Tuesday 17 February 2015

How I won at Valentine's Day

I saw a plethora of blog posts last week all revolving around the subject of Valentine's Day. All started with the same sentence "Personally my boyfriend and I don't really bother with Valentine's Day..." and then proceeded to either try and sell me something from a company that was loosely related to the day or (my personal favourite) provide a list of "alternative" things to do on Valentine's Day.

I eventually had to move my laptop to another room to prevent myself from throwing it against a wall.

Smug fuckers.

And the thing was I used to be one of those smug fuckers. Kind of. I've never understood the whole hating on Valentine's Day thing. Sure I've never gone the whole hog, buying insane presents and going out and awkwardly sitting in a restaurant with every other couple in the vicinity, but I have appreciated the day for what it is; a nice opportunity to turn the person you love and go "Hey, did you know I love you?"

No you shouldn't need just one day to tell someone you love them and yes it probably is a sad indictment of your relationship if you throw a tantrum because your other half didn't get you a big enough bunch of flowers, but why would you pass up the opportunity to be a bit romantic?

Which is probably why the lead up to Valentine's Day was rough as this year. Everywhere I went it was as if there were flashing red and pink neon signs up saying "YOU'RE ALONE!" something of which I'm already aware thaaaaaanks.

Luckily for me I had a hot date in the diary for Saturday with lovely bloggy people Gemma, Maria, Sarah, Emma and Katy. That means there were four of Team Norbury around a table which made me happy. (Really I just like an excuse to link to that blog post, it stills makes me laugh like a drain.)


At Jamie's we did the usual - ate food, drank some stuff and inwardly (and sometimes outwardly) cringed at the over-familiarity of the wait staff. It was my first time at a Jamie's and it was...you know....okay. I'm all down with the aesthetics they have going on but the food was only alright for the price you pay and the acoustics were dreadful. It was absolutely rammed and there were times when we could hardly hear each other speak.

I don't really know where the time went but before I knew it I was racing back to the train station and hopping on a train to go back home.

The bad feelings could have returned again, coming back home to an empty flat whilst everything on the internet and the TV was all about love, romance and the sexy stuff, but I knew how to keep those bad boys at bay.

All I needed was two simple ingredients.

A Chinese takeaway and Top Gun on TV.


Oh and a third ingredient. 

Twitter so I could just tweet quotes from the film ad finitum.

Suck it Valentine's Day. I win.

11 comments:

  1. Sounds like a pretty awesome Valentine's day to me!x

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  2. Oh yeah, all those "we don't do valentines but look at the HUGE bunches of roses and all the chocolate and all the meals we're having out". Yawn. Sounds like you managed to have a pretty epic day yourself, that lunch is making me hungry!

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  3. +1 for suck it Valentine's Day. I win: being in New York with 3 of my best female friends eating gumbo and drinking America's answer to sparkling wine (it's weird!). Still a little jealous of the bloggy get together mind. All my experiences at Jamie's have been the exact same: OK food, overfamiliar (or under-familiar sometimes) staff, and terrible acoustics!

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  4. Well good for you, sounds lovely. Glad you beat the system. I spent most of V day dancing lindy hop which was wonderful yet simultaneously feeling really tired and ill. I'd already cried twice by midday! By 1am the next day, I'd cried another time. And this is with a husband so you know, not everyone feels smug about it.

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  5. First time ever, we thought it might be nice to do *something* for Valentines, and I was too full of chest infection to even leave the house. SIGH. Sound like fun in in Birmingham though- ALL THE FOOD.

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  6. You totally won. It was great to see you again, I'm thinking next time I'll plan a day trip, maybe a day out to a castle or something and we can take a picnic x

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  7. Top Gun. Top Gun. You win at life. I need to have a TV rigged up again just so that I can watch that.
    And I hope you had a lovely day - I'm not a huge fan of Valentine's Day but each to their own - people do seem to go a little crazy, don't they?! I went to Jamie's in London and thought the same thing - figured it was just because we were in London and ebverything seemed busy. I probably wouldn't go again.

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  8. We all won! What a fab afternoon we had :D Looking forward to the next one, I def don't rate Jamie's restaurant, but the private dining experience in Manc was awesome!

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  9. We had a carnaval party...it rocked! They don't really do valentine's day here anyway - St George's Day is actually their valentine's day and it is a bit more civilised with books and roses and a nice load of stalls where you can buy such things and it is very pleasant...plus it is my birthday so I expect to get at least one flower - win win situation for someone who has been single for so long I'm losing count now... xxx

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  10. It was SO lovely to see you, we definitely need to make it a more regular thing!

    Maria xxx

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