Categories: uncategorized
Date: 14 February 2006 12:03:20
I'd blame St Valentine - if it could be in anyway be described as his fault, for the queues in Paperchase yesterday and the huge numbers of pink teddybears everywhere.
Except, from the vast amounts of research I've done in the last five minutes, no-body really seems to know anything about him. He was one of three Roman martyrs apparently, and he probably had his head cut off. The Catholic church took him out of the saints calendar in 1969 for being mostly legendary.
The rest of his life - including writing notes to the jailers daughter signed "from your valentine" and performing illicit marriages, appears to have been made up by some Mills & Boon author from the Middle Ages.
Poor old St Valentine. As if it wasn't enough having a silly name, he now has to put up with a whole load of stuff going on in his name. I bet he gets a bit of stick up in heaven. Maybe the Angel Gabriel calls him "snugglepumpkin" or something equally icky.
I went to Waitrose in Canary Wharf yesterday, which was full of bankers buying their lunches - as it usually is. However, they were adding some very odd things to their shopping baskets along with the usual vastly expensive sushi and coca-cola (seems to be what bankers usually eat and drink). I particularly liked the chap with the bottle of pink fizzy Jacob's Creek under his arm. He looked like the sort of bloke who normally drank something vintage - but not on Valentine's Day. Pink fizz, and a basket full of marshmallows and a card with a teddybear on it Institutionalised romance. Bizarre, isn't it?