My funny Valentine's

Bad poetry, dates in McDonald's, rejected roses and a very, very bad joke. And you thought you hated 14 February?

Sam Leith
Author/columnist

Alien visitors would be forgiven for thinking that, rather than a festival celebrating romance, Valentine's Day is an annual celebration of synthetic polymers: scarlet nylon underwear of bum-slicing brevity; imperishable genetically engineered roses; elaborate plastic packaging concealing elaborate plastic chocolates; giant, snuggly, terrifyingly flammable 'I WUV OO' bunny rabbits.

The Englishman's instinct in these circumstances is to approach the whole thing ironically. Confronted annually by shops heaving with vulgar tat that makes an infantile mockery of sexual love, you treat it as a laugh. This is the fatal error.

That, I reflect, is where I went wrong as an undergraduate. McDonald's was doing a Valentine's promotion - some gimmick with heart-shaped Big Macs and paper McCandles. I raised it with a girl I fancied. Wasn't that a hoot? 'Hilarious!' she agreed. We should go, I said. Mysteriously, I found myself picking the gherkins out of my burger at a table for one.

I never got it right. There was the time I took a girlfriend for a romantic break in Whitstable. The 'hotel' I'd selected turned out to be a vast sticky-floored pub built above a plague pit on a stretch of gravel along which the icy, gritty wind howled with tireless fury.

I took a later girlfriend to the same place - different hotel - and happened to mention the previous Valentine's outing. I thought she'd find it funny! Boy, are girls weird or what? 'But it's special to me!' I wailed, as the shutters slammed down on any chance of nookie.

I've been saying 'there's always next year' since I was 17 - which is when (aside from the annual dispiriting rummage in my boarding school pigeonhole) my relationship with St Valentine began.

The story was chaste and awkward. It involved my first girlfriend. Being a weedy poem-writing type I recorded the encounter in a Petrarchan sonnet: 'Your Valentine a tacky plastic rose/Bought in a gift shop, given in the rain.' That part was true, and I remain rather proud of the caesura in the second line. But the pay-off still makes me cringe: 'Something something something something heart/For souls are cheap and we are far apart.'

What did that even mean? Are souls cheap? I suppose if you look on eBay they are. Likewise, if I'm honest, we weren't all that 'far apart'.She lived in High Wycombe and I lived in Dorking - just two short train rides away from a rendezvous by the Dunkin' Donuts in Waterloo Station. I had fallen victim to the pressure whipped up by Petrarch - to pretend to feel, in a mopey and self-aggrandising way, an emotion I'd read about in a book. Had my sonnet only had the courage to be true to feeling, it would have ended: 'You're in Wycombe, I am stuck in Dorking/I wish we were together now, and...' - actually, best leave it there, eh?

Natalie Haynes
Writer/broadcaster

I prefer a holiday that comes with pancakes, fireworks or, ideally, bats. I'm not against romance, but I am against having it to order. I also don't like the pressure to get piles of question-mark signed cards, as though The Riddler from Batman has you in his sights. Receiving an anonymous declaration of love from someone who knows where you live is only one step up from having some crazy stalker who goes through your bins: it isn't flattering, it's creepy.

My boyfriend once bought red roses for his then Valentine and had them thrown back in his face because they were 'clichéd'. And he's an actor, so bad reviews really sting. It put him off the whole thing for years. His worst Valentine's Day is dwarfed by mine, however. I used to gig every year on 14 February, because a roomful of bitter singles was very much my target audience, as a comedian. One night I was waiting to go on stage in Soho and the compere began talking to a miserable-looking guy in the front row. Why was he so miserable, asked the compere. He should be happy. He was with a hot girl. Closer interrogation revealed that she was his sister. Every comedian in the room was gesticulating to bring me on. But he kept going. Why was the guy with his sister? Were they on a date? The guy kept trying to ignore him, but eventually cracked. He was newly single, his sister was trying to cheer him up. 'Did you chuck her,' asked the compere. 'Or did she leave you?' 'Neither,' said the guy. 'My wife died.' The compere looked at me and said, 'And now, ladies and gentlemen, Natalie Haynes.'