You might as well face it - you're addicted to love. Valentine's Day is our admission we're all just a bunch of love junkies ... or are we? JEAN MAY looks at some of the strange superstitions surrounding February 14 ...

It's the time of year to celebrate romance again. Actually, I think any time of the year should be for celebrating romance, but this is the time that society - prodded by greeting card and chocolate manufacturers - sets aside especially for such amorous festivities.

If you are happily in love, Valentine's Day can be a joyous occasion, your heart literally floating on air as you and your significant other celebrate the elation felt by merely being in each other's presence (ok, this is probably a bit of an exaggeration).

But if you're not in love, this day can mean anything from the ultimate in indifference (forgetting about it entirely); to the pits of despair (think of Meg Ryan's character in When Harry Met Sally in the scene when she gets dumped by her boyfriend).

In fact, for a large number of people, there is no crueller day of the year. While a tiny fraction of the population can look forward to a holiday of wine and roses, poetry and song, many of us can anticipate a day of nausea and grimacing, trauma and grief as we reflect sorrowfully on yesteryear's romantic indignities, today's loneliness, and the unknowable but certain heartbreak that will be visited upon us repeatedly in the years to come.

But let's not dwell on that. Here are a few facts and fables you may not know:

  • In the Middle Ages, young men and women drew names from a bowl to see who their valentines would be. They would wear these names on their sleeves for one week. To wear your heart on your sleeve now means it is easy for other people to know how you are feeling.
  • Alexander Graham Bell applied for his patent on the telephone, an Improvement in Telegraphy', on Valentine's Day, 1876.
  • About three per cent of pet owners will give Valentine's Day gifts to their pets.
  • Seventy three per cent of people who buy flowers for Valentine's Day are men and 27 per cent women.
  • It is said that on February 14 the birds begin to choose their mates. In fact Chaucer, in his Parlement of Foules, wrote: "For this was Seynt Valentine's Day when every foul cometh ther to choose his mate."
  • People once believed if you found a glove on the road on Valentine's Day, your future beloved will have the other missing glove.
  • Some never give up. The Countess of Newburgh gave the brush-off to an earl 15 times and locked him out of her house. So he climbed down her chimney and pledged his love. It was a case of 16th time lucky.
  • And finally ... remember, there is an old superstition that if you see a robin on St Valentine's Day you will marry a sailor. If you see a sparrow, you will marry a poor man. If you see a goldfinch, you will marry a millionaire. So, beware where you look!

LOVE MATHS

Smart man + smart woman = romance
Smart man + dumb woman = affair
Dumb man + smart woman = marriage
Dumb man + dumb woman = pregnancy