Valentine’s Day in 15 (rather painful) life stages

By the time you’re a grown-up, you really have gone through the ups and the downs of Valentine’s Day (ups: anything that means there’s more chocolate on offer at Tesco is a winner, downs: screams over the office Interflora delivery). Here’s how it’s gone...

1. You’re 10 and find Valentine’s Day embarrassing. You don’t even want a H Samuel necklace. You and your friend write secret ironic Valentine’s poems for all of the boys; your best work is rhyming ‘violets are blue’ with ‘we hate you.’

2. You’re 12 and Stephen Mitchell has left a giant teddy on your desk in Geography. Everyone is crowding round, someone just asked you out for Stephen and you’ve said yes. Valentine’s Day is AMAZING.

3. It’s February 16th and your boyfriend Stephen Mitchell (who you obviously don’t actually speak to, but are definitely in love with) has dumped you for Rachael Atkinson. Did Valentine’s Day mean nothing?

4. You’re in your first year at university and all ‘Valentine’s Day’ means is that there’s a 2-for-1 offer on red cocktails, you and your housemates wear matching tiny red dresses and there’s a couple of extra foam parties on this week.

5. Now at work, you spend most of the day talking to colleagues about how those boyfriends who send flowers to the office rather than doing it in private are not to be trusted (showy), and how actually you would hate it if someone did that to you.

5. The colleague next to you shrieks because she’s had an email from the post room saying she has a delivery. The only time there was more squealing in the office was when someone brought their small child in.

7. You get on the bus carrying a Tesco bag with a spag bol for one and get bashed in the face by 12 red roses, which are being carried by someone who looks like Taylor Swift.

8. You tell your mum and dad that now you’re 25, they should probably stop sending you Valentine’s Day cards.

10. Someone throws a ‘single gals’ Valentine’s night out. You decide that sounds like the worst thing ever and stay in defrosting your freezer in protest.

11. Despite the fact that the only mail you get is credit card bills and forwards from your mum, and that no-one actually has your address, on February 14th you still check the post.

12. There is a card in the post. It’s from Virgin Media saying you’ll ‘fall in love’ with their new packages. This might be the most depressing thing that’s ever happened.

13. You finally have a boyfriend for Valentine’s Day! He’s even booked a table at your favourite restaurant and you don’t care that you’re walking round looking smug because years of Valentine’s misery means you’ve EARNED this.

14. You go to Clintons Cards on February 13th. You know, for sure, that there is a hell.

15. You arrive at the restaurant. They are playing Celine Dion on repeat, there are two options on the (woah pricey) set menu and owing to the fact there are three times the amount of tables crammed in as normal, you can hear the woman next to you hissing at her husband about a text he got from a work colleague called Lucy.