How do I dub thee?

...cheesiest of days?

For some today is a festival of the highest squidgy-wuv-bunny-wunniest degree. A time when women are not ashamed to out-ruffle the pink chiffon whiffliness of la Cartlande, and men dress in tights and floppy hats to serenade their inamoratae 'neath a honeysuckle-scented arbour. A time to shout your love to the heavens and not fear the next morning's sore throat.

It is also time of expensive and scratchy underwear that you secretly feel will look faintly ridiculous at a later date. A time to venture into the hostile territory of fiercely-regimented public dining, expensive meals that do not become inspiring by virtue of being in the shape of a heart, or worse, cupids performing unmentionable acts. A time of embarrassing public gaffes, dry cleaning bills and a "rose for the lady." For others it's worse.

And so, here is the anti-valentine. It's dull, obvious and actually written on corporate email while doing a poor impression of writing an unpleasantly tactful memo about the people who remove their shoes in the office. It has then been printed out on featureless stationary and typed up in a badly-lit late-night airport waiting lounge where all the shops are closed apart from the one that sells bad overpriced coffee. The closest it comes to romance is the 25-crown-for-5-minute-leatherette massage chairs that look like someone's stuck a motor on the cast-offs from a garage sale.

Note the lack of hearts and sentimentality. Note the lack of pictures, even from a corporate logo (although the one with the dead turtle might have been appropriate, come to think). Worst of all is the fact that I have extracted this whole thing from an email to a friend and then re-worked it into a blog post in order to completely de-personalise the whole experience and ensure it thereby loses all meaning.

And to round things off nicely, I slept poorly, my breakfast banana was bruised, the milk in my tea tastes funny and I'm flying east-west so the whole day is actually 25 hours long. Happy Valentine's Day.