Valentine

Caroline Hills believes that 'people have come to expect to be sent something on St Valentine's Day and those who do not, feel horribly left out'. From the archives of MaltaToday:

At the risk of sounding a little sceptical, I find the concept of St Valentine's Day an interesting one. In a commercial sense, it is rather conveniently located between the spending rush of Christmas and the chocolate deluge of Easter. It is thus certainly well timed for shops to establish another reason to assault us with the perceived need to express our affections by displaying our purchasing power. It seems that the tradition of sending an anonymous card or gift, only really started in the eighteenth century, though the date chosen also corresponds with the long-held belief in the northern hemisphere that birds pair on 14 February. It is all a curious mixture - a Christian saint, a Greco-Roman God and an ornithological mating ritual..

In Malta, though we are hardly lacking excuses for public holidays or reasons to put up flags and bunting, we could also have spontaneous beach barbeques when fish have escaped from the farms and been caught by anyone with a jam jar or street parties to celebrate that final day when a new road is paved and 4 x 4s are no longer necessary to negotiate the cavernous excavations of a long series of infrastructure providers. The possibilities are many and no-one would have to feel left out.

Happy Valentine's day from Gonzi - the satirical MaltaFly

Send a Valentine card via MaltaMedia

Romantic getaways in Malta from lovetripper.com