It was a matter of chance, and a large amount of envelope-filling that led me to be the one to write the blog on Valentines Day.
Rather appropriate, I suppose, seeing that I am the Scribbling Scribe that almost always writes romance stories.
I was in primary school when I started thinking of my dream wedding. At 16, (after the phenomenon that was Dead Poets’ Society) my best friend and I collected poetry, the more romantic the better. I still have the hard cover exercise book filled with lines like, ‘How do I love thee . . . Let me count the ways’.
Without love, the world would be nothing but a desert. A dry, inhospitable place that we long to escape from, but are doomed to spend the rest of our days in lonely thirst.
Love makes the day worthwhile. It puts a sparkle in our eyes and a tango beat in our hearts. It makes the drudgery of work, dishes and scrubbing the floor more bearable.
I spent many years thinking about love so that I could write about it. I became proficient enough in love knowledge to know that what I had in my life was not love, but a cheap imitation that was based on what it could get out of me.
I had great hopes that this Valentines day I would actually have someone who would choose to be with me, rather than any other woman on the Earth.
Unfortunately, if I compare my life to that of Pride and Prejudice, my Valentine ended up not being the hero, Mr Darcy, but the charming villain, George Wickham (complete with chequered past)
There is a thought that has been bothering me for years . . . Can I really be a writer of love stories when I haven’t been loved myself? How can I write about true love, when I have very little hope that it is out there at all?
Then I look at my friends and work colleagues, and am relieved to see that there are a few good men. Just a few, but at least they are not a fantasy creation like a griffin or a Pegasus.
So here I am on Valentines Day, hoping that the love story writer will finally have a love story of her own one day.
In the meantime, I have spent a day with my gorgeous daughter and some very special ladies. Love may have eluded me so far, but there are many more things to be grateful for on this particular 14 February!