Blast from the Past: Valentine's Days of yore
Did your beloved shower you with gifts this Valentine’s Day? A gigantic card with gooey messages, 12 red roses, champagne and an overpriced dinner in a swanky restaurant?
No? Me neither! In fact, when people have to go to so much effort it seems more like a ‘labour’ of love than the real deal. Nauseating displays of affection don’t cut it with this hardened cynic!
When I was a teenager Valentine’s Day was simple. If you were the object of someone’s affection they might surreptitiously sneak a card into your schoolbag or locker with a cryptic message, such as ‘From ?’, which you and your friends would then submit to hours of MI5-levels of forensic detective work. ‘Could it be John?’ ‘No, he only ever uses a blue pen’, ‘Exactly! He’s trying to cover his tracks’, and so, and so on.
If the ‘woo-er’ was really trying to impress the ‘woo-ee’ they might opt to make a mix tape with songs laden with hidden meaning. Maybe a love struck Romeo would wax lyrical in verse of the classic, ‘Roses are red/ violets are blue’, variety.
If you already had a Valentine and were ‘going steady’ the obvious choice was to inscribe your initials into a tree, a simple, romantic gesture of enduring love….until you heard he fancied Julie in 3B then it was time to find a hatchet! What a rat!