WHAT COLOUR ARE VIOLETS?

Someone's just advertised the Valentine's Day Cake Sale by sending an email round with this poem in it:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Tonight is for nookie
But at work you can have a cookie

My eyes widened. All UK Staff. Unbelievable.

I'd forgotten about Valentine's Day. Valentinus was a Roman citizen who started secretly marrying off young Christian couples. The pagan Emperor, Claudius didn't like this very much. For a start, newly married men were exempt from military service, not to mention the fact that underground Christians were always trouble in Rome.

Valentinus was literally undermining the strength of the Empire. When he was taken before the Emperor, he took his chances and tried to convert Claudius himself. That didn't go down very well; he was beaten with clubs and decapitated in public.

You don't often see that image in card shops. Instead, these pink palaces are packed with fluffy teddy bears, plastic-wrapped flowers and heart-shaped cardboard love tokens, suspended from the ceiling. There are no bloodied Romans, clutching the severed head of an old priest which they're about to wedge onto an iron spike at the Flaminian gate. There's no cardboard cutout of a purple-faced Emperor, fuming at Christianity, brandishing a club and spouting incentives to religious hatred. It's all hearts and flowers and isn't it lovely.

Actually, if you're going to celebrate love, my opinion is that Valentine's Day is as good a day as any other - you crack on with that.

What might be nice is a day to also celebrate singleness. Why not? Why not a day when single people the world over send each other cards and wish each other well.

They do it in China. November 11th, every year, apparently. The four ones (11.11) are supposed to signify singleness. And I don't think it's some sarcastic response like Singleness Awareness Day (SAD) is supposed to be. That's just silly. I think in a world where you're told that a romantic relationship is the pinnacle of human achievement (it isn't), that sex is the ultimate expression of love (it isn't) and that your self-worth derives precisely from your ability to find someone who likes you (no, no, no and no!)... it would be good to redress the balance a bit.

Violets are violet anyway, aren't they?

And aren't there lots of roses, not just the red ones?

It's all a load of nonsense, isn't it?