The thought of Lent is currently a bit of a challenge. There is enough chocolate sloshing around in the flat that it's possible I will be found one morning suffocated by a tidal wave of annoyingly dark chocolate (I prefer milk). But I have absolutely no idea how I would manage to get through a day - deliberately - without it.
Admittedly, not all of the current excess is the result of Valentine's day. I had agreed with the husband that we would only exchange token presents - and that for his side of the deal he would give me a small amount of chocolate. I've learnt that it works best if I make my expectations clear (I once got an academic treatise on Medieval Heresy as a birthday present, apparently because I had enjoyed reading The Name of the Rose); although it turns out that this was actually nowhere near clear enough. I had somewhere between hoped for and expected a box of red Lindor. It turns out that was actually what the husband had intended to get, but he had planned to buy it in the supermarket on the morning of Valentine's day when he went there to get the newspapers. When they didn't have any, he panicked (it seems that he was only aware of a single shop in Fulham. I have no idea what he thought he drove past to get there). In his distressed state he saw a box of After Eight Mints - which he knows I like - but he then realised that they actually don't cost very much. Then he noticed that Green & Blacks were 3 for the price of 2, and I ended up with a box of After Eights and 3 bars of Green & Blacks as a Valentines present.
We have since had the 'small means size, not price, if we are talking about chocolate' discussion. And I've eaten most of it anyway, only for a German friend of mine to present me with four bars of orange chocolate as a very kindly meant semi-joke at lunchtime today.
The best Valentine's present I've ever had was a semi-obscene amount of chocolate. It was a big plush, red box of Godiva praline hearts; and it felt like I had finally arrived in the land of adult romance. I think I even vaguely assumed that every following Valentines day would be equally appropriately marked. The contents didn't last long, but I kept the box for several years and kept sewing thread in it. And I suspect that there is no way on earth to explain to my husband why that was OK, but 600g of Green & Blacks and After Eights really isn't.
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I had a conversation with a female friend just before Valentine's Day that touched on your last question. We were in a (very expensive) chocolate shop and I asked her opinion on the various valentine wrappings available, as I was about to buy chocolates for my wife. She - my friend that is - was of the opinion that all Valentine wrappings were a waste of money that could better be spent on more chocolate. She's a practical sort of person, which is probably why she runs a Deanery and a group of about 6 parishes in rural Oxfordshire...
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ReplyDeleteIt sounds like she has a depressingly healthy relationship with the stuff.
ReplyDeleteI've got to the rather depressing point where I actually want the fancy wrappings - but that's because it enables someone to acknowledge both my fondness and weakness for chocoate, and also spend a reasonable amount of money on me, all without making me significantly fatter. Although it has to be said that the box of Godiva hearts was on the large side...