Why I Hate Valentine's Day

By Hugh Wilson

Good grief, here it comes again. I don’t know about you, but Valentine’s Day always seems to sneak up on me like a tiger in the night. You’re drifting happily through the winter and suddenly it’s got its jaws round your throat. It’s not a day of love, it’s a romantic minefield. I hate it. It should be banned.

I really do feel that strongly, and yet I consider myself quite a loving kind of fella. I’m very fond of children (I have one) and small, furry animals. I almost blubbed during ET. I trap insects in a humane fashion and set them free to frolic in summer meadows.

So don’t call me heartless. I just don’t like being told when, exactly, I should come over all doting and devoted, and I don’t appreciate being punished if, on a cold, February evening, after a hard day of endless irritations, I can’t work myself up into a state of starry-eyed romantic zeal.

I can trot out all the usual reasons if you want me to. On 13 February I have a recurring vision of a large table in a bunker deep beneath the Swiss Alps, around which are sat a group of men who are all stroking cats and laughing menacingly.

The card maker’s there, and so is the florist, the confectioner, the restaurateur, the knicker-maker, and the bloke who sits outside my local Somerfield every year selling heart-shaped balloons. And they’re discussing a dastardly plan, which once again involves reminding the men of the world that if we don’t spend a large amount of cash on their expensive tat, we face weeks of accusing looks and tense silences.

Am I just tight? Perhaps, but I went a bundle on Christmas prezzies this year and at Easter my beloved will doubtless require the sort of ornate, organic, free-range, hand-crafted, gold-leafed chocolate egg you don’t readily find at Asda. I’ll happily cough-up, but Valentine’s Day is a spending spree too far.

Anyway, it’s not really about the money. I resent the fact that Valentine’s Day is assuming increasing importance in our lives. I resent the damage it can do to a relationship when you (OK, I) forget all about it and end up coming home bearing nothing more than a nervous smile and a bouquet of wilting pansies from the petrol station. I resent the fact that, despite the promise it seems to hold for exciting amorous adventures, Valentine’s Day has never done me any favours whatsoever.

That was even true when I was young, single, and giving out the sort of signals that were impossible to interpret as anything other than a desperate plea for female attention (I still give them out now occasionally, but she just ignores them).

For example, I remember being thrilled to find an unsigned Valentine’s card in my pigeon hole at university. I spent days fantasising about who my secret admirer might be, about the moment she would reveal herself, and about the evening we would spend discussing her future modelling career. And two years later I left university without the faintest idea who’d sent the sodding thing. Which does beg the question: what in the name of Cupid’s chubby cheeks was the point of that?

To those who say that Valentine’s Day simply provides a frisson of excitement to break up the drudgery of office life, I say only this. Pah! Drudgery is a pleasure compared to seeing the accounts manager you’ve been subtly wooing for six months go all doe-eyed over a red rose from some chisel-jawed dullard in marketing. Or so, er, I’d imagine.

Since then, Valentine’s Day has got me into far more bad books than good ones. For years I assumed my partner felt the same way about it as I did, until she revealed, after one anticlimax too many, that she’d spent the best part of a decade waiting for some spontaneous act of amour on my part.

“Why didn’t you tell me, I’m not a mind reader,” I asked her. “Then it wouldn’t have been spontaneous – you should have wanted to do it,” she replied. “But I didn’t think you were bothered,” I said. “But you should’ve done it anyway,” she replied. And on and on into the cold and passionless night.

That’s what I mean. Women get so irrational about it, as if this silly excuse for a credit card binge has any merit whatsoever. And I tell you what, setting too much store by  what does or doesn’t occur on 14 February does women no good at all. Valentine’s Day is a deadly enemy to the committed but forgetful partner, but a crafty comrade to the womanising cad, who knows that a grand romantic gesture on one day of the year can help obscure a catalogue of misdemeanours on the other 364.

So my advice is this. Get some nice food in for Valentine’s Day, and a DVD you both want to see. Maybe light a candle or two and snuggle up on the sofa. And if you’re partner produces a huge bunch of flowers, some expensive jewellery and a heart-shaped balloon, be very suspicious indeed.

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