Liz Breslin contemplates romance and price tags.
How do I love thee? Let me count the cash.
That's what Valentine's Day comes down to sometimes and how romantic is that?I don't want to be a party pooper about it. Valentine's Day can be a bit of fun unless you're stuck in a restaurant full of clone daters avoiding garlic and the eyes of the rose sellers.
Or unless you live in Connecticut, where one school has banned Valentine's Day candy because eating sweet things is an unhealthy practice.
I would rather ban those cards which pretend to be from people your friends like to tease you about.
Always so much fun when you are 12 and not on the receiving end.
Thanks to statisticians, we know that people across the globe (except, perhaps, in Connecticut) will fork out hundreds of thousands of dollars before February 14 on roses that will die, chocolates that will inspire guilt and cavities and cards with dubious recipients and rhymes.
This year, the spend is predicted to be up in the States and down in the United Kingdom.
Or is it the other way round? Never mind, all it will take to tip those statistical scales is for a couple of people to sign up for what's being touted as the most expensive Valentine's Day dinner ever; 61,000 - about $NZ120,000.
For that, you get eight courses and matching wine. Costs include all ingredients, drink, service, petals, candles, doves, harpist and, of course, a poet.
I feel gauche as, to read the proposed menu, I need a food dictionary, a pronunciation guide and a world map.
Kopi luwak coffee, anyone? Amethyst bamboo salt? Nah, you're all right. I'll get a bunch of flowers from the servo: they might even be half-price if I wait long enough.
If native oysters with almus white caviar aren't perhaps your crystal flute of Salon Blanc de Blanc, then you might consider, for the same hundred thou, a single night at the Ritz Carlton South Beach, Miami.
This package will give your 24 hours of access to all those things Lorde sings about not wanting.
The champagne, the chauffeur. A massive ballroom strewn with a hundred roses, your own private DJ, some blinging diamonds to take away.
Were Elizabeth Barrett Browning (she of How do I love thee, let me count the ways) alive today, I'm picking she'd also crave a different kind of buzz.
The sonnet goes on: ''I love thee to the level of everyday's/Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light./I love thee freely.''
An invalid and a poet, EB was born into a family which could probably afford the Victorian equivalent of gold leaf-wrapped wagyu beef, even with 12 kids in the brood. She did not have to count the cash.
Wooed by the words of Robert Browning, six years her junior and way more likely to buy the cut-price blooms, she chose to become EBB in a secret marriage in London.
They wrote to each other daily, with choice outpourings like ''You are too perfect, too overcomingly good & tender - dearest you are.''
Those who need inspiration, or just a Valentine's card phrase to copy that doesn't start with ''Roses are red'', can browse the digital archives of all 573 preserved love letters from their courtship and married life.
Yes, married people. Writing love letters to each other.
Those crazy Victorians. Anyway, EBB and RB moved to Italy, where they spent the rest of their lovey life documenting their love in super-romantic verse.
EBB even - pass the pink, scented tissues, please - died in his arms. Now that's the sort of romance you can't put a price tag on.
Liz Breslin is a Lake Hawea writer.
