Valentine's Day
Lights will have been dimmed, curtains drawn, the dining room table adorned with crisp white linen, and in the centre will be the huge bouquet of red roses I despatched just 24 hours earlier.
Alongside will be a bottle of fine French red, sparkling crystal glasses at the ready, while from the kitchen will come the unmistakable aroma of sizzling steak.
Ah, don't we just love Valentine's Day?
If only. In truth, my arrival will be nothing like that. I shall probably stumble and fumble across the threshold thanks to the lights being not just dimmed, but extinguished to save energy.
Banging into the corner of the table in the dark, I should just be able to make out that day's mail still lying there unopened from the morning's delivery.
From the kitchen will come the smell of nothing in particular. Certainly not cooking.
No matter. A chink of light escaping from beneath the living room door will be all the proof needed that the love of my life, my nearest and dearest, is in residence.
I'll burst into this inner sanctum to be greeted by Mrs D dashing away with a smoothing iron (her favourite hobby, honestly! She'd even put creases in my socks if I let her).
Close to hand will be nothing stronger than a cup of cold coffee, while on the telly will be either Poirot, Miss Marple or the man who was once Bergerac solving fictitious crimes. You can always see at least one of those three on British afternoon TV, can't you?
The only concession to setting the mood will be a couple of feeble tea lights flickering uncertainly in the fireplace.
"Have you had any flowers, darling?" I'll enquire.
And she'll say: "Yes, some did turn up, but I've had no time to look at them. They're in a bucket outside the back door."
"How about a card?"
"Oh, I haven't had time to even look at the mail ..."
Good job I hadn't wasted the price of a stamp on it, then, opting instead for personalised hand delivery.
Of a card for me, there will be no trace.
Such is the status afforded to Valentine's Day after years of married life, and, I guess, not much different from zillions of others in similar domestic circumstances.
The cherubic little chap with the bow and arrow fires wide of the mark in our house.
Much of that is down to the fact that our daughters are no longer around, so come the big day the combined elements of surprise and embarrassment are missing.
I remember various occasions when little gifts would mysteriously appear on the doorstep amid the milk bottles, all romantically wrapped. Cards with encoded messages would accompany them and be the subject of endless debate for the following 24 hours.
On one occasion, an admirer of our youngest daughter, having bought her Valentine's Day flowers, panicked, chickened out and instead of knocking on the front door, proceeded to post them one by one through our letterbox.
The big problem with Valentine's Day, as I see it, is that surviving the festival is a bit like negotiating a dodgy trapdoor. One wrong move and you can be flat on your face, emotionally speaking.
Failure to heed the celebration can lead to frostiness. Likewise, wholehearted observance of the ritual can often be greeted by scorn from the intended recipient.
It's just one of those days when we seem to set out to punish ourselves.
Anyway, back at Chez Davey, I'm confident no such pitfalls will occur because the truth is that well ahead of the day itself, my wife had already asked me "is there any football on Saturday?".
My reply in the affirmative was then met with the reply that she would be out gallivanting with her chums.
So. Forget all that stuff and nonsense about the roses. Forget the vino. And the steak. I think it's going to have to be a takeaway.
Comment on this story