He loves me?

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.