Harrowing

What with all my "tedious" navel-gazing (copyright A. Reader, 9 January 2011) and pontification on the subject of love and relationships, you'd be forgiven for expecting me to be a Full and Vocal Member of The Valentine's Haters Club. Actually, I kind of like it. I know, I know: it's horribly commercial, and yes, I know that Real Love happens 365 days a year, and I am fully aware that restaurants put their prices up just to cash in, and I know that the whole thing seems designed to make people who are alone feel much worse about themselves, increasing the sense single adults often have of being second class citizens.

But hey. At its loosest extremes, it's about telling people you love them, and I'm all for that. I just stretch the boundaries a bit, and send cards to my parents, and a few friends, and then yesterday Grania came to my office early in the morning and dropped off a small, red, heart-shaped helium balloon on a stick, so anyone who cared could see I was loved. I put it under my seat on the tube home so as not to be too unbearable, but I still enjoyed seeing it waggling along beside me as I went up the escalators. And I got a card from Astrid, and one from my dad, and then I got changed and wore a heart necklace and heart earrings and a vest-top with hearts on it, and three single girlfriends came over and I made a three course meal including heart-shaped lamb burgers, and we drank a lot of wine and I felt pretty happy, all things considered.

Doubtless, it's a good deal more fun to look down one's nose at those willing morons who allow themselves to be duped by Hallmark and Cafe Rouge into spending their hard-earned cash on cardboard and marked-up set menus; to tell oneself that one is a vastly superior specimin because one doesn't buy in to all that capitalist claptrap, because one refuses to let one's emotions be controlled by such a cynical and commercial endeavour. But I just can't do it. I'm a sucker for love.

Kate and I did the next section of the Capital Ring on Sunday, from Greenwood to South Kenton. It was grey, windy and drizzling, and by the time we reached Harrow, the only photo I'd taken was of a decomposing dead fox floating in the Grand Union Canal. I was boiling from the climb and my rucksack had created an attractive sweat patch on my back, meaning that I became absolutely freezing as soon as we sat down in the Blues cafe in Harrow for a bowl of tuna pasta. The room was slightly less frosty than the waitress, but more potent was the thudding fug of oppressive, eternal Sunday mid-afternoons that one can only understand if one has been to boarding school, where you're bored out of your tree with nothing to do and yet painfully aware of a conflicting sense that tomorrow morning is approaching at speed and that the ever-craved weekend will shortly be over for another five days. You're thrilled for the change in routine that is heralded by the arrival of your parents to take you 'out' for lunch, but then are cripplingly embarrassed by their every move and spend the longed-for, fantasized-over, hour-long pizza lunch fervently wishing that your mum was more glamorous and that your dad's voice wasn't so loud, desperate for them to stop asking stupid questions about such OBVIOUS stuff but then spitting with rage the moment the subject meandered even a millimeter from yourself. And then they tell you they love you and kiss you goodbye and you don't even want to be seen with them in case someone sees you together and finds another reason to think you're uncool, and then they get in the car and start the hour and a half drive back home, and you're left alone in the cold gloomy evening, filled with sadness and regret and self-loathing and homesickness and a physically painful feeling of loneliness.

Surrounding us in the cafe were many clusters of hopeful parents feeding their costly offspring, following in the footsteps of Winston Churchill and Baby Carrot, oops, soz, Benedict Cumberbatch in being educated at this esteemed establishment. The MILF next to us chatted to her penne-chokingly handsome teenage son about the upcoming BAFTAs and other hip things, and then casually paid for the meal with one of several crisp £50 notes and five one pound coins. On the table behind Kate, two slightly uncool brothers sat opposite their slightly uncool parents and discussed forthcoming sport fixtures over burgers, pizza and a chicken caesar salad. So much money, so many extraordinary facilities, so many privileged, forlorn boys walking outside in the drizzle wearing tailcoats and a mournful gaze. It was all just desperately sad.

Why do I feel sorry for these young men? Because it's not about love. You can pay many thousands to send your son to Harrow, or Eton, or St. Mary's Whatever. They can grow up with like-minded friends on tap, an unrivalled circle of influence, guaranteeing them entry into society's highest echelons, a free ticket into advantage that never expires. They can wake up on a Sunday aged 14 and have a golf course at their disposal, a running track, swimming pools, tennis courts, squash courts, a judo room, an art school, theatres, photography and film facilities, music rooms, recording studios, computer labs, open fields, a farm, and wealthy parents to take them out for pizza. They can be educated by top teachers for five years and come out with top grades and places at top universities, where the grooming process can continue. They can have every head start it's possible to have. But they can never be normal. They can never un-go to boarding school. And although it was wonderful in so many ways, and although parents are only doing what they think is best, the fact is, it breeds difference and it's unfair. And - vitally - for every over-confident Churchill or Carrotbatch, there are men and women who were permanently scarred by the experience, who will never fully recover from feeling abandoned during those formative years.

I'm not blaming boarding school for the snake. I just... I just wish it didn't need to exist. I wish state education was so good that even the richest felt that private education was unnecessary. Some are more equal than others and I wish it weren't so. I just want us all to be friends. Underneath the confident tone of voice, I am, as an ex-boyfriend once told me, just a big bundle of love. I think he meant it as a compliment.

I'm also massively hormonal AGAIN, and hungover and needy, and all I want to do is eat dark chocolate with sea salt and then lie in a huge bed, enveloped in some strong arms, and sleep. What I do NOT want to do is schlep over to west London and have a FREAKING CHOIR PRACTICE.