Hello, Plus Members and welcome to another bonus episode. In just a few days time, from the point that I'm releasing this episode, we are going to be experiencing Valentine's Day, which falls on the 14th of February. Now, because it's Valentine's Day, which is a celebration day of love, I have my very special other half here, the love of my life, the yin to my yang, my bae I might say, which is quite a modern acronym, which means'before anyone else'. My bae is in the studio. Hello Nicholas. Hello Anna. So, Valentine's is coming up. Now, Valentine's Day is relatively commercial in the UK, but a recent study has shown that 1 in 20 Brits feel that Valentine's Day is just too expensive. They're spending on average£39 per person on Valentine's Day. I mean, I don't really know how far£39 can go. What can you get for£39? In London, really not very much. It would make sense to me that the vast majority of the people that are included in that£39 average enjoy Valentine's Day at home. Yes, because£39 would probably get you, well, a bottle of wine and a large pizza, maybe a nice dessert and some sides. So, I think that in my experience there's a very famous shop in the UK called Marks Spencer. I do think it's international, but I think everybody in the UK knows it. And they do something called'dine in for two'. And it's a common thing. It's available every week, and we have it every now and again, and it's quite nice. And a lot of people get a kind of a'dine in for two' collection of food and drink, you know, desserts or starter and all this kind of stuff from any supermarket, but they might go to Marks Spencer and get a more expensive one. Because Marks Spencer is kind of an upmarket supermarket in the UK and then on Valentine's Day, Marks Spencer will put their prices up even more. They hike up their prices because they know the demand will be there. So, instead of sort of£15, it might be more like£30 and the food that they offer is a little bit more fancy. And so, I'd imagine that for£39 you could probably get a fancy dine in for two, a card, and maybe a cuddly toy. Maybe a cuddly toy. So yeah, I mean£39 for a meal in would be splashing out if it's just for one meal at home. Yeah. Really splashing out, isn't it? Really, very much. That's quite an extravagance. Yeah. But some people will really go to town and literally go to town. So, to go to town is an idiom that means that you go to an extreme, you make an extra effort, put everything into it. But you could go to town by going to town and having a meal out. So, that is the most popular activity in the UK for Valentine's Day. It's to either go out for a meal or to have a special meal at home. To treat the other person by cooking for them, maybe their favourite dish or having something you wouldn't normally have. In our case, it would be maybe a glass of wine because we don't tend to drink really. We only do on special occasions or having a naughty pudding, like a dirty tiramisu or a melt-in-the-middle Gü pudding or something like that. Chocolate, yeah, like a chocolate fondant. Yeah, but the other activity that's heavily associated with Valentine's Day is card giving. Now I think this is quite exclusive to the UK. I think that we are a nation of card-givers and perhaps this isn't something done as much in other countries, but please correct me if I'm wrong, listener, please let me know, if you are a card-giver in your country. I'm always open to learning more about other countries and cultures. But Valentine's Day, really any day, is a good excuse in the UK to send cards. However, not everyone adheres to the card giving rituals. Nicholas? Well, I've learnt, haven't I? I've learnt a lot more from you. I'm training you. Yeah, or at least reminding me. I never used to get cards really very much at all. I'd buy people, I'd buy my parents birthday cards and things like that, but that's probably about it. And then I remember on my 30th birthday, it was quite an eye-opener. So, I had a party at my house, and then we all went out to town. And when I came back and woke up the next morning, I went downstairs and I realised that, amongst some of the other kind of party rubble, there was just a vast number of cards, so we had quite a lot of people come round. And I had to look through all the cards and what I realised was they were all from girls. Was it mostly girls on your guest list? No, no. I'd say probably it was about 45% girls, but I had no cards from any of my best friends who were all guys. The only guys that were mentioned in cards were written as part of a couple in quite feminine handwriting as well. And it just made me realise guys don't give cards. And guys don't really care that much about cards. I thought to myself,"Why have I got so many cards?" Like, this is nice, but what, like, how strange. And I don't think I would have ever taken a card to somebody's like party if I went out into town or... cause people would bring me cards in town as well and say,"Oh, Happy Birthday! Here you go." I was