Roes are Red, violets are blue. Bugger off Valentine

My Auntie Janet, who was the scourge of the family, once had a lover who lived in Jersey. He gave her some exquisite pearls, evenly matched, for Valentine's Day and she passed them on to me.  I wore them when I went away with the company I was working for when I was twenty two. This was Coats Patons, the wool and thread company who had their head office in Glasgow. They put me up at a posh Victorian hotel and there I was in the bathroom with one of those enormous baths ( I have one, don't get one whatever you do, the water never stays hot ) and as I tried to take off my pearls they broke and all at once it was raining little white bombs.  It took me an hour to find them in the corners of this huge dark room.
On Valentine's Day the world goes mad, courtesy of Marks and Spencer and Clinton cards for bunches of dreadful red roses and huge cards with hearts all over them. Excuse me while I throw up.
When I was happily married, in what, in light of Trump, Brexit and a world gone mad, we can now clearly talk of as the good old days, we didn't bother with St Valentine or any other saint to be fair. My husband as a good Catholic had had a bellyful of saints and besides we had a good time almost every day.
Time has moved on and now St Valentine is all over the sodding place. Pity the single woman or should we?  Who was that stupid bugger who said that love was woman's whole existence?  What a stupid arse.  It never was so. For thousands of years before contraception and education women had to put up with marriage because they needed keeping. Single women have always been a butt for jokes and you were seen as failing if you didn't have a sweetheart. I spent my teenage years in various states of embarrassment because I was 'not courting'.
Women don't need red roses. They don't need a saint. What they need is a decent partner who cares, or a dog that cares, or children or a fulfilling life through their work.
What we really need is choice and independence. We need education and contraception and for men to stop bloody telling us what to do with our bodies.
So this Valentine's Day I spare a thought for hundreds of thousands of women throughout the world who are poor, abused or lonely.  It has never been easy for any of us and the way things are going it looks as though we may never have equality, we may never be loved or respected but we have to fight always for independence, the right to earn the same money as men, the freedom to walk the streets safely, the say over our minds and bodies.  We deserve our own place in this world, the one we choose and work for.  And for daughters and granddaughters we need to give them better than what we have now and most of it has fuck all to do with St Valentine.
So on Tuesday I shall wear my aunt's pearls and drink champagne and toast you all. To women everywhere, we deserve the best.