THING: VALENTINE’S DAY
We all know that Valentine’s Day is the worst. If you’re single it can make you feel exposed, weird and unwanted, and if you’re in a couple it puts pressure on you to express your love on some random Tuesday in February when you’d really rather be having a furious argument about who forgot to buy chopped tomatoes. Not to mention the fact that it’s as tediously heteronormative as a single rose gold foil balloon floating over a pile of hen night sick.
Yet still, like fools, we dance to its tune every year, snapping up those grim £10 meal deals and falling for its trashy red-satined charms. So here are some amazing gifts and offers from the Wonderful World of Late Capitalism which I’m sure will make your ‘Other Half’ leave you, change their identity and move to Costa Rica.
CO-OP SCOTCH EGGS
Yes, the Co-op seriously has this as one of the starters for it’s Valentine’s Meal deal, because there really is nothing sexier than biting into a flaccid hard-boiled egg surrounded with orange breadcrumbs and abattoir scrapings.
VERDICT: Can you smell gas?
M&S PERCY PIG HANGING HEART
Talking of abbatoir scrapings, M&S’s obsession with Percy Pig is reaching new heights that might warrant an investigation from the police. Also, it’s hard to see how this pointless pig-shaped hanger could be romantic in any way. Is it a decoration? Are we supposed to have Valentine’s Christmas trees now? Why does it have ‘2023’ on the heart? Is that so you can look back on it in years to come and remember that your ex bought you an absolute shiter of a present?
VERDICT: Pig’s ear
SAINSBURY’S NOVELTY MUG
There seems to be a huge market for novelty gifts that tell people they’re an absolute prick and you hate them. Scribbler has built their business model on birthday cards featuring hilarious royalty-free stock photos of gossipy 1950s housewives with speech bubbles that say ‘YES I ALWAYS THOUGHT HE WAS A CUNT.’ And now Sainsbury’s are getting in on the action with this ‘sassy’ mug, which is also a weary admission that your relationship has been dead since that awful mini-break you had in Bristol in 2015. Extra bonus points for the use of the word ‘swap’, as if your partner is a faulty ironing board you need to take back to Argos but you don’t have the receipt, and really who can be arsed to go to the customer services desk and try to explain it? Apathy, contempt, a mug from Sainsbury’s… I don’t know about you but I’m feeling all warm and fuzzy inside!
VERDICT: Fuck-offee
ROMANTIC PLASTER CAST KIT
This pure classy couple’s plastercast kit is APPARENTLY for hands and feet. Just imagine a pair of sinister disembodied hands, clutching each other on the mantelpiece, next to a wax melt warmer and a photograph of a baby on a sheepskin rug. That’s art, that is. Or you could make an exquisite sculpture of your partner’s knobbly size 10s and use it as a jewellery hanger. Listen, this kit is for willies and boobs - end of - and is an exercise in romantic misadventure if ever I saw one. It’s enough to make Michaelangelo drop his chisel.
VERDICT: ‘Hello, is that NHS 24? Yes, I can feel a burning sensation in my er, feet.’
NOVELTY HEART
Haha look at this yeah it says I LOVE YOU WITH ALL MY KNOB shall i get it
Yeh Steve she’s a laugh i reckon she’d think that was funny get it
A week later:
Steve is dead
VERDICT: Anatomically incorrect
MOONPIG 100 DATES SCRATCH-OFF BUCKET LIST POSTER
How do you tell someone that they’ll never quite measure up to your lofty expectations? Buy this! Each square has an ‘inspiring’ idea for a date, so after you’ve scratched it off, you can turn to your partner and demand that they take you to a vineyard or a pottery painting class. And if they don’t, you can look sadly at the calendar and say ‘we never did go to that vineyard.’ Your partner, who thought relationships were about spending time together rather than ticking off a huge to-do list of 100 elaborate and expensive activities, shrugs. Cracks start to appear in the relationship. You reveal more squares, and each one is a slap in the face. All you do is watch TV and go out for dinner and see friends and go for walks and go shopping and go to the cinema and gigs. Why don’t you ever go zorbing or skydiving? Why have you never enrolled in a sushi making class together? What’s WRONG? It’s not good enough! You break up. And now you live alone, with a glorified oversized scratchcard from Moonpig.
VERDICT: Literally a red flag
THE ROMANTIC MULTI-TOOL
And finally, here’s a lovely Valentine’s gift that also doubles up as a death threat. This charming item is emblazoned with a message that’s somewhat final. In fact, you can hear it between blows, can’t you? ‘LOVE YOU MOST.’ *THWACK* ‘THE END.’ (oh yes, it most certainly is) *THWACK*. ‘I WIN’ *drags body into a shallow grave*. You can almost hear the perpetrator exhaling cigarette smoke as they pause for a moment of reflection on a bloodstained hillock. Aww. Ain’t love grand?
VERDICT: Hammer time
How wrong have I been for the past 50 years!!??🥲 Scotch eggs have always worked a treat for me! 🤣🤣
The food in the M&S valentine meal for two deal is more suited to carb loading for a marathon than a romantic night à deux. And the rest is gloriously unsexy. One of the mains is coquille St Jacques – not exactly nature’s breath mint.