Roses are red . . . and so is the bank balance

Ready to feel the chill when Valentine's Day arrives tomorrow? Fiona McCannforecasts 10 signs that your Valentine has been stung by the recession

1The card is home-made. On closer inspection, it's fashioned from a P45.

2Worse still, there is no card. Instead, you get an "eco-friendly" e-card that plays a muzak version of Endless Love when you open it in the office. Colleagues with bloom- and balloon-festooned desks look pityingly over the dividers.

3Your Valentine's bouquet comes wrapped in Clingfilm and consists of six ("The recession dozen," he explains helpfully) underdeveloped daffodils that were clearly liberated from the side of the motorway. One even still has the bulb attached. Those petrol-station bouquets of yore, made up of plastic-wrapped carnations, suddenly seem lavish and decadent. Them were the days.

4Instead of a voucher for a pampering pedicure, the wrapping paper falls away to reveal a PedEgg, the "revolutionary foot file" currently being advertised to death on TV. The cheap-as-chips device collects dead skin scrapings from your feet in a handy receptacle which can then be emptied into the bin. This may be a metaphor for your relationship and his bank account.

5The smell of burnt garlic and melting pot handles alerts you to the fact that your romantic candlelit dinner-á-deux will this year be a home-cooked affair. Expect Lidl linguini with sauce in a jar, washed down with a bottle of belt-tightening Buck's Fizz. (Don't be fooled by the candles everywhere – they're evidence she hasn't paid her ESB bill.)

6Your "special gift" turns out to be a scratched seven-inch single of Tiffany's I Think We're Alone Now from the 1980s. When you complain, he looks crestfallen and reminds you that "you dropped so many hints about Tiffany".

7If life is like a box of chocolates, then what does a half-eaten selection box left over from Christmas say about yours?

8Track One on the romantic mix-tape he makes for you is Simply Red's Money's Too Tight to Mention. This is followed by Abba's Money, Money, Money, If I Were a Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof, and Chet Atkins's Poor Boy Blues. Message received.

9After all his moaning about the pension levy, he buys you some new jewellery. You haven't been this excited since your fifth birthday. Funny, that's also the last time you were given an edible necklace and a jelly ring.

10After years of holding off on making the big commitment to move in, she turns up at yours on February 14th carrying all her worldly goods and a big co-habitational grin. Celebrations are ever-so-slightly muted when she involuntarily let's slip that it's because her house has been repossessed. Happy Valentine's Day!