Confessions of the Sad, Lonely and Single

Did you know that the volume of tears wept by the average singleton on Valentine’s Day equates roughly the quantity of strawberry liquor consumed by a loved one? This is clearly a made up statistic, but at least the mood is set.

Whilst Pizza Express slowly fills with the clip-clop of many a romanced heel, elsewhere doors are slamming, Rustlers are being microwaved, and people are staying in the bath up to an hour after the water first felt tepid on the toes.

We took to the streets, libraries and urinals of Cambridge to find out what the unattached Cantab had been up to this Valentine’s. Here are some of the most heartfelt confessions, carefully sorted into categories for your reading pleasure…

The Great Pretender 

“This Valentine’s, I changed into a floor length dress and walked around my room doing faces that I had seen characters doing in period dramas. For example: surprised, emotionally wounded and thrillingly in love.”

“The morning after Valentine’s day, the cleaner in the library asked me what I had been up the night before. I couldn’t bear to say that in fact all I had done was to bid on eBay for a new piggy bank before having an early night. So instead, I made up that I had a boyfriend called Jimmy, and that he had taken me to the Arts Picture House to see an old film. I felt so stupid. Who is called Jimmy these days?”

“In first year, I posted a Valentine’s card to myself by UMS. I cried when I received it, so I don’t think I’ll be doing that again.”

pretend away the pain with a healthy dose of dress-up

The ‘Fuck You!’ 

“Obviously I’m not single, but one of my friends wrote the lyrics to ‘Fuck you’ by Eamon onto a napkin, wiped his bum with it, and sent it to his ex by UMS.”

“Went to Cindies with all my single friends and had a really good night. Fuck you David!”

“I baked a biscuit in the shape of a large penis – twice the size of his – and ate it in the bath.”

“I thought that, being as I was going to be on my own anyway, I might as well learn something. So I youtubed Lady Gaga videos and learned the choreography to the choruses of Bad Romance, Alejandro and Marry The Night. More fun than a night in his company would ever have been.”

No I’m not fucking vomiting.

The Solitary Oggle

“I watched the jungle book and dined on jelly and chocolate milk. It was the best night of 2012 so far.”

“I sat in my room watching ‘The Secret Garden’, because I love English landscapes, and eating chocolates. Because chocolates feel like sex.”

“Sometimes in the past I have typed ‘Valentine’s Day’ into Redtube and Pornhub to ensure that my solitary masturbation was at least topical…”

If music be the food of  love…

The plain bizarre… 

“One year I listened to Christmas songs in my room, because Christmas reminds me of happiness.”

“I found out that my ex-girlfriend had spent her Valentine’s Day putting pictures of me into the toaster and then watching them burn. We got back together a few months later…”

“I sat on my bed watching romantic films and imagining them with horrible endings. For example: both Jack and Rose survive at the end of Titanic, thus being able to stay together when on dry land. They break up a couple of months later, however, after Jack sleeps with a prostitute. Another would be: Shrek comes out as gay and sets Princess Fiona on fire…”

Shit, is that an iceberg?

So there you have it: the sinister behind-the-scenes of Valentine’s Day. Do spare a thought, as you sip sumptuously on your glass of Lambrini, for those of us who weren’t quite so lucky…