My husband ran into the kitchen with a red envelope. "I've just found this on the doormat," he said excitedly. "Who's it for?" I asked.

"Err ... it just has a question mark on it," he replied. This was good enough for our four-year-old daughter. She snatched it from my husband's grasp, saying: "It might be for me, it might be for me."

In fact it was a Valentine for all of us from one of the more opportunistic local estate agents.

The wording went something like: "Even if everyone else loathes you, we still love you. Sell your home through us."

"That's going straight into the recycling," said my husband. "I thought it might have been a REAL valentine from a MYSTERY ADMIRER."

"We don't have those any more, do we?" I said, looking at him a little suspiciously.

He gave me an enigmatic wink. "I'd like to think I'm still adored from afar."

Of course, we did get real Valentine's cards. But only from each other.

I made one out of black card, red paper (cut into heart shapes) and glitter. Funnily enough, my husband made one very similar using the same materials. I'll have to get some more glitter and paper before our daughter realises we have raided her arts and crafts drawer.

And we gave each other quite romantic presents. I bought my husband a copy of Stephen King's spine-chiller, The Shining.

He was very pleased. He saw the film on telly a few weeks ago and had been going on about wanting the book.

My present from him was a beautiful new handbag, large enough to carry his keys and wallet when we go out.

We were planning a romantic lunch out deux but our baby, Max, had come down with a heavy cold and was too out of sorts to be left at nursery.

So we dined on soup and spaghetti at home while our snotty, cranky son threw spoons across the kitchen.

Our romantic afternoon stroll was also cancelled because of Max's illness.

"Why don't we hire a video?" said my husband. "We could sit here watching it with an enormous bag of Maltesers."

This seemed a better option than repainting the banisters (something I've been meaning to do since Christmas). So I popped out to the video hire shop and scanned the shelves. I quite fancied a chick flick but I couldn't face the thought of my husband snoring through it. So I took out Spiderman.

"Are you sure you want to watch this?" he said, inspecting my choice on my return.

"Yeah, well, I couldn't find any others that we would both find interesting. Besides, it'll be easy to follow this if Max starts making too much noise."

As it happened, Max still made too much noise for me to even get the gist of it. So I started reading a family health encyclopedia, just to check that Max's symptoms weren't turning into pneumonia or measles.

Naturally, I got sidetracked into reading about glomerulonephritis, which is some sort of kidney infection.

"Sweetheart, you're not watching it," said my husband during a lull in the action sequences.

"Mmm..." I mmmed.

He then handed me the bag of Maltesers. "I've saved you a few."

I tipped up the bag and four rolled into my palm.

"Thank you darling," I said.

"You're welcome," he replied.

The age of romance is not dead, just a little weary.