Yes, it is the fourteenth. No, I have not booked anywhere.
Obligatory, Apparently
Two years ago a restaurant lost our booking and we ended up eating chips on a wall in February, and that remains the best Valentine’s we have had. Awkward, given I have just spent an evening on this instead of finding a wall.
Tolerating me since
Februaries, one of them on a wall
Four Februaries. Three restaurants, one wall, and one year you were asleep by nine. Guess which of them you describe to strangers.
Disclaimer, filed early
Let us both admit what this day actually is.
It is a commercial holiday with a marketing budget, a dedicated aisle, and a truly militant flower industry. Nobody has ever required the fourteenth of February in order to learn they are loved.
The evidence is against me and I am submitting it anyway. The one year I booked properly, the restaurant lost the booking, and we ate chips on a wall by the car park with my coat over your knees and no feeling below the wrist. That is the one you tell people. The three correctly executed Valentine’s have vanished without trace. The wall is immortal.
So the date is doing no work here. Nothing below this paragraph gets to lean on it. If a line would not survive being said on a wet Wednesday in October, I have taken it out.
The reasons, and not one of them fits on a card.
Kind, funny, gorgeous — all true, all useless. You could print those on a card, hand it to a hundred people, and nobody would query a word of it.
Specifics, then. You ask the second question. Everyone manages the first; you come back with the second, to strangers, at bus stops, with absolutely nothing in it for you. You apologise without smuggling a "but" onto the end. You are endlessly patient with slow people and have no tolerance whatsoever for cruel ones, and in four years I have never seen you get those the wrong way round.
Also, and this is the one that finished me: on the wall, in February, with the evening comprehensively ruined, you did not say what a shame. You asked if I wanted the last of the chips. Character, revealed by chips.
Turn them over. You have earned nothing, but still.
Front: the version that fits on a card. Back: the version that only comes out on a wall, in February, near chips.
Four Februaries. One good one, and it was an accident.
- The first one
The Valentine’s we both refused to acknowledge
We agreed at length that it was commercial nonsense, that neither of us needed a scheduled day, and that anyone taking part had been got at by the greetings-card industry. Then we both turned up with something anyway and had to pretend not to be pleased about it.
- Two years ago
The restaurant lost our booking
No record of it, and no table until half nine. You were kind to the man on the door, which I was not. We bought chips and sat on the wall by the car park with my coat over your knees and stayed there until the shops shut. It is the only Valentine’s either of us can describe in any detail.
- Last year
You were asleep by nine
I cooked, badly. You made it to the end of the starter and about eleven minutes of the film. I finished it on my own and told you the next morning it had been terrible, which was a lie, and you have never once asked to watch the rest.
- This year
I did not book anywhere
Deliberately. There is a wall, there is a chip shop, and there is nothing in the calendar after seven. If you are asleep by nine we will be comfortably ahead of schedule.
The unflattering February archive
Four Februaries. Note that the only year with any photographs at all is the year the plan collapsed on the pavement.
The one you played on the wall, badly
The tinny car-park anthem, performed at volume
Played through a phone speaker on a wall in February, at a volume best described as optimistic, because the chips were gone and neither of us would admit to wanting to go home. It sounded appalling. I have played it roughly two hundred times since.
Rations, for the eleven non-February months
This day expires in twelve hours. These do not. Sealed until you want one.
The day has been over for eight months and every line on that page still holds. That was the test, and the wall in the cold was the only February that ever passed it first time.
Nothing on this page needs the argument settled first. The wall by the car park did not need a booking either, and that was still the best February we have had.
You ask people the second question. You asked it of the man who lost our booking, thirty seconds after he had ruined the evening. Almost nobody on earth does that, and you have it filed under nothing.
Good. The best night we have had was the one where the plan fell through and we ate chips on a wall. Get the coat. There is always a wall.
Told again: I would pick you on an ordinary evening, nothing booked, no occasion, no audience, and you asleep by nine.
The small print
Valid all year. No expiry. Enforcement admittedly weak.
- 01To say the good thing on the day I think it, in whatever month that lands in, rather than saving it up for February.
- 02To ask you the second question back. You have been doing all of that on your own for four years.
- 03To notice the effort before you have to mention it, and to say what I noticed rather than merely noticing it.
- 04To make one ordinary Wednesday a month feel deliberate. No booking required. A wall is fine.
- 05To let you fall asleep at nine without turning it into a story about a wasted evening.
Three years I booked correctly.
One year they lost the booking
and we sat on a wall with the chips going cold.
You can recount that evening minute by minute.
Neither of us can name one of the restaurants.
Brief speech. Remain seated.
To the wall. To the chips. To the man who lost our table.
- To the man who lost our booking, wherever he is, and to whoever trained him.
- To chips on a wall, in February, with no feeling left in either hand.
- To you asking him the second question thirty seconds after he ruined the evening.
- To falling asleep at nine, and to the film I have still not finished.
- And to the ordinary Wednesdays, which is where all of this actually lives.
One more thing, booked this time
We are going. And it starts at six.
You mentioned this once, in the car, months ago, and then never brought it up again — which is how you mention everything you actually want.
I wrote it on the back of a receipt at the time and then lost the receipt for eleven weeks.
It starts at six, which is early, which is deliberate. You will be home well before nine and I will not have to lie to you about how it ended.
One more, off the books
I bought a star. On the fourteenth. I hear it, and I am doing it anyway.
Same rule as the rest of it. If it is only true on the fourteenth of February it does not go on the page, and this one clears it easily.
Algol
Perseus
- Designation
- Beta Persei
- Constellation
- Perseus
- Right ascension
- 03h 08m 10s
- Declination
- +40° 57′ 20″
- Magnitude
- 2.1 to 3.4
- Distance
- 90 light years
- Type
- Eclipsing binary
- Dedicated to
- Aarav & Ishita
It dims and brightens every two days and twenty hours, because a companion passes in front of it. Ancient astronomers noticed it changing and called it the demon star. It is not unreliable — it is exactly, predictably regular, and it took people three thousand years to work out why.
It fades and comes back every two days and twenty hours, and the ancients decided this made it a demon. It is not unreliable, it is the most punctual thing up there. Three thousand years to work that out. I managed four Februaries and a wall by a car park.
Northern sky. Look up on a clear night and it is there.
Right, sincerely now, sorry
I spend eleven and a half months of the year assuming you already know all of this. Deeply convenient. Assuming it means never having to say it out loud, and I have built an entire personality on the savings.
You probably do know. But knowing a thing and being told it are different, and I have been coasting on the first since approximately the wall.
Here is what emerged over the course of building this. The best night we have had is the one I did not organise. Not the chips. Not the cold, which was genuinely unpleasant and which you have quietly edited out of the story. It was that the evening fell apart at seven, in front of a stranger, and you were kind to him, and then you sat on a wall in the dark and turned the wreckage into the good one. I would have spent that night being extensively right about the booking.
So: not a February thing. Never was. I would pick you on a wet Wednesday in October, nothing booked, you asleep by nine, me lying about the ending of a film.
— yours, shamelessly on-schedule
One booking, lost.
One wall, extremely cold.
One bag of chips, shared,
by two people with a far better plan.
Three correctly executed Februaries,
none of which either of us can describe.
See you Wednesday. Bring the coat.
Happy Valentine’s, you.
Next year: no booking, no restaurant, no pink. There is a wall, there is a chip shop, and there is you, unconscious by nine. I consider this a plan.
made instead of booking a restaurant