It's coming...

It'll soon be Valentines day. Valentines is the most fraught of festivals as people have such widely varying reactions to it. Some couples consider swearing undying love whilst sipping champagne in a heart-shaped hot air balloon to be the very height of sophisticated romance, whilst others (like me) are moved to bloody wrath at the merest sight of a card with a pastel-drawn teddybear on it.
This makes life difficult comparted to other fesitvals such as christmas. At Christmas, If you like someone you buy them a present you think they'll like. If you despise someone, you get them something like a potato peeler or a free pen you picked up at a trade show in order to demonstrate your contempt. For Valentines you have to make a value judgement not only on what sort of present someone will like, but also based on how much they like or dislike the very idea of the holiday. It's a minefield.

Some people like mawkish sentiment and will appreciate grand romantic gestures or crying teddybears. Others don't, and won't thank you for it. A good rule of thumb when you aren't sure what to do is to make sure the gift is funny for both of you. Nobody ever complained that they were made to laugh*.
Failing that, you can always try for the perfect present - the one which is appallingly mawkish and will bring the most public embarrassment to the recipient but you can claim is meant as heartfelt romance. Off the top of my head, probably the worst someone could do to me would be to arrange for a gigantic cake to be delivered to my office. A midget dressed as cupid then pops out of it to sing in a falsetto voice a love ode specially composed for the occasion. Something like:

My love
Like a flying dove
In the sky above
Is my love.

It could probably get worse than that. Your thoughts?


^{*Except me when I laughed so hard my surgical stitches came open and I had to go back to hospital to be sewn up and pumped full of antibiotics.}