It’s singles awareness day today, and as ever a healthy dose of romance gets blended with a big dollop of cynicism. It doesn’t tend to polarise people too much though – quite often the people who criticise Valentine’s day as being too commercial are the same people who spend hundreds of pounds every year on it.

Valentine’s day is far too impersonal – it’s lovely to share an intimate meal once in a while, but doing it on exactly the same date as the rest of the world because a card company says so seems unoriginal and rather unromantic. Surely an anniversary or a birthday, or any other date that is special for reasons that only you two know is a better time?

What sounds better?

“Why are you two going out tonight?” “Oh, it’s three years today since we first kissed.”

“Because everyone else is.”

My point is proved by today’s picture, which requires some explanation. The lights up there are cars on top of the hill. There’s a small road which leads to the service route to get to the top of the hill, which looks out over the bay. I think I even got a picture from up there once or twice.

Whenever I go up there – it’s deadly quiet. That’s clearly the case for everyone else too, because on Valentine’s day that ‘secret spot looking over everything at night from a Richard Curtis film’ is busier than the bloody motorway. I can still see cars coming up and down as I type.

And yet, even with all that, it’s ultimately unavoidable – the way the world is makes it difficult to have an eventless Valentine’s day without repercussions! Oh well, I’m sure we’ll all live.