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Idislike Valentine’s Day but my father always said it’s a good time to take a closer look at your partner and get a better idea of what really matters to her.

My dad met my mom on Valentine’s Day. It was 1970, he had just moved to Durban, and a work colleague set him up on a date. My dad cut his hair for the big night and polished his shoes and borrowed a suit that more or less fitted him. They arranged to meet at the restaurant because he didn’t have a car, only a scooter. He couldn’t decide whether to bring a bunch of flowers or a box of chocolates, so he brought both. At this point of my dad’s story, I interrupted him to say, “Wow. You were kind of a dork.”

“I wasn’t a dork,” he said. “I was polite. That’s good manners.”

“You could have played a bit more cool.”

“Thanks, my boy,” he said. “I tell you what, when you have children and a wife who loves you, then I’d love to hear your dating advice.”

My dad was nervous and even more so when his date arrived. She was lovely, and her hair was taller and beehivier than every other hairdo in the joint. He tried to keep cool. He took her coat and pulled out her chair and gave her the chocolates and the flowers. Her name was Ronnie and she liked the chocolates but she wrinkled her nose and said she didn’t like carnations.

“You can’t blame her for that,” I said. “Carnations are lame.”

“Nonsense,” he scowled. “Carnations are elegant.”

My dad ordered them a bottle of sparkling wine. Unfortunately he didn’t order the most expensive one and that was a mistake because she took one sip and wrinkled her nose again and said it was too sweet.

“Her nose looked pretty when she wrinkled it,” said my dad. “But I wished she wouldn’t wrinkle it quite so much.”

Things weren’t off to a good start. She refused to drink any more of the sparkling wine and he couldn’t afford another bottle, so he was left with the

LOVE

VALENTINE’S DAY 1970 WAS A VERY MEMORABLE ONE FOR MY DAD, WRITES DARREL BRISTOW-BOVEY

She ordered mussels, which my dad remembers because when the waitress brought the food she tripped and spilt them all down Ronnie’s dress

tricky decision of whether or not to keep drinking the first one on his own. He decided, wisely, that he should. She ordered mussels, which my dad remembers because when the waitress brought the food she tripped and spilt them all down Ronnie’s dress.

“It wasn’t really the mussels that bothered her,” my dad clarified. “It was the sauce.”

When the food landed on Ronnie’s lap, she was furious. My dad remembers her yelling at the waitress, “Look at my dress! Look! Look at my dress!”

“It’s not that bad,” my dad tried to reassure her, so she yelled at him too.

Ronnie yelled some more at the waitress and when she went off to go clean herself, the waitress apologised to my dad for ruining his Valentine’s evening. It was her first week on the job, and she knew something terrible was going to happen – and now it had.

My dad could see that she was upset and trying very hard not to cry. He thought she was brave and dignified, and he told her he was sorry Ronnie had yelled like that. And because he was being kind, that did make her start crying, and to stop her crying he asked her if she liked carnations, and she said she did, so he gave them to her. Some time later the waitress became my mom, and for the rest of their lives together, she still pretended she liked carnations. *