like,"What am I supposed to do with this now? I'm at a bar. I'm trying to dance and I've got these cards." You know, and so it was a really interesting eye-opener to the idea of who gives and who, more importantly for me, appreciates cards. Right. I hesitate to just go along with you. I'd like to know more from other men in the UK about their experience because it might just be your particular upbringing and your group of friends that you feel that maybe men don't send cards because I've been in relationships before and, you know, experienced male friends giving me cards. So, I can't completely verify your belief, but let's loosely take it on board, but take it with a pinch of salt. Well, so, let me just push back very, very gently on this one. So, you always get a card from me. I do, because you know that I think cards are important, and so you have upped your game. But, I think I've always given you cards, and I think I've also always given you quite elaborate cards with wonderfully considerate input into the pages. Well, you write poetry for me. Yeah, short stories. Yeah. Little doodles. Little reminders of things we've done together and... You outshine me actually on the card front. Mmm. I think your pushback against cards has kind of rubbed off on me a little bit. I'm not against cards. I just don't think about them. No, but I've always grown up in a very kind of romantic family and we're gift givers. That's our language of love. We're gift givers and note writers and just doing little acts of love. And that's what I've always felt was important. But being with you has opened my eyes to the fact that maybe it's not that important. If someone doesn't write you a card or a little note, it doesn't mean they don't love you. And so, I've kind of hardened a little bit. My heart has hardened ever so slightly. And so, there was one Valentine's, probably last year, where I didn't buy you a card thinking,"Oh, he's not going to remember anyway. I'm not going to bother." And then you surprised me with, I think, chocolate and......an enormous card. An enormous card with a poem. I felt awful. I felt like I was a real meanie that year. Well, maybe some of this is your perspective. Maybe, maybe. Coming back to the survey, some people really go to town, they really splash out. So, 7% of Brits will spend between£91 and£100. That's a lot of cards. But they're not just buying cards, are they? They're probably buying some of the cliche gifts like flowers and chocolates. What else could you get a little.. Lingerie Oh, lingerie if you're in a really hot and spicy relationship. Chocolate lingerie. Edible, edible undies. That is a thing. Edible undies. Chocolate body paint, all that kind of stuff, a bit fruity. But also things like little teddy bears with a little love heart or those teddy bears where you can record something. His and hers, bracelets. His and hers, bracelets. Yeah. Things like that. Love charms. But a larger amount, 18% of people believe that Valentine's Day is just overly commercial. It's too commercialised, which is kind of the camp that we sit in, isn't it? And yet we still buy into it. Even if we think,"Oh, it's just the company's trying to make money out of us, trying to manipulate us." We still end up buying a little something, don't we? Yeah. And I think, there's two sides to this. So, one is, was Valentine's Day created solely by commercial entities to make money? And I don't know the answer, but my hope would be no. And the second part is is it too commercialised now in a way in which it kind of loses some of its meaning? And I think the answer to that is... Yes. Yes. And so you can really celebrate and enjoy the romance and time with your partner that comes with the holiday. Yeah. And I think this is the important thing is, without feeling like you have the burden of spending money in a way that you wouldn't normally, or in a way that's way more expensive than it would be to do the same thing on any other day. Yeah. Yeah, some people use Valentine's Day as an excuse to be romantic, like they see it as a good excuse to be a romantic when they wouldn't be romantic most of the year round. I think the important thing is to be reminded that you love and appreciate someone and to remind them that you love and appreciate them. But, ideally, you would do that all year round. But I guess Valentine's Day serves as a good reminder for those people who are perhaps lacking in romantic attributes. And I think with young kids with young girls in particular, there might be this expectation of if you don't treat me amazingly on Valentine's Day, then you don't really love me. Yeah. And I think when you get a bit older you realise actually it's the rest of the year that counts. Absolutely. It's not Valentine's Day that's a defining feature of your relationship. Absolutely, you can show extra affection on Valentine's Day, but you should just always be appreciative of the people you love, shouldn't you? Probably. Yeah. Otherwise, if you take them for