I was thinking of St Valentine while I drove to the card shop. About how according to legend, in the third century, in Rome, this priest died for love. (I don’t mean the kind of sick love where people are so insecure and fixated that they kill themselves and everyone around them over unrequited love).

Valentine landed in jail and was put to death because he was discovered performing marriages for young lovers in secret at a time when Emperor Claudius 11, had outlawed marriage for young single men. The Emperor had decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families but Valentine defied the emperor for young lovers.

Saint Valentine may have had a soft heart (some say he fell in love with his jailer’s daughter and actually sent her a letter which he signed “from your Valentine”) but I think he would have had double vision, wanted to go colour blind if his eyes would have been assaulted as mine were, by rows of red tacky hearts on cards, cushions, chocolate in his name.

You mean after all this time, we still haven’t learned to express ourselves as men and women without the use of these props? Love, like everything, has been reduced to the lowest common denominator. February 14 is love day. On this day you do cliched things like send the person with whom you are currently having carnal knowledge (or trying to) a dozen red roses which resemble plastic flowers and have only the faintest of perfume; chocolate with yucky soft centres; a booking at a restaurant with other highly self conscious couples sitting together at candle lit tables, the women looking at other women’s dresses and the men looking at other women. Everyone aping an idea of commercial love day. And, because the situation is so artificial, not being able to be themselves.

And the rest of the year, relations between men and women are a tangled mess. There is a growing trend of unhappiness of working women, especially in the 30-40 age group as supported by rising divorce statistics worldwide. We are the children of the sexual and intellectual revolution. We were born with the vote and a right to University education but there was spillage once all the old rules were broken. Can’t have it all girls.

Many married 30-somethings are either bored, obsessed with their children because their husbands ignore them using their careers as an excuse, wanting to have affairs, (or having them) restless, or depressed, wanting out, but not knowing how, or giving up or worst of all, just there.

Single women in their late 30s, having done the power career thing with great zeal, have suddenly stopped in their tracks and decided they want children before the biological clock stops ticking altogether, so they are desperate for commitment and if not that, an appointment with the sperm bank. And the more desperate they are, (this being part of the bitter irony of the male-female courtship,) the more scarce men become.

Divorced men, according to a study carried out in the UK are the worst off. Men are creatures of habit, and once married like to stay that way. In fact, they live longer if they are married while women shorten their lifespan by more then five years if they stay married (so the study said).

Now single men, and 30-something successful men, says the study, are the best off. For February 14, 2000 I wish for women the gift, not of roses that haven’t had the chance to bloom, but the attitude of a single 30-something man for a day.

Man for a day rules

Happy Valentines Day!