To buy a Valentine's card or not to buy a Valentine's card? That is the question.

I was listening to two women talking next to me as I looked at the Valentine's cards in WHSmith today. Very interesting, and it's made me realise that not everyone is bothered about the whole 'February 14th' stuff. They were checking out the cards, pondering whether to buy a funny one or not,when one turned to the other and said "oh I might as well just give him last years' card" and they both nodded and laughed. Neil and I always buy a card for each other and sometimes a little chocolate. On the odd occasion we'll even buy one of the supermarket Valentine's Day meal deals and cook it together. We both know it's totally over commercialised, and if you love someone you don't need a particular day to show it, but we decided when we first met that buying a card enabled us to write how we are feeling towards the other partner, and that we appreciate them and what they do. We do say 'I love you' every day and pretty often through the day too. We cuddle, and we hold hands when we walk along together. So why bother with a card? Even though we've been married for 27 years now sometimes saying I love you an sound like it's being said out of habit. Both of us search for cards that say certain things inside, particularly if we are going through a tough time. Buying a card wont stop that but may just be a little lift in the I love you's? This year I want to find a card that expresses how much I admire Neil and am glad that we met and have been together for this long...……..and that I would like to be with him for always. Yes I know it's sounds all mushy and daft, and I could write it myself, but for some reason it's important to me. I know Neil feels the same because of the type of cards he buys me. There's a romantic in him after all!

People express love in all sorts of ways. Buying a Valentine's card is simply one small way of doing that. 

My ex husband used to buy me flowers every week, which I adored. We had very little money, but he would get paid every week on a Thursday and stop off at a garage on the way home, put petrol in the car and buy me a bunch. I appreciated it so much because I love flowers and it showed he cared about me, and what I liked. We divorced after 10 years and he still bought me flowers right up to the week we parted. Neil is different. He has bought me flowers now and again, and the bouquets have always been large and delivered. He knows I love flowers but buys them infrequently. Neil has explained to me that he does it like this because it's a way he can surprise me and make the 'giving' special. I must say they always arrive unexpected. A couple of times, when we were going out all those years ago, he sent me flowers, and it does amuse me to read the card for one of them now and again. It says 'I don't know what I have done but I am so sorry. I love you with all my heart. xxx'. Hmmm, I think I was probably horrible to him, and it was my fault as I know what I was like back then. I have mellowed a lot and relaxed as time has passed, thank goodness. There is no point in Neil buying me flowers now though, because, much as I adore them, one of our cats Mr Hugo, (coming up five years old), will not leave them alone. I have tried a few times to display flowers in a vase on the dining room table, or in the sitting room, only to come downstairs in the morning and find flowers beheaded with the leaves all over the place. He just cannot resist pulling them apart and so, after trying to hide them, put them up high where I think he cant reach them, and doing a lot of loud clapping to make him jump and stop when I see him biting them, I have given up. We don't have real flowers in the house. Fortunately it's the fashion to have fake flowers and plants at the moment so I have the odd one or two dotted about the house...…….and yes it's confused all the cats, and yes they still have tried to bite them!!