Good riddance to Valentine's Day! It's a cynical, irritating and expensive con



Home alone this Valentine's Day: Tanya Gold hates the commercial, unoriginal love fest of February 14th

Is it safe to come out yet? Have the heart-shaped balloons sagged and floated away? Have the cheap champagne bottles rolled under the sofa?



Has the red viscose seduction wear fallen to the floor to be forgotten? Is Valentine's Day really over for yet another year?



Can I crawl out from under the bed? Every year I approach Valentine's Day with peculiar dread.

I spend most of the day with a towel over my mouth, so I won't be sick.



Why do I want to kick over the Valentine's Day restaurant promotion signs - Spend £200 Because You Are In Love! - and blow up the I Love You, You Are My Special Bunny Rabbit cards?



Ideally in a giant pink and polyester explosion that would be visible from space?

Because Valentine's Day is tyrannical and imposed upon us all. It is like an 'Everyone Be in Love' party organised by the Government.



It is also weirdly like paying taxes. It's expensive, incredibly irritating and everyone has to do it. If you don't take part, you are possibly suspicious and probably dangerous.



On January 31, you pay the taxman. On February 14, you declare your love.

I looked up the source of Valentine's Day. There are two St Valentines. One is a total mystery, and the other was stoned and then decapitated by a Roman emperor called Claudius, presumably for founding Valentine's Day. (I'd have done something much worse to him). Also, birds apparently choose their mates on February 14.



So, when you slip on a cheap dress and eat a cheap steak in front of a cheap man in the name of cheap love, you are actually copying a pigeon. Yes, a pigeon.

Pigeonwoman! Stick that in a heart-shaped cookie cutter and eat it.

Cash splash: We spent £1.6billion on Valentine's Day this year

Love - of course - is all about intimacy. Well, it's supposed to be, and like a glittering, sobbing snowflake, no two loves are ever the same.



Except on Valentine's Day when everything is the same - the stupid cards, the gross food, the matching couples with matching expressions.



When everyone is doing it, at the same time and in the same way, how can it be personal? How can it be special? How can it be yours? Would anyone with Great Love really do anything on the day, except vomit?



Can you really see Rick and Ilsa from Casablanca celebrating Valentine's Day? Or Scarlett and Rhett from Gone With The Wind?



Isn't celebrating February 14 just like slipping into the Ikea of love, with everyone queuing up to buy the same flat-packed emotions?



Toa large extent it is about love - the love of money, that is. Everywhere you go, there are retailers and service providers waving hearts and flowers, desperate to rip you off.



A deli on my High Street was charging £49 for a Valentine's breakfast. You got two croissants, a carton of orange juice and some naff sparkling wine. Is that romantic? Or is it theft?



It's a difficult day for men, too - full of heart-shaped landmines. The cool ones ignore it, either because they know it's rubbish or because football-and-Top-Gear Valentine's Day cards have yet to be invented (give it time).



But what if your boyfriend does celebrate the day? Doesn't that make him an idiot whose imagination has been surgically removed, along with the £200 he paid for an indifferent dinner?



But, even worse, what if he doesn't? Does that mean he doesn't love you? Want you? Care? On Valentine's Day your man can be one of two things - a fool or a pig.



And how would you feel if your man actually proposed to you on Valentine's Day? I'd feel as if I had just made love to a malfunctioning robot.



So I spent the day under the bed, and I hope you did, too. Because love means never having to say: 'I'll have a table for two on Valentine's Day.'



