Yep. You read that correctly. Elsewhere in this paper we report that a florist in Liverpool Street station is selling a bunch of red roses for £385. (Or a bargain bunch for £200.) Look, for that, the two of you can eat at Le Gavroche. And I know which I’d prefer.
But everywhere you go, it’s red bloody roses. The florist near this office has long-stem single red roses, with a little plastic thing around the head, for a fiver each, or a bunch for £25. Don’t do it. It is not yet too late not to buy a red rose. Or any rose, come to that.
Can we get our heads around the fact that roses are not in season, unless you’re Alice in Wonderland, looking through a tiny door into a garden? There are no British roses just now. Zero. Therefore the only way you can get them is by flying them in from Kenya or similar. Right now, Brits buy 570 tonnes of roses for Valentine’s Day, putting local producers under colossal pressure to get the wretched things here in time for February 14. By February 15, presumably they’ll all be redundant, poor things.
The flown-in red rose is a beastly thing. It’s long-stemmed, usually in buds which never quite flower, and scentless. That’s because in some varieties the scent has been bred out of them, privileging longevity over fragrance. Wrapped in cellophane, they look horrid. And can we just note that Robbie Burns, when he was going on about his love being like you-know-what, didn’t actually specify Valentine’s Day. He was probably writing in June.
Friends, there is a better way. Let me give you daffodils. Tulips (and even if they’re from Amsterdam, it’s closer than Africa). Narcissi. Hyacinths. All of them lovely, all enchanting in a little bunch, all in season. And yours from M&S for less than a tenner. Or you could somehow get hold of a little posy or pot of snowdrops – there is nothing more exquisite.
Then there are hellebores and cyclamen, or better still, branches of flowering shrubs. Nature is doing its bit for us out there, and all we can do is fly roses in from Africa?
If you want to channel roses, get a scent that includes roses. Farmacia Santa Maria Novella has a very pretty Rosa Novella, which would do it for me. Or Floris does a White Rose scent that the late Queen was said to like. Or, good lord, what’s wrong with a heart shaped box of chocolates from William Curley? Or just champagne?
Me, I’m with Dorothy Parker:
