Valentine

Well here we are, one of those so called special days. The day of ‘love’, valentine.

a gift from Mr H :-)

Irrespective of having a valentine or not, it is a day to wear exceptionally vivid colours – scarlet, flame, or emerald green, or kingfisher blue. To lean towards vividness, to be provocative. Consign black things to the fire (well not quite – what would I wear to work?!).

I know about this ‘love thing’, happily married, as I am. But how lovely it has been to meet with a dear friend recently, in the build up to this day, and find it is newly so for her. To be struck by her face, a quality that has less to do with colouring or bone structure (or indeed vivid clothes) than with a kind of inner brightness and anticipation, the look of someone who has hardly begun to discover what life has to offer, and who is in love. As she talked about him I gave her a straight inquisitive yet concerned look – as good friends are want to do. She yielded with a sudden smile, and relieved, I could see it was going to be just fine. When I then met him, her man, I found him tall, placid, gentle and generous of nature, not particularly stirred to spontaneous speech yet in the most lovely of ways, clearly the friend and playfellow of children, for whom he has a clumsy tenderness, perhaps himself still a bit of a child (as they with subtle intuition know). What better way to mark valentine’s day, than to celebrate them both in the words of Sarah Bernhardt …

“Carry me off into the blue skies of tender loves, roll me in dark clouds, trample me with thunder storms. But love me”.