Nick Ingram: Rosy outlook? Certainly if you're single

IF I AM to register my disappointment I might just as well do it in a Frankie Howerd style: 'O woe, O woe, thrice woe, alas alack, I'm always alacking Mrs.'

There that gets the dramatic emotional bit out of the way.

Why am I feeling like this you may well ask? After all the past week cannot have been that bad. The Council may well be putting the tax up, but in the end life has been quite sweet. Spring is on the way and the blossom is coming out. Winter is nearly over. Hmm... then again I think I need to qualify the above dramatic emotional bit with a short narrative.

You see there was my fine self thinking that because it was Valentine's Day that love would be in the air. Cards would fall through the letter box from all my secret admirers across Plymouth. Gifts would shower down from above. I would be covered in a blanket of warm fuzziness. As I walked down the street I would be accompanied by the flutter of a pair of Turtle Doves softly cooing from above.

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And what happened in reality? Well, nothing. Not a thing. It was as if the Turtle Doves had been blown out of the sky by a double barrelled shotgun. A wooden spoon would have been nice. But I did not even get one of them. There was not even so much as a friendly belch in my direction. The feeling of warm fuzziness gave way to the cruel winds of arctic night, leading to disappointment and the dramatic emotional bit.

Now at this stage you may well be thinking that somehow I stink? It may be the case that I do not have a very good hygiene routine, and that is why all the blondes and the brunettes run in the opposite direction every time I turn up? You may also believe that I am not a well dressed man, who has the habit of wearing grubby old string vests to white tie dinners? You may also by thinking that I lack the social skills to attract the female of the species?

If you hold on to these assumptions you would be wrong! I have a very good hygiene routine thank you very much, and my breath smells of sweet perfume. I believe the way I dress is both dapper, modern, and within the norms set by the twenty first century high street. String vests are so not my thing. As far as social skills go I always thought they were acceptable within most social situations. Sophistication and charm has always been the name of the game Miss Moneypenny.

But in the end is this just too much navel gazing for one column? Should I just come out with it and state that really I hate Valentine's Day? It's rubbish. Down with love!

Who needs all the hassle? This is not the sound of cynicism but the voice of someone wondering what all the fuss is about? So you buy her flowers and some cheap Cava from the petrol station! And what does this amount to? It amounts to the fact that you forgot. Roll over Beethoven and play me another tune.

Personally I think it's more a case that I'm ecstatically happy being single at the moment. And being that I have no baggage I can just do what the hell I want. Call me selfish, but it's true! I can go to the cinema and choose what I want to see – normally something moody with subtitles. I can go for a run or slob out on the settee. These are just some of the freedoms of being single.

Wait there's more. I can walk in to a book shop and buy the books I want to buy with out someone nagging over my shoulder: 'you sure you want to buy a book like that?' The answer would normally be yes: and then I would buy it. But being single means I can do this in peace. Being single means freedom from being nagged.

On top of this though it also means I don't have to go and pick up the kids from school. I don't have any. It also means I can sit around all day writing and not be interrupted by some one with an unreasonable request. In this sense being single is pure unadulterated bliss.

So the dramatic emotional bit is nothing other than unnecessary. I'm free. I'm single. I hope this state lasts a little longer. After all there is so much I want to do, and it's good to be flying solo.

Valentine's Day, I'm glad it's gone again until next year. When I hope I will still be single and free. After all sending cards all the time is such a waste of money.