The Day of St. Valentine can only be a depressing one. The urgency and desperation of the situation is such that usually calm, sane, and singularly polar people can be transmogrified into erratic, bloodshot, mouth-frothing maniacs as the dreaded date inches ever near.

As with other annual celebratory times and periods, along with Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Guy Fawkes, St Patrick’s Day, and to a lesser extent St George’s Day, Valentine’s Day is a mainly commercial affair. There are so many of these Commercial events, they’ve been granted the collective term ‘Hallmark Holidays’. Everything within society is geared up to this Sunday… special offers, retail displays, TV shows, magazines, social entertainment webzines.

It can be a huge pressurised environment for anyone to be in. You may feel the eyes of a thousand-eyed beast staring at you simultaneously (unless a few of them are lazy. Likelihood out of a thousand, one or two are gonna be a bit apathetic).

What if you don’t have a girl/boyfriend? You watch TV programmes about couples in love. You read articles about couples in love. You watch a TV advertisement where one half of an in love couple gives the other half of the same in love couple a gift, and the other half of the in love bastards is appreciative of the gift. I’ve been there, watching that advert, looking across at that empty spot on the sofa where the other in love couple half could be sat, only to see a cold, unforgiving space staring blankly back at me. I then stare back at my reflection in the (now destroyed after not withstanding the propelled force of my coke can) TV screen, and all I see is a lonely, ageing, pathetic old man. But that old man isn’t me. God if only it was me! It’s just the best quality prostitute I could find at 23:05 on Valentine’s night.

The experience isn’t much better if you do have some to share it with. Someone to hold, to kiss, and to love. Because if you do really love that person (not that I’m saying you don’t), and if you’re both fully content in your relationship and your position within it… then why are you stood in the gift card section of TESCO, 20 minutes before your 18:00, single table they’ve squeezed two chairs around, 4 feet from the door to the toilets, date at Nandos, still unsure if she’d prefer cute fluffy loved up sheep, or cute fluffy loved up bunnies? Why? I’ll tell you why. Because you’re so fucking scared, that not only will the whole evening’s experience not be good enough for her, but it won’t live up to your expectations of what you think a man (and possibly you if you’re lucky) should be able to provide for her.

Whereas in reality… it doesn’t cocking matter. It doesn’t matter at all! Do you want to go out with your girlfriend? Yes. Do you want to treat her to a comfortable evening at a nice restaurant, and buy her a nice gift to show her how much you love and care for her? Yes. Do you want to take her to a low quality ‘restaurant’ and force her to inhale her burning hot peri peri chicken with all the suction you’re so thankful she’s blessed with? No. So why the fuck force her? More to the point, why force yourself?

I realise you love her, and you want her to know how much you love her… you want her to know how thoughtful you are. But it’s twenty times more thoughtful to do a nice thing for your partner at a time when you don’t feel obligated to do it. I’m not just shaming the men either. Ladies, what would you do if your man said ‘No dear, we’re not going out tonight, Valentine’s night. It’s far too busy, expensive and stressful. I thought I’d cook a nice meal for us to enjoy at home instead, here is your favourite film, then afterwards, you can eat as much of this diet, calorieless, flavourless chocolate as you like whilst I tell you how beautiful you are’ – you’d have a fucking fit!

Well… two guys I know who possibly have their heads screwed on as tight as Ronaldo’s Ken Doll pants, are Gazz and Nick. For the weekend before Valentine’s Day, no current plans of their own for the following weekend. Were they panicking running around finding the prefect Edward Duke present? Calling a posh restaurant whose last table was booked by Saint Valentine himself? Or scanning the personals for the love of their lives? No (they weren’t). They were in the pub (with me) on a Sam Smith’s (that brewery what owns several pubs in the area selling pints for under £2) pub crawl around Soho.

Having gone into all that, the plan was for a couple of girls to join us (Gazz knows them). If they happened to get drunk enough to lower their standards to the required height and have to look up Sunday morning train times then so be it. Sadly the girls suffered what sounded like quite a serious bout of last minute tuberculosis or some other such made up booze banishing illness.

So just the three of us then… Hey, perhaps we’ll get lucky…

Pub One - The Glasshouse:

Only female in the place was the girl on the front of the ladies toilet door, and frankly she looks a bit sexually inadequate to me.

Pub Two - The Duke of Argyll:

After I up ended someone’s gran to make it first to an opening table, I don’t think we were seen too kindly by the rest of the fairer sex clientele.

Pub Three - White Horse:

A combination of the only available table next to the gents, and Nick constantly trying to convince Gazz and me to join him for a £5 sex show… we didn’t attract much attention.

Pub Four - The Red Lion:

A group of sexy foreign girls walk in, and our luck might be in. A group of extremely large foreign bodybuilders follow them, we drink up and move on.

Pub Five - The Champion:

Gazz asks if one punter is a man or woman, then loses all composure and bodily function when he sees a woman wearing a pantsuit. This wouldn’t be the best time for him to meet anyone.

Pub Six - The Blue Posts:

The barmaid is actually bloody well into Gazz! He even impresses her by winning a couple of quid on the quiz box and makes sure she hears him too. But he’s not convinced, and throws in the towel.

KFC - Leicester Square:

Don’t forget the popcorn chicken, you’ve pulled.