As the liquid poured over my face, I offered a prayer of thanks to the giver of such a gift. "Thank you for seeing fit to wet my unhappy face and make me free from torment again", I cried.

"Sorry, didn’t see you down there – your mother’s in the toilet and I was simply aching for a slash", came the reply.

I was assailed by confusion – was this the word of God? Could I be about to embark on another desperate quest, leading me to the heart of my faith, to prove myself worthy of a place in Heaven? Then it dawned upon me that the voice of God sounded suspiciously like the voice of Winthrop Burberry, the local bookmaker, whom I have long suspected of having a clandestine affair with my dear Mother. Certainly, urinating from her bedroom window at half past six in the morning did little to lessen my suspicions.

With a sigh, I walked to the bathroom to wash the micturation from my face. As I sauntered languidly past the study, my keen eyes noticed the calendar hanging above father’s desk, dusty and unused since that terrible night in 1984 that must ne’er be spoken of, lest the wrath of Mother falleth upon me. The date on the calendar was, I noticed, February 13th.

"Hold!" I ejaculated. The word thrusting from between my lips as a realisation struck me full in the face. Tomorrow was the day of love, the day when twin souls are bound, and hearts young and old blossom into one, and their joyous faces sing a hymn to love, and loving – Saint Valentine Dyall’s Day. Alack, this day has for so many years been a day of bitter disappointment and gut-wrenching self flagellation. Too well do I remember the anguish the day brought to my early teens: The beauty and purity of the poetry that in a rampant spurt of creative inspiration I blazed onto the pages of the ‘Ten cards for £1.99’ I purchased from Bargainsave, the rush of excitement as I posted each through the vestibules of some of the sweethearted beauties of Cymm and Bendaton, the waiting.... Ye Gods, the endless waiting – a torture in itself. And then, finally, the terrible conclusion – the returned cards daubed with slogans "Fuck off spazzer", "I’d rather cut off my head than kiss you", "Wash your hands after wanking, spunk thumb", and "Two pints for the price of one from your friendly Firkinside Dairy". Worse, the bleak day in 1995 when I was viciously assaulted by a local thug who accused me of sending a card to his good lady. Despite my protestations of innocence – I explained that I never sent cards to those lucky creatures whom I have spied on with my telescope – the hoodlum grasped my lapels and, breathing the unmistakeable odour of tobacco and cheap ale, screamed a tirade of profanity and delivered a swift uppercut to my face, causing minor bruising of the cheek, and a terrible, gnawing ache in my soul, as if my creative loins had taken a terminal blow. Thankfully, the lords of inspiration will never bow to the attack of heathens, and my immortal prose still flows like the rivers of life, unquenched and unstemmed by this world.

It is this belief in my own powers that each annum lends hope and belief to Valentine Dyall’s Day – and this year, I knew there was but one icon of femininity who could hope to receive one of my sweet haikus of love. The sweet angel in question has never set her eyes upon my modest form, but I have viewed her from afar, via the glowing tube of my televisual set, which throughout my younger years transported me to many a wondrous place and time. Sadly, glimpses of my true love were kept to a minimum in my troubled younger years – Mother had very strict rules about what was acceptable for a sensitive youth such as I to cast my gaze upon, and ‘twas the fate of my Goddess to work in a school in far off giddy London, where all the pupils spoke in such a quaint vernacular that I could barely understand their words. Mother called them "rough commoners" and refused to allow me to watch. But sometimes, when she was paying her respects at the local hostelry, I would flick the switch and immerse my self in this world where the pupils cussed incomprehensibly and played sport, yet the teachers ruled with strength and passion. And one teacher, one divine instructess of knowledge bestrode them all, with sensible sweaters and golden curls – Mrs. McCluskey.

Never ‘Bridget’ to me – such low familiarity would shame me if I ever uttered it. In my heart and my dreams she is Mrs McCluskey, and after years of keeping my emotions hidden away, this year I was finally ready to let them erupt like a towering, spurting volcano of passion.

Mindful of the ammonia stench emanating from my head and upper torso, I decided to postpone the purchase of card and the composition of sonnet until after bathing. Once cleansed, I took to my heels and ventured into Bendaton to search for a card for my love. The details of my journey there, the perilous search through the shopping centre, and my return whence I came are not for now. Much time and experience must pass before I shall set down that tale in tablets of stone. Suffice to say, it was almost luncheon before I was sat at my desk, with my fountain pen in one hand, and a Valentine Dyall’s Day card in the other, ready to empty my lovelorn soul of emotive language and word-pictures.

The card was, perhaps, not precisely what I had intended to send to dear Mrs McCluskey – it was the last one in the whole of Bendaton, it seems, and my pecuniary funds did not run to getting the bus to Shagford. So it came to pass that I had in my hand a penny short of three pounds worth of neon red paper and white cardboard, adorned with a piece of writing so shoddy and worthless I dare not call it ‘poetry’ for fear of angering the Master.

It read:

"Roses are red,
The night sky is black
Come home with me
And I’ll empty my sack"

I didn’t pretend to even understand such coarse vulgarity, but it was a problem that I easily solved by the application of some Bargainsave liquid paper, over which I wrote a few touching lines that I knew would melt the heart of any woman, such was their fragile beauty:

"Mrs McCluskey, thou art an angel
A fair maiden without compare
With your sensible firmness with rough boys
And your beautifully neat hair

O!

How I loves thou

O!

How I needs thou

One day I pray I shall come
Within your attention
And you will place me forever
Within your detention"

The forcing out of such emotion had tired me, yet I knew that the task was but only half-done. I inserted the epistle into an envelope, and addressed it to "Mrs. B. McCluskey, Grange Hill School, Northam, London N1", sealing it with a gentle brushing of my lips, and a whispered promise to my love. Rushing down the stairs, heedless of the voice of my Mother bellowing that my haddock was going cold, I dashed across the pebbledash courtyard and out to the postal box that sat, beckoning me, like a great red beast with a gaping black maw, from across St. Chlamydia's Road. With heart palpitating, yet with soul aflame, I dashed across the road, and in one swift motion thrust my missive of desire deep into the dark opening, crying out exultantly as I did so, beating my chest with the conviction of a God, such was the depth of my emotions. I seemed to fly back across the road, as if my body were made simply of pure feeling, not mere flesh.

I went back inside and ate my cold, soggy fish, and listened to Mother talking to the cast of some dismal soap opera, not realising that they could not hear her, and furthermore it was simply a made up television programme and that the characters within it were not real. But I cared not. This year, for both me, and my dear Mrs. McCluskey, Valentine Dyall’s Day was to be the greatest in the history of history, and my heart was enraptured with a passion that would never, never be cooled.

Yours sincerely,

Ernest R Soul, writer