Giving the V-sign to V-day

Ah Valentine’s Day. We meet again, old foe. Another year on, and there you are. Eternally taunting me. The Professor Moriarty to my Sherlock Holmes. The Bin Laden to my Bush. The Itchy to my Scratchy.

(Okay: so it's slightly after Valentine's Day at this stage. What can I say- tardiness is to me what prostitutes are to Tiger Woods: a bad habit I just can't kick... Besides, don't think of it as eight days late, more as three hundred and fifty seven days early, glass-half-full style.)

Like most single people, my feelings on Valentine’s Day broadly range from the apathetic to the downright nauseous. What's so good about the 14th of February anyway? The exact origins of the day are lost in history, though odds are it had more to do with beheading christians than with exchanging flowers and chocolates. And, given the fact that people in love should theoretically be mutually expressing said love the entire year round, quite why this particular day is singled out for special attention is anyone's guess. Especially when the calendar is full of so many other days infinitely more deserving of celebration. National Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day (19th September) for one. Or how about Cow Appreciation Day (15th of July)? And did you know that February is National Grapefruit month? I, of course, am heritage-bound to admit that my favourite day of the year, and a little over a month away from V-Day, is the 17th of March- Paddy's Day. Instead of giving each other overpriced roses and ridiculous teddybears, people can instead give themselves intense liver damage and extreme hangovers, all in celebration of a Welshman who supposedly banished Ireland's only interesting form of wildlife.

But in fairness to Paddy's Day, it is bloody good craic.

But whatever its origins, what does Valentine's Day mean today? A celebration of love. Delving deeper, and to quote nineties audioterrorist Haddaway, what is love? (Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more)

Love is, in fact, many things. A battlefield. A four-letter word. The devil. Never having to say you're sorry.

Love is also many places. In the air. All around. In your eyes. Purportedly growing where my Rosemary goes.

The truth of the matter is, and obvious as it seems, love is completely different things to different people. Therefore, the main problem with Valentine's Day is how in a shower of bland mass marketing, it dilutes the intimacy and uniqueness of love between two people. Think about it: how cheapening is it to realise that somewhere, someone else is giving a card to their loved one with the same, pre-printed, clichéd words as the card you're giving to yours? Or sit in a restaurant on Valentine's Day filled with dozens of other people doing the exact same thing?

But it's not all doom and gloom; my own back catalogue of Valentine's Days, for example, hasn't been without some joy. One of the happiest was when I was about seventeen, and received a perfume-doused card from a secret admirer, the inside of which was covered with little poems and scrawlings of love hearts. It didn’t take me long to work out who the sender was, and although I did not reciprocate the feelings, the gesture was sweet and much appreciated. The happiness however, was short lived: the girl who originally sent the card realised years later that she was, in fact, a lesbian. Probably best not to psychoanalyse that one.

Which neatly brings me back to the potential misery of V-Day. Fellow single folk, despair not: there are numerous ways of occupying yourself this (or, er more likely, next) Valentine's Day. Over the years, I have developed several ways of keeping the V-Day blues at bay.

The first involves a watermelon with a hole in the middle, a bottle of handlotion, and ....wait- clearly I've said too much.

Alternatively, why not spend the evening with a stack of completely anti-Valentine movies. The 'flying' scene in Titanic? The pottery scene in Ghost? Please. How about that scene in Commando where Arnold Schwarzenegger kills a guy on an airplane before quipping to the stewardess in Austrian monotone, "Please eskoos my friend; he's dead..ti-uuhed." Comic timing par excellence: eat your heart out, WC Fields.

Or one could always turn to achohol; after all, you can't spell Valentine's without Ale. Try getting shitfaced in the nearest hostelry. Trust me, it's very easy to do. Just take a gulp of your pint every time you see a couple smooching in the corner of the pub. Before you know it, it'll be last orders at the bar, and you'll be so hammered you'll be chatting up the fire extinguisher. Good times.

But for true hibernation from this brief Winter of smug coupledom, nothing can really compare to Speed Dating: the most fun you and a dozen girls can have with your clothes on.

I was personally first welcomed to the fold a few years back....(Cue flashback music and wavey screen-wipe effect)

There I was, sitting in the pub, having pints with a few mates one February the thirteenth, when a girl circulated the pub distributing flyers advertising a speed dating event for the following day. One of the lads looks at the flyer and says with a smile, “are ye thinking what I’m thinking?”

Probably not: I was silently wondering why abbreviation was such a long word.

“Speed dating!” says my mate, punctuating the silence.

"No. Fucking. Way," the rest of us simultaneously reply.

And so, like a swift cut to the next scene of a very predictable sitcom, we found ourselves traipsing out to the speed dating event the following night.

And to be fair, a bit of craic it was too. It was, after all, a sixty-minute opportunity to meet a diverse cross section of the finest single ladies London had to offer. It's the standard, compere-rings-bell-after-three-minutes, guys-move-to-the-next-seat, girls-remain-seated type of affair. There were fifteen girls in all, a sample of which follow:

Date #2- Humourless, but fit, Finnish girl
Her: Tell me about yourself.
Me: Well, I'm Irish....er been in London a few years....
Her: Where's the last place you've travelled?
Me: Em....Helsinki, I went there back in...
Her: What's the most important thing to you in life?
Me: (a little taken aback) Pfff...well.....em....I guess....
Her: What are your life ambitions?
Me: Whooa, em...ambitions you say...er
Her: Where do you see yourself in five years?
Me: (hooking a finger around collar to loosen) Christ....er....
Her: Make me laugh, tell me a joke.
Me: (sweating slightly) Feck...er....okay three men and a horse walk into a bar...
Her: Would you be willing to relocate?
Me: Huh?

