AND FINALLY
You can’t put a price on affection
THE press release from an online marketplace claimed to know everything about women and Valentine’s Day.
Its survey said women expect their partner to spend between £50 and £100 on gifts and between £100 and £150 on a Valentine’s Day date. More than three-quarters expect to be ‘wined and dined’ at a ‘fancy restaurant’.
Who are all these women? If I told my husband I’d like an expensive trinket to mark February 14 and then a posh meal — believe me, I’d receive a very short, sharp reply. He’d mutter something about restaurant wine mark-ups and suggest a visit to our favourite supermarket and a lit candle on the kitchen table. Thank goodness!
I detest the cliche idea of ‘romance’. It has nothing to do with real relationships.
The idea that money spent equals ‘love’ and that it will help sustain the ‘thrill’ is pernicious — because if you’re immature enough to expect hearts and flowers to last you’ll soon skip off, disappointed, to find the next delusion. Send a card, by all means (that’s fun), but don’t create another greedfest, full of silly expectations.
The actual history of the feast of St Valentine is fascinating, although obscure. There’s more than one St Valentine and lots of legends which cumulatively leave you none the wiser.
Many people accuse Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English poetry, of ‘inventing’ Valentine’s Day. In his poem The Parliament Of Foules (c.1375) Chaucer describes a beautiful Queen, a Nature Goddess, who presides over a glorious spring love-in of birds: ‘And there was not any bird born of love [meaning sex] that was not ready in her presence to hear her and receive her judgment. For this was Saint Valentine’s Day, when all the birds of every kind come to choose their mates.’
Isn’t that fun? I’d much rather visualise a beautiful battalion of bonking birds than a monstrous regiment of the human sort — holding out manicured talons for expensive gifts and overpriced restaurant meals.
Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, london W8 5TT, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co. uk. A pseudonym will be used if you wish. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.