The Ramblings of Guise Dugal

I don’t like Valentines Day. There I said it, I’ve gone on the record and put across that I’m not a fan of the day.

Now, some might consider that this is down to having only recieved two Valentines cards in the past twenty years, since the age of eight was the last time that kids did the ‘cards for everyone’ before realising that the cards were meant to be targetted. Some might also think that it’s because I’ve had three people in the past dump me in the days directly leading up to Valentines day. Those people aren’t actually right on this occassion, but lets all thank them for dragging that nasty business up.

In part I don’t like Valentines Day because it is a lazy excuse to hold sentiment and feeling, with a lot of people only ever actually making an effort to make a gesture once in the year. I use the term effort lightly too, because in most instances this takes the form of purchasing a mass-produced card and signing it without any thought to even an additional message, a box of cheap standardised chocolates that have been directly marketed as “show someone you care with chocolates” usually accompanied by a sign reading “50% off”, and taking the valentine out for a meal somewhere that took bookings for private romantic meals amongst other couples enjoying private romantic meals. I even know people who will make the one effort on Valentines Day, but will do nothing else ‘romantic’, even on special occassions like birthdays.

But maybe that’s me. I’m the type of guy who writes messages in Christmas cards, who buys gifts for people just because ‘it made me think of you’, and who thinks you can make an adventure out of anything as long as you really want to.

Another reason I don’t like Valentines Day is because of the siren song of a small, smug-looking, morkish troll with a fuzzy caterpillar stapled to his forehead to look like a bushy monobrow. A song that hypnotises the weak-willed like a Pied Piper and makes them believe the song is ‘their song’. It’s a song that floats through the air and sets of the cringe gland in all men.

As I put to my friends on Facebook, and seeking advice from my friend Tink: is there a legal defense where a man is allowed to open fire in a crowded area if he’s been subjected to having heard Lady In Red over 30 times in one day and then has Chris De Burgh’s morkish face, smug grin and caterpillar-stapled-to-the-face monobrow imprinted on his brain?

Lady in Red is one of the evilest songs ever. I’m not saying it is a bad song, just that the majority of its benefits have been corrupted over time by its popularity and its ability to burrow in to emotional centres like a parasitic lice and form a symbiotic relationship with its host. Most of its hosts are noticably middle- to old aged ladies who wear supermarket underwear, smell faintly of the combination of cabbage and lily of the valley, and who actually appreciate Oil of Ulay as a Christmas gift despite the fact that anyone giving it is basically confirming your feelings that you have ‘signs of aging’ to hide. I’ve heard a lot of people say that it is ‘their song’, though mostly its the women in the relationship that say this.

Couple of times I’ve pressed on this, and most of the time the girl involved will have some personal instance where she felt the song described her and that it was therefore their song as a couple, though the guy couldn’t remember. Funnily, and before anyone states that guys don’t have sentimentality, the guys will often have a completely different song. The thing is though, a guys version of ‘their song’ tends to be based on things like: the song to that movie we went to on our first date; that song that was always playing on the radio when we were going out; that song she always sang or hummed; that song that always reminds me of her.

I’ve had a guy tell me that it was ‘their song’ because it was played at the wedding reception. I asked if it was the song used for the first dance? No. Was it put on at special request? No. What was she wearing at the reception? Wedding dress. What coulour was it? White. Ohhhhkay. It’s popular pulp, it gets played at every reception, every Valentines dance (where at least a percentage will be wearing red for it to be relevant), at every 10+ anniversary and at at least one funeral I’ve attended.

One of the things that gets me about the ‘deep meaning’ people see, is that I think I view it at an askew angle. To me, the song is more about the dress than the lady, because it almost seems that no-one (including the narrator) even noticed the lady before she wore this stunning dress, and then like Cinderella or any coming-of-age sitcom with a ‘plain girl’ she magically becomes stunning and everyone wants to know her. ‘Never saw you looking as lovely as you did tonight’, is hardly a testament to seeing the real depth. There also doesn’t seem to be anything more than bragging about having the trophy lady, it’s all about appearance and other guys not getting ‘a little romance, given half the chance’.

Yet still it persists as one of those songs that gets piped through shopping centres, played by my neighbours loudly, sung by drunks and uncles and drunken uncles, and used to disguise inadequate and awkward sex in hotels.

To me, I find more emotional depth in songs like Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colours“, any version of “The first cut is the deepest“, Savage Garden’s “Truly, Madly, Deeply”and to the more sweating end of the spectrum “I touch myself” and “Hallelujah“, but then I’m not the target audience. De Burgh wasn’t trying to woo me, something for which I shall be eternally grateful.

But just one message to guys out there, do something nice for the one you love at Valentines – make it last through the year.

So, final question: Do you have a ‘our song’, what is it and why?