granted, which is a really good phrase to know, if you take someone for granted, then you might get dumped. That's not nice, is it? No. No. Horrible. Dumped or cheated on, one or the other. So, you can enjoy Valentine's Day without breaking the bank. I think what we're going to do is probably just put the boys to bed early. We always cook nice meals anyway, so just have a meal, but maybe have it a little later, perhaps with a naughty tiramisu afterwards, and then we could do something special, like cracking out a jigsaw? Yeah, I think so. I mean, our situation is that we have children, it's really expensive for us to go out because we've got to pay for childcare. And, on Valentine's Day, all the restaurants are twice as expensive. Yeah. So, the way I see it, is it would be better to just enjoy Valentine's Day at home doing something special that suits our circumstances. And then if you really want to go out and do something, you can either go somewhere twice as good on any other day of the year or... Twice as good because it would be less crowded and less expensive. Or you can go and do the thing that you really wanted to do but you can do it twice. Because it's the normal price instead of the Valentine's Day price. Some people use Valentine's day as an excuse to pop the question. What do I mean by pop the question Nicholas? So, this is a really interesting phrase that is it's exactly specific to proposing marriage. Yes. It's not used in any other way, is it? No. You don't pop the question when you're asking them what they want for dinner, or pop the question if you're asking someone to come and live with you. If you pop the question, it's specifically asking someone to marry you. And yeah, I mean,'pop' is a very interesting word. It's used in so many different contexts. Often if you pop somewhere. You could pop out, pop to the shop, pop in, pop off. Pop off is completely different. That's to die, isn't it? If you pop off, but to pop is to go somewhere quickly or do something quickly. So, if you pop the question, I wonder if it's about an unexpected element, like a... it comes out of the blue, I guess. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. I mean, it's funny because if you said,"Oh, you know, these little sweets, I feel like I shouldn't have one." And I said,"Just pop one in." You know, it's just for something really small and insignificant. Just pop it in your mouth! Right. And popping the question's massive and you know, a really significant thing. So, it's strange, like it makes me wonder, I've never thought about this before, but it really makes me wonder whether it's in reference to bursting something. What, like a thought bubble that sits above society's head going,"When are they going to get married?" And that question of when you marry me is floating in the thought bubble. Yeah, exactly. And then he finally pop... I say he because there's this old tradition of the man doing the popping of the question. Which is the only way that it could happen. But these days, obviously, women also pop the question, but I guess you're thinking about popping that thought bubble and the question finally landing,"Kapow!" Knocking out the partner going,"Oh my goodness, they've finally proposed." Maybe that is the origin. Who knows? Who knows? This crazy English language. So, I think, actually, popping the question on Valentine's Day is a little bit... I want to say a cop out, but I don't really mean cop out. It's just a bit mean, because if you pop the question on a special occasion, like a birthday, Christmas, or Valentine's Day, then you're... you're like killing two birds with one stone. You're taking something away from... Yeah....what the day already has. Yeah, an occasion like getting engaged should be celebrated. Although, I'm talking about if you're having a long engagement, really, then you get married and you celebrate your marriage date, the date you got married. You don't celebrate your engagement year after year after year, unless you're very unlucky. But yeah, I think it's better to propose on a day that's just an average day so that can be a special day in its own right. Yeah, I mean, it's the same as anything, right? There's normally only enough room for one thing when you're trying to focus on something. And if a day is already special and you try and make it special times two, you probably actually make both of them half as special as they would be on their own. Yeah. Well, thank you, Nicholas, for your input today. You're very welcome. We should probably both pop off, but not, not in the death way. I've got to pop out. You've got to pop out and make some plans for the upcoming event. Buy a card. Grab a jigsaw. Make sure we've got a good one to crack on with. But thank you listeners for listening. If you do have any input, anything you'd like to share about how you celebrate Valentine's Day, if you do at all, your thoughts and feelings about it, then please do feel free to share. Until next time, take very good care and goodbye.