Roses for My Lady - The perfect gift of Love for Valentines

Hello girls and women it’s your favourite doctor here, yes I’m the one without a speculum, but I will speculate about the gifts we men give you at Valentines Day. Yes, this is another one of my famous Valentines lectures.

Valentines Day will soon be upon us, it is time to think about the gifts we should get for our loved ones. This is the time of the year when romance should rule our hearts and we should not let our minds rule our wallets. It is a time for whimsy and lovey dovey gestures. So although I am sure she would appreciate that special gift on this special of all days lets leave the purchase of the new set of pots and pans, the new steam iron and the Magimix until Christmas, when maybe she will appreciate it that little bit more. I know now you can get irons in a fetching shade of pink and Jamie Oliver signs his frying pans but it’s just not in keeping with the season.

No, a Valentines day gift must be from the heart, it must have significance and the woman of your dreams must be convinced that you have thought about this gift for slightly more than the 30 seconds it took you to lift that last wilted bunch of weeds out of the bucket at the last service station you passed en-route from work.

Remember guys that this IS your early warning. The big day is on Wednesday so you need to slip out of work and down to the shops. The weekend has been full of Six Nations Rugby Action, The Winter Olympics and there’s probably some football and other stuff on, so when else will you get to the shops?

And when you do get to the shops what shall you buy?

Roses are still traditional, but I am at a loss to understand why? Apparently the Rose, as the queen of flowers, symbolizes peace and war, love and forgiveness, which seems to me to be a mixed message. And another thing, why roses, because as far as I know roses don’t grow in England, in February, so how did that come about? I can just see it now:

Wavy lines and spectral music:

Man on Bended Knee (somewhere back in History) ‘O my darling I Love thee so. It is thy bonny month of Valentines and I wish to make thee happy, anything thee asks for is thine, darling.’

Woman (half listening) ‘what… o darling you are soeth kindeth, what’s that you say… anything?’

Man on etc: 'Yes my darling love, I will doeth anything for thee as its Valentines Day.'

Woman combing hair and looking out of window distractedly as if waiting for Hello magazine to be invented: ‘I want some roses, red ones’

Man: R, roses my love, but ‘tis only February and the snow still lies thickly on the ground see how yon peasants are freezing to death.’

Woman, flicking absentmindedly through the Book of Kells looking at the pictures: ‘You said anything and I want roses, I thought thee said thee loved me.’

Man: O yes my love, I doest love thee but roses my love? What about something from yon market place… surely thy needest a new pot or something for thy bedchamber perchance (he winks suggestively).

Woman (suddenly has mood change): ‘If you loved me you’d get me some roses, red ones that smell nice.’ She stomps off to the wash place to brush away her tears in a muddy puddle.

Man looks stunned, but resigns himself to the 10-year journey to China to get his beloved some roses.

10 years later he returns with the red roses he has nurtured across the frozen steppes of Mongolia, protected against his bosom on the swaying backs of camels across the Gobi desert, the sharp thorns tearing gashes in his chest so the blood dripped, like tears down his chest. Until at last the stormy English Channel and home.

He bangs on his darlings front door. It is again the 14th of February. It opens, he kneels in the snow and ice and holds the roses aloft, ‘My darling’, he cries, ‘I love you and here are your Roses. I have suffered much and been lonely without you ere these 10 long years. But here is proof of my love’. He thrusts them out his hand on his heart.

Woman at the door: ‘Ere ou are you, yer nutter get lost’ She grabs the roses and slams the door in his face. It is only then that he sees the daubed cross, the sign of the Black Death smeared across the front door. And from inside faintly he hears ‘Ring a Ring a Rosie a pocket full of posy.’

He looks around and shakes his head: Bah Women’ he cries and goes off down the town to watch that new game with the funny shaped ball and down a few ales with the lads.

He was right though wasn’t he? Aren’t roses the most inappropriate gift to give in February? They don’t grow in this Britain in February. They grow in Kenya. So that gift of love, we purchase for extortionate amounts of money, has been handpicked by someone getting about 50 cents (US) a day (Zimbabwe) or $3 a day (Kenya). That’s not love that’s exploitation. (O dear I’m getting political)

So maybe we ought to think about a more appropriate gift this Valentines Day, like the daffodil or the tulip - who couldn’t resist a huge bunch of tulips? (Voice from outside of blog: aren’t they from Holland by the way?)