Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, this is a Valentine’s Blog just for You

Do you celebrate Valentine’s Day? Apparently, in our house we do. I have been told we do, which means, in our house, we do. Valentine’s Day has been celebrated since the Middle Ages. During that time, it was believed that birds paired up in preparation for breeding. This is just one of the many explanations as to why Valentine’s Day has, since that time, been associated with declarations of love and romance. St Valentine (and there seems to be at least three of them) was a clergyman. Some say he was a priest, others a bishop. He was certainly keen on converting others to Christianity. On a visit to Rome, he was placed under house arrest for his beliefs. For younger readers of this blog, just think of it as an early form of our current rule about mandatory self-isolation. So currently, if you come into this country from many other countries then you will have to spend 10 days in self-isolation, at a cost of around £1,700. I’m not sure if Valentine had to pay for his home imprisonment, or whether Rome paid for his stay.

Whilst self-isolating, he was visited by Judge Asterius, a kind of third century test and trace operative. The Judge had a young daughter who was blind, and it is said that when asked to cure her, Valentine laid his hands on the child’s eyes and restored her sight. Sadly, this did little to endear him to the Roman Emperor, Claudius II, who had him imprisoned, tortured and killed in Rome, on February 14th, AD269 for his troubles. It is also said that while imprisoned, he sent a note to Asterius’s daughter signed ‘from your Valentine’ - another one of the many explanations as to why the day is associated with love.

But let’s leave St Valentine for a moment, as there are other interesting (well, for me at least) things to consider about the day.

Do you know where those lovely red roses you gave or received come from? Now I did, which is one of the reasons I don’t give red roses to anyone on Valentine’s day. Most of them come from either Kenya, or Columbia. Both of which are a long way from the UK. They are picked by people on very low wages, and who often live in very poor conditions. The same applies to the cocoa used to make those delicious chocolates given and received today. Much of it comes from Africa (Ghana and the Ivory Coast produce 75% of the worlds cocoa market). I’m not sure that Valentine’s Day is widely celebrated in Africa, and as for me, I don’t give chocolates either.

Apparently, we do celebrate Valentine’s Day in our house. I have been told we do, so we do.

The giving of flowers to those we love, is of course, a longstanding tradition. Flowers can convey a message. For example, ‘Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, you weren’t my first choice but…’ – it’s called floriography, or the language of flowers. It was Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who brought the notion of floriography to Europe. She probably wouldn’t have been able to do this now in our post-Brexit world. Lady Mary was famous for many things. Two come to mind: her support of women’s rights being one, but also the work she did in setting in place the foundations for eradicating smallpox. She introduced the concept of inoculation against the disease.

On her return to England, she faced an uphill battle to get her ideas accepted by the establishment. Although this was around 1720, the challenges she faced seem very familiar to me today. The medical community simply didn’t give her the time of day. She was, after all, not a doctor, nor even a scientist. As such she had nothing to offer. The concept of ‘experts by experience’ simply didn’t exist in those days. And she was a woman, and a female challenging the thinking of men was just an anathema. It was many decades later that Edward Jenner convinced both the politicians and the SAGE equivalent of the day, that vaccinating the entire population could be the way forward on dealing with the smallpox pandemic. A global vaccination programme was implemented. There hasn’t been a case for some 40 years now. It was a devasting global disease, with three out 10 people who became infected dying from it.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Thankfully, the world has a Covid19 vaccine and we are well on our way and have made a great start on getting people vaccinated. There are exceptions of course. Canada has no natural vaccine production, so has to rely on imports from Europe. The European Union haven’t really got their act together and the vaccination programme is not going well across all the member states. Tanzania has refused to accept the vaccines as being safe and have no plans to vaccinate their population. Here in the UK, up to 49% of those from BAME communities are still reluctant to have the vaccination. There is much more work to be done before we can realistically realise the Hancock dream of living with Covid, as we do with flu.    

However, let’s get back to St Valentine. I hadn’t realised that saints are expected to continue to work in the afterlife. Apparently, they have a range of responsibilities as saints to keep a watchful eye on what’s going on here on earth. Valentine’s responsibilities are far ranging. He is the patron saint of beekeepers, and for those who live with epilepsy, those prone to fainting, and for keeping travellers safe. From a romantic point of view, he is also the patron saint of lovers, engaged couples and happy marriages.

He is also the patron saint of plagues.

As for today, yes, we will be celebrating Valentine’s Day in style – no roses or chocolates, but there will be plenty of smiles, bubbles, sparkly moments, happiness, and love, and for the meat eating half of this 'blissful union', a big fat juicy rump steak dinner.