The future of Valentine’s Day is here; I should have seen it coming

It started on Valentine’s morning last week and ended with a present from the ‘ lovely Husband’ that not even I, with my all seeing eye and particular extra sensory powers, could have predicted.

Tuesday was a suitably depressing day. Cold and dark, the miasma never really lifted off the town for most of the daylight hours. The meteorological situation aptly reflected the misery that I was feeling, knowing full well that I would not be coming home to romance. It’s not that the Husband doesn’t understand the concept - it’s just that he feels he isn’t able to project it properly and, in the absence of possible brilliance, he usually decides to do nothing at all.

Being at work didn’t make me feel any better. One lady, recently married, was wowed with a beautiful bouquet of flowers. The new husband had also left her a rose and a card that morning before he left for work. I eyed the flowers with not a little jealousy. Stuff like that never happens to me.

Later, at lunchtime, a friend contacted me on the phone, sending me a picture of the most gorgeous diamond ring which announced her engagement to a thoroughly decent chap. I was, of course, delighted for her, but it was beginning to feel like that no matter what the Husband did later on, it was not going to beat the diamond ring and gorgeous flowers.

I had, naturally, been ‘ hinting’ for weeks previously that Valentine’s Day was coming up and it was his opportunity to ‘show me how much he truly cared’. Silly, I know, but when there is zero romance the other 364 days of the year, a girl’s gotta grab February 14 for all its worth.

He rolled his eyes a lot when I told him that this year, I didn’t want the scrapings of the flower bucket in Lidl, purchased in a rush on the way home from collecting the kids from school. A proper bouquet, the like of which he has never purchased for me in 12 years, would suffice. All he had to do was go into the florist and pay the money. Not taxing, you’d think.

So when I finally made my way home on Tuesday afternoon, I was disappointed to say the least not to see a whopper of a bouquet lying in the scullery. . . or the kitchen, or in the shed. I did look. It was nowhere to be found.

Instead, however, the Lads arrived in, one carrying an oversized envelope and the other with a brown paper bag in the shape of a box. The handed them over with some enthusiasm, with the Big Lad already opening the card, while the Wee Lad, who shouldn’t have been put in the same parish as a box of chocolates, ripped them out of the paper bag and handed them over with the proviso: ‘ We’re having them after dinner’.

The Husband himself stayed back from this overt display of affection. He’s not one for that auld carry on. But a short time later, he produced yet another brown paper bag and handed it over. It weighed an absolute tonne. It was far too heavy for even the most generous bunch of flowers. Which wouldn’t, of course, have been in a brown bag.

Instead, a large crystal ball, with stand, was lifted out of the bag. His face was beaming, while my jaw unhinged in shock. ‘Er, what’s this?’ I wondered, really meaning I know what it is but why is it here? ‘It’s a crystal ball’, he said. ‘Isn’t it great. Sure where would you get it?’

Actually, where would you get it? A charity shop in town, it turned out. Which was where the Husband went looking on Valentine’s Day, it turns out. Says it all really. A tenner was all it cost and ‘it’s a curiosity’. He kept saying: ‘Sure where would you get it?’ A week later I still don’t know why exactly he bought it and it’s sitting in the living room, looking slightly weird (the crystal ball not the Husband). So while ladies regaled me with their romantic meals and jewellery, I was able to tell them about my crystal ball. After 13 years, I should have seen it coming!