Valentines day. Different strokes for different folks:
1.Chocolates or other giftage
2.Flowers
3.A nice meal
4.A card – ironic, soppy, comedic, bought or home-made
5.A combination of the above
6.Steadfast refusal to engage in an over-commercialised event
7.Or a chance to watch your beloved stress in front of Friday night football.
‘Luckily’ for Mr TLF, the footballing fixture gods had conspired with St Valentine and randomly allocated him no 7. What more romantic experience could a chap ask for than sitting next to an increasingly animated and slightly over-wrought TLF? I can only assume that he left the living room and didn’t reappear until well after the final whistle because he was so overcome with the emotion of the whole evening as the loving phrases, “how the eff is that a free kick?” and “too bloody lightweight Perez!” reverberated around the house.
St Valentine, patron saint of lovers, epileptics and beekeepers (go figure) dates back a bit. Although just to confuse you he does have two back stories. Maybe a priest and physician martyred during the persecutions of the Christians in 270 AD or maybe the Bishop of Terni, martyred a bit later while there was still some persecution going on (‘Persecutions, Gromit, are our specialty’ the Roman Wallace might have said). And either he befriended his jailer’s daughter and sent her a letter ‘from your Valentine’ OR he defied the emperor and secretly married couples to spare husbands from the army. Such levels of unreliable information about him meant that in 1969 he was removed from the General Roman Calendar which seems a bit harsh.
Closely related is his cousin St VARentine, a more modern phenomena, although some might argue the unreliable bit still applies. His origins lie with the Dutch of all people who successfully lobbied the International Football Association Board to pilot it. While some would no doubt be grateful if at that point some Roman Emperor had intervened and created a modern martyr it wasn’t to be. Over time the legend that is VARentine spread to the point that now he inhabits the premier league; persecuted and cursed regularly but generally having the last laugh.
Just like you will always have a complicated relationship with matters of the heart, so too with VAR. Even if you hate it, you may find yourself quite grateful. Going to bed on 14 February, relieved that your underperforming team had dodged a bullet and scraped an away draw thanks to the patron saint of ‘clear and obvious error’.
Stockley Park Fox
Marching orders