So it’s Valentines day.
You will be aware that Mrs Dr Brown is magnificent.
Dolphins have swimming with her on their bucket lists.
If she was any more magnificent, Richard Dawkins wouldn’t believe in her.
And so I need to buy a Valentine’s card.
Because nothing says “I love you, and please forgive the three hundred and sixty four days of rubbishness (365 in a leap year)” like a hastily-chosen folded-over piece of cardboard-recycling-bin filler.
And who even was St Valentine, you rightly ask, other the patron saint of adding a blob of pink icing to a donut and charging an extra quid?
A quick google search reveals he was the patron saint of courtly love, but also beekeepers, epilepsy and the plague.
Quite the brief.
I’m also going to add in that he played the banjo and could talk to beavers, in the hope that some time in the future you’ll get jumbled and vaguely remember this in a pub quiz, and insist one of my made-up ones was true.
I don’t mind shops cashing in on Valentines day.
I sort of agree with the people who complain about the commercialisation of Christmas. But this isn’t true for Valentines Day. Valentine’s day has only ever been a commercial racket: it’s the season of heart shaped chocs, expensive bouquets and M&S meal deals for two.
And it’s not my place to whinge about hikes in the price of petrol-station flowers (confirming myself in the highest order of romantic warrior poets) if, while I’m buying a card, I also pick up a 40p Christmas pudding with a yellow sticker, and three advent calendars for a quid.
“But Rick? What of the true meaning of Valentines Day?” I hear you ask.
Yes.
What would Valentine’s day be without adding to the crippling anxiety of awkward teenagers?
I can remember drawing lots at medical school with me and Messrs Bains, Brown and Buckwell as to which of us would go to the pigeon holes to check the “B” section for cards for any of the four of us, on the grounds that if we worked as a consortium there was less chance of one of us having to walk out of the common room empty handed.
And did one of us see the flash of red or pink envelope, like a Wonka’s Golden Ticket?
You know what?
I cant remember.
Though literally nothing in the universe seemed so important at the time.
Except maybe choosing the perfect line for any cards we may have sent ourselves.
Rejected examples include:
“Beggars can’t me choosers”
“I would: thousands wouldn’t”
I wouldn’t say we were unromantic but I recall shopping for a card that didn’t have the words “love” or “forever” on it. If Cupid had pointed his bow in my direction I’d as likely as not have complained he’d have someone’s eye out with that.
But we get off subject.
Buying a card for Mrs Dr Brown.
Or… perhaps not.
They’re meant to be anonymous, aren’t they?
But then there was the year I got jumbled and signed my “Happy wedding anniversary to my beautiful wife” card with a question mark. Thankfully I didn’t then get confused and accuse her of having a secret second identity.
I do have to get her at least a card.
In spite of the “It’s so cheesy – let’s not do anything this year” agreement.
Because then I’d run the risk of the Valentines day Rock Scissors Paper game.
You know the one.
One…
Two…
Three…
“Empty handed!”
“Bunch of flowers!”
“Bollocks!”
Tears.
So what have we learned?
I think we will agree to keep going with Valentines Day.
And so, until we meet again next year to celebrate the patron saint of disappointed teenagers, heart shaped chocolates and enough pink tat in supermarkets that you’d think Tesco was having a baby girl:
Lots of love
? xxx
Dr Brown is Getting Better 