(Unfortunately at this point, the bell rings before I have chance to fashion a noose out of my tie and hang myself)

Date #4- Flirty Irish girl.
Her: So, what's the best compliment you've ever gotten from someone else?
Me: Wow, good question. Not sure really...umm probably that I've got reeeally long eyelashes for a bloke. (hurriedly filling the silence) Er, what about you?
Her: Well.....a few weeks ago, a guy told me I was..."insatiable". You know what that means, don't you?
Me: Oho, I do indeed (cheeky wink and a smile)
Her: Ah good, (her smile turning to a puzzled frown) so... what does it mean?
Me: Ha ha (taking a swig of beer) Oh, you're serious. Em...it means you can never get enough.
Her: Ah, (smiles again) well it's true then (she licks her lips), I can't.
Me: Glad to hear it.
Her: So, (she circles the rim of her martini glass with an index finger) tell me: do you give good backrubs?
Me: Well ha ha, I've had very few complaints (I've also given very few backrubs)
Her: (smiling and delictately plucking the olive from her martini) Mmmmm, let me see your hands.
Me: (reaching across) Er...okay; here.
Her: Soft hands. Are you right handed or left handed?
Me: Right handed. (unable to follow where she's going with this, adding a banal question) Are...you right handed or..left handed?
Her: Both. I'm what you call....(she pauses to seductively suck the olive into her mouth) amphibious.
Me: (returning her flirty look with a smile, before realising what's just been said) amphib...wait, don't you mean ambidextrous?
Her: Why, what did I say?
Me: (motioning to the compere to ring the bell)

Date #7- Pretty Indian girl.
Her: So...what do you do for a living?
Me: (sheepishly) I'm a banker.
Her: (visibly more interested) Really? An investment bank?
Me: Er...not really. Actually, no.
Her: (interest flagging) So what kind of banking then?
Me: Corporate lending
Her: (interest back up) Interesting, what sectors?
Me: Small, education deals...
Her: (interest down) oh....
Me: ...but also some larger synidcated deals.
Her: (interest back up) ..interesting. Do you have a company car?
Me: Well... I just find it's pointless to have a car in London (I also can't actually drive)
Her: Oh haha, I know what you mean. Soooo, where do you live?
Me: West London (a.k.a. the arse end of Ealing)
Her: Do you have your own place?
Me: Kind of...(meaning no)
Her: Oh. (disappointed)
Me: (deciding to come clean) My real dream though is to be a writer.
Her: NEXT.

Date #10- Slightly tipsy Essex girl.
Her: I'm a little drunk (bursts out in a fit of giggles)
Me: Hey it's Friday, let your hair down!
Her: My gawd! Are you Scottish?
Me: Er..no, I'm Irish.
Her: Oh my gawd- do that fing!
Me: What thing?
Her: (more giggles) Oh I love how you say 'ting'. Go on, do that fing! That fing, you know!
Me: WHAT fecking thing?
Her: That number fing. Go on, go on: say it, say firty free and a fird!
Me: Thirty...three and a third?
Her: (yet more giggles) Oho, that is SO brilliant! 'Turty tree and a turd!' That is SO funnay! (slapping table)
Me: Thirty three and a third (anything for a cheap laugh)
Her: (the cocktail she's just sipped is now coming out her nose) Pffff, that is BRILLIANT! (the giggles now mutate into full blown cackling)
Me: (in the most Oirish accent I can muster) Potatoes. (cheap shot I know)
Her: (face now puce from laughter) oh my gawd, oh my gawd, stop! That is SO funnay! Now do the other fing!
Me: Er...what other thing?
Her: The other fing, you know! Do FATHER TED, do FATHER TED!
Me: (The bell then rings before I have a chance to explain that, linguistically speaking, asking a Dubliner to 'do Father Ted' is tantamount to asking Ant and Dec to impersonate the Mitchell Brothers)

Date #15- Bubbly Ozzie girl.
Her: Hoy, I'm Janine
Me: Howya Janine, I'm Conor.
Her: Ooooh Conor, eh? I've heard a lot aboutcha.
Me: Really? (slightly blushing) How so?
Her: My mate Samantha's here tonoyt, and I think she loykes ya (winks)
Me: (struggling to remember out of the last fourteen girls which one Samantha was) Oho..interesting.
Her: Chroyst she'll probably kill me for dobbing on her, hahaha!
Me: Sooo, what did she say?
Her: She said she thought you were funny, and had really noyce eyes.
Me: (blushing has now subsided, overt smugness taking over) oh, stop. Stop. Seriously though....what else did Samantha say?
Her: Jeez, I cannot belieoyve I'm telling you all this! But she also said you had really noyce lips.
Me: Oh stop. But seriously, what else?
Her: She also said....aw shit, here she is!
(Samantha passes by on her way to the toilet)
Her: Oh hoy Sam, just chatting with Conor (giving Samantha a wink)
Samantha: (looking puzzled) Oh...okay?
Her: Y'know- Conor. The Oyrish guy, right?
Samantha: (rolling her eyes) No-oo, it was the other Oyrish guy (gestures over to my friend Murphy across the room)
Her: Oh royt, haha that's a bladdy riot hey! (the two girls crack up)
Me: (blushing out of sheer embarassment this time and realising there are actually NO words for that situation..)

And those were just the highlights.

So to summarise, whatever your situation, whoever you are, there is a solution to the horror of V-Day.

If you are in a couple, refuse to be blackmailed into playing the V-Day game, I urge you. Show your love in little ways, every day. A txt here, a kiss there. It's the little things that count.

And if you are single, well.....watermelons are going two for a quid at Asda.

Brendan out.