"I didn't give it a lot of thought romance's festival day has never been a great advert for the concept. In the best case scenario, it turns your real and important feelings into a commercial cliche, in the worst, it's just a vivid and poignant reminder of how much you wish you were elsewhere, and at every point in between, it's open season for restaurants to rip you off while you make dry conversation over drier chicken."
"I always greet him the same way, HELLO UNCLE RICHARD, and he always greets me the same way, HELLO ZO, shameless, exuberant shouting, which is handy now because he's deaf, but came about (in 1978) because I was just so happy to see him. In adolescence I had a choice whether to transmute to a more adult hey, Richard, and I elected instead to just stay the same, only ironic."
The narrator spent Valentine's Day single for the first time since 1994 and expected little from the day. The holiday's commercialisation and price-gouging often turn genuine feelings into clichés or an occasion for awkward loneliness. Plans with two married friends produced mischievous pleasure by surprising their husbands in public. An uncle born on 14 February chose at short notice to celebrate his birthday, prompting a family gathering. The narrator and uncle maintain an exuberant, shouted greeting developed decades ago, and the loud, affectionate exchange persists into later life, emphasizing warmth and continuity.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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