The Best Kind Of Valentine

Valentine's Day. The big day. The day of secret admirers, crushes, loves and heartbreak. Cards, chocolates, flowers all wrapped in a big shiny bow that represents love. Fat babies with sharp weapons and everything adorned with hearts. Nope.

Boyfriend and I have been together for almost five years and we are very much in love but we just don't get Valentines. We understand the history, we understand that other couples love it but we're just not the 'big gesture on a specific day' kind of people. We don't plan meals out but we usually do make an effort in that we buy each other a card. Usually a joke card or the biggest, tackiest one in the shop because we can. I don't expect anything and if we do decide to do flowers (me) or a big steak dinner (both of us) it's a lovely surprise.

However two years ago boyfriend came up trumps. He'd wrapped a gift rather spectacularly and left it next to the bed with a card saying 'To my future wife, I will love you'. Me, naturally, thinking it was a joke gift tore off the paper to find..well, this. This became and still is my most favourite gift anyone has ever given me. People always ask me the story behind it but there is none - not really. Sherlock Holmes doesn't hold some huge sentimental heart shaped space in our relationship other than than we both love the BBC series with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. It was just so thoughtful and I love that he made it about me rather than us.

All my life I've been delving into stories both visual and in the written word. Sherlock Holmes was the story that made me enthralled with detective and murder mysteries that still, to this day, I read more often than any other genre of book and watch more than any other genre of TV and film. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made me want to become a writer and to inspire others as he did with generations of material from just a few short stories.

To have them all in a hardcover book that I could pick up and delve into whenever I fancied? That showed that he knew me. The fact that he used all his expendable income on it? That showed I was important to him. The fact that it's not about us but all about me? That showed that I was respected and valued and the fact that it wasn't expected and each year since we've still done our joke gifts? That's just how we do it. That's our love.