The joy of text: Is it really better than a card on Valentine's Day?
Of all the depressing news this month, one of the saddest moments for me was the announcement by U.S. telecoms company AT&T that Valentine's Day is the most popular day of the year for texting.
Some 61 per cent of people surveyed said they were going to send a Valentine's Day text to their partner and the same proportion thought it was as good or better than getting a card.
In other words, more than half of mobile-phone owners would rather wake up to a beep from their mobile than hear the magical sound of a card being pushed through the letterbox.
Somehow I can't believe anyone would prefer reading a message which reads 2G2BT (too good to be true) or IWALU (I will always love you) to the glorious anticipation involved in opening an envelope and finding a carefully chosen card containing a message.
Even a simple message like: 'Roses are red/Violets are blue/Sugar is sweet/And so are you' would be more touching. Or better still: 'But true love is a durable fire/In the wind never burning;/ Never sick, never, old, never dead,/From itself never turning' (Sir Walter Raleigh).
A Valentine's card is an event, a memento to be treasured. I still have a box in my attic full of dusty but precious cards.
A Valentine's text is a moment of gratification that will last perhaps a month at most until you accidentally press the wrong button and delete it by mistake or lose your phone and those romantic monosyllables for ever.
I think that the way your loved one marks Valentine's Day says a great deal about them as a lover.
Sending a text on Valentine's Day takes one second of thought and perhaps a minute of execution.
Sending a card involves choosing the right card and remembering to send it the day before.
Which kind of person would you rather end up sharing a romantic night with - the wham-bang texter or the card sender who understands the importance of anticipation?
Just because they can press phone buttons quickly, doesn't mean they will know how to press your buttons.
And one of the really worrying things about this survey was the number of people who said they would be sending Valentine's messages.
It's one thing to be the only recipient of an electronic I LUV U, but quite another to find out he has sent that message to all the 'special friends' in his phone book.
At least it takes effort and financial outlay to send multiple Valentine cards.
But the real drawback to the Valentine's text is that it can never be anonymous. When I was a teenager, the real excitement of Valentine's Day was not the cards I expected but the ones I didn't.
The best card I ever got was when I was 18 in my first term at university - it read simply: 'You are always on my mind.'
I spent weeks trying to find out who it was from, but to this day it is still a mystery. Even now, when things get tough in my everyday life, I think about that card and about the romantic parallel universe I might have known.
Sending an anonymous card is a tradition that stretches back to the medieval world when troubadours would woo women with unsigned poems from admirers.
What could be a more romantic start to a relationship than a mysterious card - everybody who opens a card from 'Guess Who?' feels a frisson of excitement.
Cherished: Receiving a card is more special than a text because it can be kept forever and shows the sender made an effort
You have to be sure that the card isn't from an attentive grandmother, of course, but it's usually quite easy to tell the mercy Valentine from the genuine article (anything the bubblegum side of pink or involving Hello Kitty is probably not from the next love of your life).
My teenage daughter was sent a card with a message which simply gave a page number from The Great Gatsby.
She had to go to the school library to find the book and hidden at the right page was another message with the page number of another book and so on.
An hour later she finally found the message, 'be my Valentine' - I don't think she ever discovered who sent it, but I know that every Valentine's Day to come will be measured by that one.
I have been married, almost always happily, for 21 years, but I know that there is still a part of me that's hoping something unexpected will drop through the letterbox on Saturday.
I will be thrilled by the cards from my kids and the flowers from my husband, but the perpetual teenager in me still longs for a card from 'Guess Who?'.
I want to spend days trying to guess who and I also want to fail, because if it is from my best friend I don't want to know. I just want to believe, even if only for a moment, that I am the object of somebody's hopeless romantic longing.
So this year, give your thumbs a rest and rediscover the pleasures of sending cards. Think of all your friends who might not get cards and send them one (in your best disguised handwriting, of course).
And send an unsigned card to the one you love as well - cheaper and infinitely more romantic than a bunch of service station roses - and I guarantee, whether they know it is from you or not, they will treasure it for ever.
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