Our funny Valentines
The Valentine I treasure came from my first boyfriend who I had recently chucked (as we used to call being dumped back then). The card was all pink hearts and roses on the outside, but far from begging me to change my mind, inside he’d simply written ‘Get lost!’ in capital letters.
I have kept it to this day and it still makes me smile at the fickleness of puppy love!
“The card was all pink hearts and roses on the outside, but far from begging me to change my mind, inside he’d simply written ‘Get lost!’ in capital letters”
Marjorie Edwards was just 13 when she plucked up the courage to send her first Valentine: “I was mad about a boy called Brian at the youth club, who was a couple of years older than me, so I sent him a card, desperately hoping he wouldn’t know who it was from.
“A few days later when we were in a group walking to the bus stop he came up to me and asked, ‘Did you send me that card?’
I cringed, went bright red and stammered, ‘Yes, it was me’. He took my hand, pulled me into a doorway and kissed me. It was my first kiss and I’ll never forget it!”
Very often it’s the ‘mystery Valentine’ that intrigues us for years to come.
Anne Wood was a student at a college in Scarborough when she had the thrill of receiving a bunch of red roses on February 14th: “In the evening I rang my boyfriend in Leeds to thank him. He answered that it was a nice thought, but they were not from him. To this day, I do not know who my secret admirer was.”
When she was 18,
Jo Masters worked in a record shop in Hammersmith, London: “Lots of young men came there to buy the latest hits. One year I received six Valentine cards, all were unsigned and I only discovered who sent two of them. I was so thrilled and flattered and have never forgotten it.”
But sending an anonymous card can lead to trouble, as Mari Wallace discovered: “I used to send my daughter a Valentine card. I would write it with my left hand or get a friend to sign it so she wouldn’t guess it was from me.
“She had been living with her boyfriend for a short time when the card arrived in the post. When we met later for coffee she told me they’d had a big fight because he jealously thought she had a secret admirer. She was beside herself so I instantly owned up that it was from me.
“It was just as well I came clean as she ended up marrying him.”
Even though she also ended up marrying her boyfriend, Margaret Housley has never solved a mystery surrounding her card: “In the Sixties
I was dating a lad and wondered if he would send me a card. I did receive one on February 14th (I presume from him) but it was a birthday card and my birthday is in September.
“Although we eventually married I never did ask him if he mistook it for a Valentine card or if he was too embarrassed to buy one.”
Linda Spooner also waited impatiently for the postman to bring a card from her boyfriend: “Hoping for hearts and flowers, to my disappointment he had written, ‘Roses are red, violets are blue. Kippers stink, but you don’t’. Not the most romantic of messages, but something must have clicked as we were married for 44 years.”
It wasn’t bad verse but bad spelling that nearly put Olive Willmott off her would-be suitor: “My first Valentine card was very pretty but said ‘to my sweat-heart’ which was a shock! This year is our diamond wedding anniversary and he is still my one and only sweetheart!”
Julie Joslin’s fiancé was in hospital after a motorbike accident: “I bought him a Valentine card but didn’t expect to get one from him as he was lying in bed with his leg in traction. I was delighted when I received a beautiful card from him on the day. He had asked a nurse to buy one for him!” He was definitely a keeper, Julie.
Linda Nesbitt always used to enter into the spirit of Valentine’s Day: “Back in the Seventies, I sent a card to a younger man with SWALK and ‘Hoping our love lasts and never dies’ written on the envelope with a lipstick kiss. Another time, I crept to my dishy dentist’s surgery on February 13th and posted a card through his letterbox.”
Intriguingly, Linda doesn’t reveal the outcome of those romantic gestures but she feels that Valentine’s Day has become too commercialised, adding: “But I often buy myself a bunch of red roses to enjoy on the day.”
I love that idea, Linda – why don’t we all treat ourselves to a gorgeous bouquet and, if anyone asks, say it is from ‘an unknown admirer’!
By the way, for the benefit of younger readers, SWALK stood for ‘Sealed With
A Loving Kiss’.
“My first Valentine card was very pretty but said ‘to my sweat-heart’ which was a shock! This year is our diamond wedding anniversary”