It’s by now well documented that for Dom and I valentines day hasn’t always been exactly successful… we’ve had flowers fail to arrive for days, my turning up on long distance surprise visits to find the only surprise was that that Dom wasn’t there, we’ve each had to work SEVERAL valentines days, once got probable food poisoning from our “romantic” meal and last year nearly set our brand new house on fire in a candle related incident. Each year I plan something nice for my beautiful valentine and each time it seems to fail in the most spectacular way possible.
Perhaps this year will be different. We’re married now, perhaps the wielder of our very own personal curse may have spotted those wedding rings and accepted defeat… perhaps. But I’m not betting on it!
So this year I’m thinking that for the sake of our personal safety perhaps we should aim not to give ourselves a nice romantic valentines day but to lower our expectations and plan a frankly dreadful 24hrs. I’m thinking rather than flowers some nice sheets of A4 paper might be nice… no bear with me, paper’s amazing, you can make anything with paper, long as you’re good at origami… which she isn’t. Still, that’s her fault not mine, although can you get A4 with smoothed edges to avoid any potentially fatal paper-cuts?
With Dom squealing with delight at my generous gift I thought perhaps I could follow up the romance with a nice lunch out at her favourite McDonalds. I hear they’re doing a great deal on McHorse Burgers these days. This would normally be followed by a romantic walk somewhere, however this is bound to end up with one of us falling off a cliff or something, so I’ve been recording BBC 1‘s ‘Countryfile’ for the last few weeks and thought we could do a few laps around the coffee table while Matt Baker talks us through the scenery we could otherwise be seeing. Now I know what you’re thinking… “isn’t your coffee table made of glass?” Well fear not, I’ve ordered her a glamorous crash helmet and replaced the actual table with a cardboard box.
By dinnertime I did think that perhaps it was time to be slightly more adventurous. Being well trained in the art of making risk assessments though I felt I should assess the relative dangers of various romantic ideas in order to avoid calamity…
ACTIVITY: Dinner at a restaurant
RISK: Chokage and general poisoning, possibility of being slapped by wet fish if waiter accidentally offended
SEVERITY: Possible death or a nasty bruise.
LIKELIHOOD: Almost certain in our case
ACTIVITY: Dancing
RISK: General embarrassment.
SEVERITY: Varies depending on blood-alcohol level
LIKELIHOOD: 95% probability, unless all the others on the dance floor are dad dancers.
ACTIVITY: Drinking Champagne
RISK: Cork related eye injuries
SEVERITY: Bruising and the possibility that Matt might have to deal with an eye injury… Matt HATES anything to do with eyes!
LIKELIHOOD: Matt is practically a sharpshooter when it comes to accidentally firing corks
ACTIVITY: Chocolate Fountain
RISK: Spikey sticks and chocolate explosions
SEVERITY: Spending the evening cleaning chocolate off the walls, accidental acupuncture
LIKELIHOOD: High, though masked by general chocolate joy.
ACTIVITY: Watching a movie
RISK: Argument over the choice of film
SEVERITY: Bad evening for Matt
LIKELIHOOD: High… Die Hard almost never wins!
Maybe we’ll just hold this valentines day via Skype… Anyone know what the correct Personal Protective Equipment for sitting in a chair with an iPad is?
Hmm… speaking of Pad I wonder whether Small Dog’s got anything planned for his girl…
Haha Matt you made us laugh. We don’t have any embarrasing valentine’s day stories but a photography related incident where Michael was trying to get a romantic photo of us together.
We were walking along a cliff with a beautiful view on the Isle of Wight, there was a low rolling fog beneath us covering the sea like a blanket so we had to get a photo! We didn’t have a tripod so Michael had the idea of putting the camera on a fence post on a timer. Michael had to half step over the barbed wired fence the post was attached to so he could position the camera.
Unfortunately as he pressed the shutter and wanted to hurry up to
stand next to me he totally forgot he had one leg across the fence. So instead of running he was suddenly hanging on the fence.
After I got over the initial shock and worry and realised he was not bleeding too much or dying, I removed him from the fence with the help of another couple and we found it very amusing. His trousers were rather embarrasingly ripped for the rest of the day! We now think twice before attempting to take a photo of us together. Top tip…always carry a tripod!
Haha, Andrea that’s brilliant! We’ve had similar disasters getting photos of ourselves, although none quite as bad as that! Lucky for us we had Fer and Ed to ensure we finally got some proper pics together! Looking forward to sharing a post from you guys tomorrow! 🙂