VALENTINE - THE TWAT

So Valentine's Day then. The day people are told to tell other people whom they love/admire/fancy/pity that they worship the very ground they walk on and cannot contemplate life without them.

It's a terrifying day for stupid men. Men who love to play up to the advertisers' view that women are organised and blokes are dim loons too busy scratching their balls while contemplating pie to function on any level. Hmm pie.

PIE - THE WAY TO A MAN'S PANTS

Men who think they are somehow cute for being feckless. Men who want to be told what to do until that conflicts with what they actually want to do. 

Men who are a disgrace to the gender. Fools encouraging pity and succour for invented inadequacies. I despise these men. I know when Valentine's Day is, when my anniversary is, when her birthday is, and they know theirs.

But for most men, Valentine's Day is just a headache. A pointless and frustrating adventure in the manic world of marketing.

I saw them, the sullen, lumbering bewildered and sweating around a city full of love, frayed tempers and knives.

The more grotesque the card, the more emotion and devotion can be attached to it. The grander the gesture, the greater the love is the motto of desperate sales staff eager to offload last year's shite.

Let's face facts. No let's not.

Valentine is also the patron saint of epilepsy, presumably after people started taking fits when they spotted the price of the cards.

STUPID CUPID - DON'T MESS WITH THE BOOMERANG ARROWS

All this effort is supposedly in the hope of reminding your loved one that they do indeed matter to you and can I have some sex please? That's the line as that's all men think of apparently, young randy opportunists and tired middle aged dreamers.

The reality is a twee card accompanied by a ghastly flower arrangement, some sugar loaded cheap chocolate and unwanted sexy underwear that trading standards should look at before you do.

This is normally followed by the snarling realisation for married couples that Elvis has more chance of getting his end away than you.

We have three children. The youngest is three. We chase the flirty bubble when the chance arises. Sleep is king. No forward planning for us as any moment is ruined when a three-year-old interrupts to tell you there is a huge spider under his bed breathing fire while eating thunder and his pillow or something.

We don't need told by a marketing man that February 14 is the time to get the kids to bed and woo the bejesus out of each other.

What we need is Sleep Day. A day when you buy your partner a pillow and a duvet and say: "There you go honey, go snooze you crazy tired beauty. I'll get mine and we can snooze the hell out of each other, like we used to. Really go at it. A full on snooze."

I despise Valentine's Day and the aimless guilt it engenders.

This argument didn't hold a lot of water with the Sultana of Fun. Far from it. A card was dutifully passed to me with a question mark in it so I didn't know who it came from. Her passing it to me and the "To my amazing husband" inscription were not clues presumanbly.

This was followed by the "where's mine" eyes.

I explained how it hurts my head to fall for such a manufactured tradition but I was lost.

I went out to the garage in a panic, well it was a Mazda but that's not important. I walked in as the female staff looked at me knowing I what I was there for but not the fight I had put up not to be

but I didn't get to be the renowned lover lover man I am without knowing which buttons to press.

So I arrived back and handed her the Curly Wurly, a Muller Fruit Corner and a good luck card. Other panicky fellas had emptied the shelves. Bingo, that should hit the spot.

This may go some way to explaining why I am writing this from the spare room.

Men, buy them a card and some flowers. Pick your fights. This one is not really worth the effort.