Live a little this J Day by finding your balance

TODAY, millions of grown-ups around the world will clutch teddy bears to their chests.

Restaurants will overflow with couples holding hands across the table, the men trying not to get clam sauce on their sleeves. Camps Bay will be declared a war zone and the streets closed off as Champagne corks fly through the air like drunken missiles. Spouses who dream of sewing anchovies into each other’s car seats will give each other gifts and kiss each other’s gravlax lips.

I hate Valentine’s Day – and not for the usual reasons trotted out by Goths, sociology lecturers and people wearing Converse trainers: it’s a commercial ploy; it involves too much red; it’s an opportunity for wife beaters to appear nice; it encourages cruelty to roses.

And it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I never got any roses at school, or that Susan Donnelly got so many she couldn’t see the chalkboard, or that every Valentine’s Day my father would anonymously send me flowers and it took me years – and then one humiliating conversation – to work out they hadn’t come from David Robertson, or that every partner I have had has given me gifts of pen-knives.

No, it has nothing to with this – although, in hindsight, maybe it should. and spite, and I think we need to get some balance.

So I propose that in addition to St Valentine’s Day, we celebrate St Jude’s Day. For those who missed the final lecture on Patron Saints 101, Jude has nothing to do with the Fab Four or singing “Nah, nah, nah, nah-nah-nah nah” while clutching a Castle Lite, and everything to do with Disastrous Situations.

And Jude rhymes with rude – perfect for a day of non-love.

Gifts on St Jude’s Day would be more fun than Valentine’s Day trinkets. That ex-husband who snipped up your best linen, sold your car and made off with the only bottle opener in the house? A nice DHL delivery of a packet of toenail clippings and a Yorkshire terrier. That woman who bullied you at work and then went on to not only become your boss, but a volunteer for an HIV orphanage, a published poet, a spokeswoman for Dove and a Mensa member? An Interflora delivery of a Titan arum – also known as a stinky-disgustingrotten-meat-flower-that-is-guaranteed-to-attract-a-lot-of-flies. That colleague who moans about how hard they work even though they take three-hour lunch breaks to buy light fittings and Super Mario games? A compilation CD featuring the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, Rolf Harris, covers of Rolf Harris by the Kabul Bronchial Choir and recordings of your neighbour’s child riding a plastic scooter up and down the cul-de-sac.

And unlike Valentine’s Day, Jude’s Day – or J Day, as advertisers would no doubt call it – would not be restricted to people you know. You could pick a random person or organisation that causes you angst and gift the living hell out of them: Mark Zuckerberg for making us use timeline on Facebook; Bashar alAssad for turning Syria into a morgue; Woolworths for their ginger fails; Mariah Carey for yet another Christmas CD featuring her boobs and the Cape Town traffic police for their non-existent existence.

Everyone would benefit: restaurants could offer set menus featuring devils on horseback, blackened fish, followed by orange blegh-mange; Hallmark could bring out a range of cards printed on un-recycled asbestos, with cute cartoons of veiny-nosed men pulling rude finger gestures; and florists would suddenly have a market for their withered wisteria and dead delphiniums.

In the meantime, may this day of teddy bears and overpriced roses be a happy one. May you receive love and receipts for those expensive under-garments. And if you spot my husband buying a pen-knife, be sure to warn him that I’ve learnt how to use the scalpel function.