Valentine's Day Memories

1992
I was 7. I gave my boyfriend of the time a little cake with a dog on it. He gave me a scented card with a fairy on the front and a single red rose. We shyly kissed in the cloakroom at the exchange of these presents. I was smiling, he went bright red. We were the couple at our school at that time.

1997
I was 12. I was a skinny nerd with a horrible fringe. There was no way the 'cute' guy with the curtain haircut would ever fancy me - he was far too cool, his girlfriend was gorgeous, and most of the girls in our year had a huge crush on him. Yet when he received a box of chocolates on Valentine's Day everyone thought that I had sent them. He barely knew I existed, and I never even talked to him, let alone flirted with him. I swear to this day that I never bought him those chocolates, but I do know who did, and it wasn't his girlfriend!

Valentine's Day got worse each year that I was at school, until the point where I believed I was above it all and no longer needed to acknowledge its existence, even though deep down I still longed to find a card snuck into my locker.

2003
My best friend and I gave each other hilarious, terribly hand-made cards. I never did figure out who mine was really from. Joseph Fiennes? Aragorn? Scott Tracy from Thunderbirds? Or perhaps it was Mr Darcy... Hers was from Indiana Jones.

2006
My halls of residence at university decided to raise money for charity by running a 'postal' agency for Valentine's Day, where you could send a chocolate heart and a love note to someone's room. A friend and I sent one to a friend of ours who had a major man crush on Mark Antony. The immensely heartfelt note read:

Blood is red

Veins are blue

You've conquered my heart

So I'll rally to you.

Rally to me, rally to me

Your Mark Antony

I've never seen anyone so genuinely chuffed with a Valentine. Cleopatra would have seethed with jealous rage.

2009

Our first Valentine's together. Neither of us had ever had a proper Valentine before (the kiddy ones don't count!), so we felt it would be nice to acknowledge it. He bought me breakfast in bed and a small bunch of beautiful red roses. I wrote out one of Shakespeare's sonnets for him in silver pen on red heart-shaped card.

Now

Years of teenage angst and a deep-rooted wish to reject commercialism should have made us hate Valentine's Day. We don't hate it, nor do we love it, but we'll always make a little gesture that is very 'us' and that's it, why not?

Photo my own - Asian short-clawed otters at London Wetlands.