Valentine's Day

Public declarations of love are a bit naff - so I'll not do it here. St Valentine's Day (SVD) is named after a saint that nobody knows anything about - except that he was born on February 14th. According to Wikipedia, there were several St Valentines and that is is "uncertain whether the feast of that day celebrates only one saint or more saints of the same name".

Antique valentine's Card.
Image link to Wikipedia.

I think my most memorable SVD was the first one that I bought a card for someone (Roma!) in 1981. I had been preparing her with proclamations that I didn't believe in this shite, it was all invented by Hallmark, and sure it was just a racket to get us to spend money on cards, roses, and chocolates. I also probably felt that it was not a macho thing to do to be spouting declarations of love, though it was most likely that I was just too shy to do it.

My sister (Kayo) persuaded me that I should stop this nonsense and go and get her a card, roses, and go around to her place to give them to her. She was very persuasive and after some thought I went out and bought a card and a single red rose (all I could afford). At that time I had a Honda CD 175 with a carrier box on the back. I put the card in, but the rose wouldn't fit without breaking - so I left it at an angle and placed the lid of the box on top without shutting it fully. Feeling a bit of an eejit I headed off to Roma's flat. When I arrived, to my horror the card was gone - blown out of the partially opened box. The rose was still there. To this day Roma  jokes about the card blown away in the wind - thankfully she didn't dump me on the spot. I also hope that somebody picked up the card from the road and made good use of it.