A country less travelled or a chick with whom messing would be a mistake.

Here's my Valentine post, a little early since I'll be working all day and probably most of the night tomorrow.
  Check out the link at the bottom for all the other bloggers on this Valentine blog hop.

   I’m not entirely sure which facet of Saint Valentine meets with today’s interpretation. Naturally the Roman priest executed by Claudius, or a bunch of mafia hoodlums being gunned down against a wall in Chicago is one. That was then, so what could be easier, or safer than selecting a valentine’s card for my one true love of thirty years? Still, it was with a mild trepidation that I timorously entered a shop yesterday to select something suitable for aforementioned inamorata who’d earlier less than subtly mentioned for the twentieth eighth time that a special day was looming.

      “Fear not my love, my dove, my linnet; being thy slave I do but tend upon the hours and times of your desire, for I exist merely to serve.” I even spoke in italics, for which poetic effort I nearly felt the flat end of the iron.

      “Talk is cheap, Romeo. On yer’ bike.”

     Such earnest words sent me on my way and early enough, or so I believed, that the rampaging mobs had already departed like receding jackals from a boneyard.

    My error of judgement was soon pointed out to me after my effrontery of selecting a card before the grasping claws of a ravenous young woman, who plucked it from my fingers with talons of pure, unbridled malice. After a glare which nearly froze my blood I skulked at the back of the shop until a brief lull allowed me to peruse the creased and torn remains littering the floor.

     Quite pretty creations laden with words like love and passion had all been discarded for enormous cardboard edifices, some weighing about thirty pounds and simply dripping with gaudy trimmings and barely uncensored images of what was in store for the lucky recipient. All these and more were being effortlessly carted off by be-muscled behemoths whose faces suggested murder and evisceration should anybody foolishly hinder their quest.
    After my trembling finally began to subside I heard a vague shuffling noise. Perhaps some unlucky rodent? No, several cowering men, who like myself had been first caught in, then effortlessly trampled by the herd. None of us had the courage to stare the other in the face, for to admit defeat was to lose our manhood for ever. However, none of us were either brave or macho enough to risk wading through the expert shoppers for whom even the first day of the sales held no terrors.

    Finally I plucked the courage to rise and after checking all was well, or at least less deadly, sauntered over to the counter in what I hoped was a devil-may-care swagger to face the counter staff.

    A sympathetic shop woman smiled tiredly at me, asking if this was my first time. I nodded shamefacedly as she offered me a knowing look before dexterously tossing my card into an oversized envelope and sending me packing with the injunction that next year I should come a little earlier – two weeks earlier. In fact a couple of days after Christmas was her best estimation for my chances of success.

    I won’t bother. Next year I’ll do what I always do. Order a bewildered looking puppy from one of those card sites on the net and present it to her myself along with an invitation to dinner. No wonder the card shops in England are having such a hard time. Every man in the country is too petrified to enter. 

                                                                  

 Valentine blog hop