February 2010

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

Doubtless you are the discerning type of reader who isn’t going to be duped by the flowery delivery, stuffed bear and edible arrangement cabal that have currently taken over sports and talk radio advertising ahead of the annual celebration of making single people feel worse but for the benefits of those who are wavering, let me help steel your resolve.

You need to convince your significant other, girlfriend or boyfriend (take that, Hannity) that you love them each and every day and that no amount of plastic gaudery is going to make that any more apparent and that you thought they would see through your opportunistic fumbling as easily as a Brian McBride jockstrap.  If you really do love them then every day should be Valentine’s Day, not the one Mr. Hallmark decreed it impossible for ordinary people, like myself, who may have another anniversary to celebrate on that day, like myself, being able to get a table at a decent or even tawdry restaurant anywhere, like myself.

The compilers of the fixture list obviously agree with me – not only do we have the Winter Olympics getting into full swing but we’ve got three FA Cup matches as well as several from the Women’s FA Cup taking place – have that Hallmark. Imagine you had laid on rose petals, candles, Lasagna and a red hot bubble bath and your other half comes in, pissed off because her team had lost 5-0 and she had been sent off?

I once spent a horrible St Valentine’s Day Night in front of the TV watching my team getting torn apart by a rampant Aston Villa, including seeing the failing Paul Gascoigne break his own arm on the cheek of future Boro legend George Boateng; all the while listening to my then girlfriend in the other way slagging me off to her mother about how I’d known all along the match was tonight and hadn’t told her and this was her Valentine’s day etc, etc.

Basically, Football and Valentine’s Day don’t mix so there should be some kind of official armistice when either there are no games at all or the scores are automatically decided in advance, 0-0 draws all round, so people can forgo the game to spend forced time with a partner you may or may not want to actually be with.  On another memorable St Valentine’s Day, I blew-off match tickets to spend it with a girlfriend in a country retreat, drove 60 miles on a rainy Friday night to her house; spent the night in the spare room (she was a fundamentalist Christian but I was allowed some benefits and thought that the intoxicating Valentine’s atmosphere would take her further away from God and closer to the clutches of BeelzeBailey) and then got the elbow the next Saturday as she felt we wanted different things from the relationship.  I spent the rest of the day in the pub drinking Coke, too far to get to the match but having to make the drive back in time for work and not being able to get sozzled.

No, Valentines’ Day is for losers and saps – I thought it when I was single, I think it when I’m married and a dad and I’ll think it again in 50 years time unless the merry window at the other end of the nursing home thinks differently and I think I might be in with a chance.

But if you must go along with the whole charade then take a leaf out of these Spurs fans book and at least keep a fig leaf of masculinity about you.

Guy Bailey is a staff writer for The Yanks Are Coming. He can be reached at guy@yanksarecoming.com.