Valentine’s Eve – at five thirty, the streets are filled with people swarming in and out of card shops. Their desperation is palpable. Crowds fill the pubs. Get drunk enough and you’re bound to wake up with someone, right? The panic-buying goes beyond flowers, chocolates and restaurant food – at this time of year, people feel the need to shop around to find other people to be loved by. Even when you’ve got someone, you’re convinced that there’s something better out there – someone who’s that elusive quarry known as The One. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been cruised by husbands with pushchairs this week. It’s Valentine’s fault – little did the martyred Saint know that, centuries later, he’d be responsible for an annual festival of insecurity and chasmic loneliness. There’s something so futile about the whole sorry lot of it. Humans only collide and stick when sentimentality forces it. As a species, they’re just histrionic primates trying to make nests, rutting, flailing, pushing out offspring in the hope of being wanted by someone, somewhere, even if they have to make that person themselves – because in the end, you just feel empty, hollow, as if you’re only half a person if you don’t have that “other half”. Doesn’t it make you want to cry?

So, on that note, happy Valentine’s Day. Buy me presents, you tragic fucker.

Anti-Valentine’s Wishes