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My wife and I’s 10th Valentine’s Day together. Which meant 512 Ferrero Rochers had to be shipped in from Italy to celebrate…. or it would have done, but I dropped the ball last year, when in the fug of illness and the excitement of my daughter’s first birthday I somehow forgot about my promise. But more significantly, I discover there was a fourth way out of my self-imposed Ferrero Rocher prison. By giving my wife so many of the chocolates and by putting aboard her love of them, so that she also receives them as gifts at all other occasions, I have actually put her off the disgusting testicle-shaped sweetmeats. She wouldn’t want 512 of the buggers. She doesn’t even want a small box. I got her some heart-shaped chocs from Hotel Chocolat instead (much more the kind of thing that any decent ambassador would be providing) and have definitely escaped the dilemma that threatened to destroy us.
In the process of redoing the Ferrero Rocher routine I have realised that my maths was wrong all along. I had claimed that in 2020 I’d be buying 2048 chocolates, but in fact it should he 4096. I can’t believe no one noticed this terrible mathematical error. I will attempt to correct it for future performances.
But how crazy is it that I have been with the same person for 10 consecutive Valentine’s Days? Who am I? What kind of a monster have I become?
We realised at dinner tonight that we’ve now been married longer than we dated, which is also mind-blowing.
Having foolishly left booking a table until about 3 weeks ago we had an early dinner starting at 5.30. It was interesting to look around and see the other couples who’d also left it too late to get a proper dinner time. We were a motley crew of people in love who had not had he foresight to see Valentine’s Day coming. My wife and I tried to guess the occupations of the people around us. There was an older guy with young man’s hair and clothes and a broken arm with his younger wife who looked a bit like Melania Trump. In fact there was something Trump like about their demeanour and frostiness with each other and the waiters. I thought he was probably an old musician or music producer, my wife thought he was a gangster.
Then we realised we were sitting opposite a mirror. Ha ha. Not really.
To be fair, they might have looked at the two of us and wondered what the fuck was going on. I don’t know how I have ended up with this incredible woman.
Next to the broken armed gangster were a younger and much happier couple at the start of their relationship (I would guess) who were both very attractive, especially the man who was actually so good looking it was hard to take it all in. I had to stop myself staring at him with a mixture of awe and envy. Though I am happy with my own pudgy, non-hypnotic face, but confused that as I approach the third way through my life point I seem more interested in handsome men than beautiful women.
I didn’t really have time to dwell on all the Valentine’s stories that were going on around us, as it’s important to be more involved in your own one. But we all shared that common bond of either late booking for an important day, or as my astute wife pointed out, perhaps in the Trump-alike case, this was a lunch that had gone on for a long time.
