V Day.

For singletons or the recently separated, V Day can seem like a worrisome blot on their emotional landscape. For eleven months of the year Florists, Confectioners and Card Shops churn out fairly unremarkable blooms, sweets and messages – then something odd happens at the beginning of February. It’s as though they’ve missed out on Christmas and are determined to try and out-tack one another.

It begins like Chicken Pox, with the odd pink blemish or swirl of red ribbon. Then as each day passes more and more cerise, magenta and crimson appears. Window displays become chock full of silk veins and arteries plumbed into swelling satin organs. Jauntily angled cocktail glasses and champagne bottles vie for space in this sick bowl of gushing sentimentality.

When I pass my local Thornton’s I’m reminded of that scene from Chocolat , when Alfred Molina is unable to quell his repressed urges any longer and runs amok in the window of the local chocolatier, gorging himself on everything he can, before he falls into a sugary stupor. This would be relatively easy to reproduce in Thornton’s, but Interflora and Hallmark might prove slightly more challenging.

For a start, I suffer from hay fever which cancels out the florists. How does one run amok in a card shop window? I could tear off all the bows and ribbons and adorn my body like some camp pearly queen or better still tear of all my clothes and stick myself to the largest card - a statement of dissent, if ever there was one.

Then there’s the question of disabling all the alarms and cutting through the steel safety shutters. I could always buy out the entire stock of Valentines cards and drop them into a flaming brazier whilst shouting “Love is dead!” through a megaphone to passing shoppers, but that would just get me sectioned under the mental health act.

No, the best thing I can do is not get involved. On the 14^th February I’ll get up at 7am and slot into my well-worn routine. With my index finger hovering over the mute button I’ll sit and watch Bill and Susanna being nice to each other and sip my instant decaff.

At approximately 9am I won’t rush to the front door and pore over the post, tearing open a certain beautifully hand -written white envelope with abandon, hoping for the subtle scent of Fleur by Floris. No, I won’t do any of that – I promise.