To Spell With Love

There's an air of electric excitement on Valentine's Day in Supermarkets. If you manage to get past the crowded flower stand, push your way through the greeting cards aisle and to the checkouts, you'll see an alarming sight. Any store worth their retail salt will fill their checkouts with pink laden colleagues. Today, bleeping food through the tills were middle aged woman with pink-fuzzy-love-hearts-on-springs attached to their heads, all with pink lipstick on and, oh yes, shiny pink shirts . A pink day all round. Just because it's the 14th of February it means a box of chocolates should be pink and twice the price.


But I'm no Love-Scrooge, if that's an actual term. I just have no-one to be happy and pink with. The girls at University were either engaged or not interested. A good percentage of those were engaged and not interested. Double the fun. But I didn't mind, ten minutes at work today and the whole idea of relationships made me sick. The colleague canteen was a sea of pink, but I spotted Darren in the corner, hunched over an empty table. A grabbed a sandwich and joined him to a lovely and heart-warming welcome.

'Oh, piss off!'

Turned out he was stewing over a Valentines Card for some 20 minutes. He'd gone over on his lunch break to pen it perfectly. It was for Jenny, a checkout girl a little younger that Darren. Apparently they'd got chatting whilst he was collecting baskets.

'I said piss off!'

I opened my sandwich packet and took a bite. Darren was the first porter I met when I first started. He makes me laugh because of his alarming honesty and dry sense of humour. He gave me my grand tour (A 30 second walk around the car park) on my first day as a Saturday boy. That day the man in charge, Steve, was on holiday, so from what I understood he was second in command and eager to hold the respected fort.


'That Steve's a wanker.' Darren barked. 'Still lives with his mum.'
 
I didn't find that funny until I found out Steve was 46 years old, heavily into Iron Maiden and had a grey ponytail that reached his arse.
 
I could see Darren was struggling with the card. He'd written it backwards, so all that was on the card was 'Love Your Secret Admirer' at the bottom. I thought I'd chip in.

'Why don't you do the old 'Roses are red' thing...'
'Roses are red thing?'
'Yeah, 'Roses are red, violets are blue...''
'...yes, and?'
'Well, you come up with the next bit.'
'Next bit?'

  How does anyone go through years and years of their lives and not know the 'Roses are red' thing?! Amazing. Even if you don't ever use it, say it or like it, you know it! It's engrained into you during childhood. It's one of those things you know. I realised that Darren wasn't coming down to work any time soon, so I hurried it along a bit.
 
'It's normally something like 'Roses are red, violets are blue, da da da da, I love you.'
 
Now the 'da da da da' thing wasn't meant to be taken literally. The 'da da da da' was supposed to be replaced by his own words. Forgive me but I expected a 25 year old man to a) know the roses are red thing and b) write 1/4 of his own Valentines Card.
   

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  Nope. He didn't even spell 'Secret' right.
 
 
 
He closed the card and popped it into the envelope before I could bother to correct him.

'So, you just going to leave it on her checkout, then?'
'No, popping it into her locker.'  He said with a wink.
'Yeah, I'd love to see you get caught in the girls locker room!' I laughed.
'Didn't get caught the last two times.'



Then he slowly licked the envelope as his eyes glazed over. It made me shudder inside. I became instantly fearful. Not only for Jenny, but for women everywhere.