Are you feeling safe? Are you comfortable with the state of your relationship? Or maybe you're considering embarking on a new one. Have you been browsing in the newsagents? Are you secure in the knowledge that the card, at least, will arrive? Are you grinning inwardly and hugging it to yourself like the best of secrets or are you being stoic and outwardly uncaring?
St Valentine. Patron saint of lovers, the Hallmark greeting card company, florists, teddy-bears-with-ribbons-on and the cocoa plantations of South America. Will he remember you on the day? Does someone worship from afar or is that special someone in your life re-committing? Will Diddums buy a few column inches to tell Squidgy he weely, weely wuvs her? More to the point, does any of this really matter?
No apology
I've often been accused of being cynical and, in moments of honest self-analysis, I can sometimes see why, but I make no apology for this one. When it comes to the Valentine's thing, that most detestable of manufactured feasts, I'm up there with my big, cynical hat on. I hate it.
That isn't to say I'm not a romantic or loving person - I appreciate the odd wine-soaked, candlelit dinner and a bunch of flowers on occasion is usually well received. And I dream my dreams the same as the next. I think I led the blubbering in the cinema when Ali Mc Graw died in Love Story (even though some wag at the back tried to ruin it with an "up, ya boy ya" when Ryan O'Neal was struggling onto the bed to hold her in her dying throes). The notion of being physically lifted and carried off like Debra Winger in An Officer and a Gentleman is just too, too thrilling, but who will this really work for? Certainly not for me - I'm a tad large for that. A fireman's lift is as good as I can hope for and even that might be ambitious - it depends on how committed the fireman is.
But I do dream and I can feel and I think I know what love is; if it isn't love, whatever it is has been working very nicely for nearly 25 years. And St Valentine, the sod, has nothing to do with it.
February 14th has always been an annoyance to me. When I first became aware of how "important" it was, I was a gangly, gauche teenager. I plea-bargained with God that I'd mend my ways if only I got a card. It didn't matter who from - a card, any card, that you could bring to school and show-and-tell with the rest. Anything not to be left out.
And that's the nub of it - not wanting to be "left out". Wanting to feel loved. Not realising, at that formative stage of your life, that being loved has nothing to do with cruel boys and bitchy girls. I got the odd card (never plural, I confess) over the years of my adolescence, but I still remember with a chill how horrible it all was - the waiting, the wondering, the desperate insecurity of considering sending one to yourself just to be safe. Awful, awful stuff.
Cooey-gooey stuff
My next encounter with said Valentine's Day was when my children were at an age to notice things. My other half and I never really bothered with the cooey-gooey stuff. True love, for him, is me washing his toxic sports gear after it has rested for a few days in the boot of the car and the three most loving little words he can utter to me are "you lie in" or "I'll do it".
Our girls, however, noticing for the first time that we didn't even exchange cards on the day in question, were worried. Why don't we do the whole Valentine's thing? Did we not love each other? Did this mean we were getting divorced? In their little minds, we were one step away from Jerry Springer and heading for Judge Judy. Momma gets the truck and Pop visits Saturdays. No amount of reassurance was enough.
We gave in and went the consumer way and exchanged cards for the duration of their formative years. Weak-willed, easy option I know, but we're human. And even that wasn't easy. The whole purpose of the charade was to reassure them by exchanging cards that were soppy and romantic. Easier said than done: it takes a fair bit of trawling through several newsagents to get a card that is fit to be seen by your young offspring. Ninety per cent of what's available have undisguised sexual references of some description on them - most probably body parts that squeak when the card is opened, or something equally tasteful. Phallic pop-ups seemed to be quite the rage at one point and, if I'm to believe the Internet advertising, there's now a range of "scratch and sniff". The mind boggles. All very amusing, I'm sure, but we needed something mushy from the "Roses are Red" stable to put on the table at dinnertime.
Full circle
The next tango with Valentine was probably the worst. We are back with the first scenario - only this time, I'm observing. I'm watching my wonderful, clever, beautiful daughters wait for the thud of the post on St bloody Valentine's Day. Full circle. There is no point in telling them that you've been there and done that and it really doesn't matter. That's like telling them not to go out with wet hair, to floss regularly and eat their greens. You're going to be ignored. You just have to sit and pray. Were he to arrive in the flesh in your front room at this time, said St Valentine is toast.
And so, I make no apology for my cynicism here. The original saint might have been very well intentioned - one story suggests that Claudius outlawed marriage in the 3rd century on the principle that single men made better soldiers. Valentine continued to marry young couples in secret and paid the ultimate price for his sin of disobedience. It seems he fell in love too with his gaoler's daughter and, on the eve of his execution, sent her a little note "from your Valentine". Aw.
That little story has a romantic feel to it but, over the years, like Topsy, it has just growed. I despise what the occasion has become and I pity those who depend on an annual consumerfest to be told that they're loved. I get a lie in at least once a week and his is the cleanest sports gear in town.