Valentine’s Day is an exciting time of the year, when marketing departments across the land scramble to take an entirely loveless product and give it a romantic spin. Suggestions this year include gifting your loved one an entry in a Tough Mudder race – for real, you give him/her a token to scramble over a set of obstacles, because nothing says “I care” like “I’m worried about your fitness levels”. Elsewhere, there is a discount on waxing services, the circuitous generosity logic being that you will be able to give the gift of your own hairlessness.

They assail you like this because they know you are desperate. The ideal Valentine’s gift is extremely cheap, since money besmirches emotion, and also, if you outrank in value whatever you have been bought yourself, you instigate a future Valentine’s arms race.

Expense depersonalises: think a wallet, roses, perfume or a pen. All regular fallback options – meat, booze, cheese, socks – carry the taint of evanescence: “Dear loved one, hopefully we will last longer than this gift.” Cheap things, however, must be planned or they look incredibly random, like the ice bucket in the shape of a pineapple that someone bought me once, and I still haven’t stopped going on about, seven relationships and 20 years later. A shell, a postcard, an out-of-print book – you would have to plan for a year to make these look like legitimate love tokens rather than something you found down the back of a sofa.

Then, miraculously, five years into any relationship, there is a Valentine’s amnesty, and you no longer have to do anything but make an affectionate remark and fry an egg in the shape of a heart.