MY FUNNY VALENTINE

Do you do the whole big thing with flowers, artificial snow and singing penguins? Or do you do a low-key thing with maybe half a dozen roses and a card from "Stationery Box"?

Or maybe you are one of those who harrumph that "it’s all a blatantly commercial exercise and totally artificial.  Just another way of trying to part us from our hard earned".

One listener to the show did complain that it always fell on his birthday and now he was 55 and he hated the whole thing.

I have a certain sympathy just as I sympathise with those who are born on December 25th.  Which ever way you look at it, Jesus gets the big birthday bumps and you just get overlooked. It ain't too good on the gift front either, I would imagine. 

"Here's your Xmas present darling. Oh, and I got a little extra for your birthday".

A LITTLE EXTRA??!!!!

As a child that would scar you for life.

As you grew up a resentful child hiding in your bedroom pulling the wings off flies imagining them to be your friends and relatives who had only gifted you "a little extra" for your birthday on December 25th.

You then had a long lonely year stretching before you with all the other kids not inviting you to their birthday parties as you never had one as everyone was bound up in Christmas festivities and so wasn't thinking about birthdays and particularly yours!

By the age of 27 you had graduated to roaming the neighbourhood at night peeking in windows at people enjoying parties and vowing a terrible revenge.  Secreting guns, ammunition and bomb making equipment in your wardrobe before embarking on a killing spree which would make you infamous and provoke a backlash against parents who were unable to keep it zipped in about March as spring sprung and their sap rose.  Resulting in their offspring being born in December.

However, by this time you would be such a loser and enfeebled by constant masturbation that by the time you had donned all your weapons and combat survival gear, made your valedictory video and posted it on YouTube you'd feel a little light headed and fearing a nosebleed would have to call your Mum to bring you chicken soup and sing you "all the pretty horses" as she stroked your forehead as she did every Christmas when the tantrum died down, prompted by Santa, his elves and your relatives having failed once again to provide you with enough gifts as they were too busy doing the festive season rather than your birthday in particular.

Before you call the SWAT team, I would like to reassure you that my birthday falls in May.  Although clever relatives realising what a brat I was would send me a gift on my sister’s birthday despite the fact hers falls in January.  If anyone should have a wardrobe full of ArmaLites in our family it should be her.

I think I may be digressing a tad.

Dark Lady and I have discussed Valentines Day. She is more a Christmas girl and I am more a birthday boy. So 14th February is one that we don't do with any great hurrah.  Having said that paranoia began to strike last week.

"What if she gets me something amazing and I haven't?"

"She is good at surprises"

"I'd feel a bit of a chump if she got me something and I didn't bother"

"Hmmm maybe some hedging here"

I had bought her a little bracelet for Christmas, which like many bracelets she has, went the way of much of her arm jewellery.

I am sure Star Trek fans would be able to make something of her ability to throw off anything around her wrist in a matter of seconds.

No one would ever be able to take her prisoner.  Two minutes and the shackles would just fall off somehow.

The bracelet I bought last December managed to exit her wrist approximately 5 times during the first week - luckily at home, so she was able to find it due to frantic searching.

This was proving too stressful so I took it back to the shop to tell them it was a dud and I should get my money back or find something more suitable.

So this morning as I lay dozing in she crept with an armful of gifts.

She'd found some "Aqua di Selva" my favourite cologne, which I had been unable to find since the one supplier I knew changed hands (see previous blogs).

Some sweets with my name on, and where she found this I will never know as I have been unable to replace one I lost 20 years ago and France no longer seems to stock them anywhere.

A beret!

How could I compete? Well I had been to the jewellers to get rid of the pesky bracelet and replace it with something a little better and less likely to fly from her wrist.

So with the aid of a credit note and a few more quid, I bought her a… er… a um… a....

Bracelet!