probably would have met more often had it continued - we did live over 20 miles away and was a completely platonic relationship as we didn't give each other enough time. It certainly wasn't my fault at my end - the number of times I had asked her: "can we get back together, again?" I did feel optimistic, and as we were both in touch as friends, there could be a slight chance, who knows?
The closest that I have had with someone else after that was when I was a member of a national group I was with - someone in Wales I was in contact with by email. She was disabled which also meant that things would be a bit more difficult with communicating there. One year I put a Valentine's advert in her local paper over there, and she loved it when she saw it, and we later exchanged gifts in the post. And her Valentine's Day card actually arrived in the post on 14th February one year - probably the only time that I ever remember receiving on on that day - putting Sundays aside, I noticed that in recent years, the postman hardly ever delivered anything to my address on 14th February, not even bills or reminders. This is why I would have wanted to move to Wales; in order to cement a possible relationship with her. It might take two to flippin' tango, but that's only when you are both in the same place.
A year after my platonic relationship, along came the speed dating episode where myself and this woman had incorrectly matched up with each other; I didn't tick "date" for her, and I believe that she didn't "date" for me either. I gave her the benefit of the doubt, and when I eventually caught up with her on the phone, the call lasted just two minutes before her putting the receiver down on me. After around half an hour, (which gave me reasonable time for dry my eyes from being upset and in order to properly compose myself after the previous phone call), I phoned the speed dating organisation who said that they had not made a mistake, and that the woman had changed her mind. Really? How comfortable to know that after how upset I was, (and they could tell that I was from how I sounded on the line...) Six years later I tried again with another speed dating event night whixh had been ran by another unrelated organisation, but I might as well have been the Invisible Man there.
I would personally recommend not advertising for love if it costs too much - save your money, and certainly don't use services that uses Premium Rate telephone numbers - that is a no, no - one for my Room 101. I have been interviewed and have asked my views about love and relationships over the years which I am more than pleased to take part in. And I spoke to a researcher from the Channel 5 version of Blind Date that Paul O'Grady was involved in a few years ago, giving a verbal timeline of my own relationship failures, and probably half-boring her to death in the process. I have to say that I did feel better talking to someone about then, and "getting it off my chest" on the umpteenth occasion. I always seem to keep reminding myself of Article 12 of the Human Rights Act 1998 - and that I have a right to marry and found a family.
If you are married, or even engaged and cohabiting at this moment in time, just be thankful for how lucky you are - even a social worker would sometimes make a great substitute for a partner as I sometimes feel. At least love means "nothing" in tennis.