“Happy Valentine’s Day!!!” I wish the LTLP romantically, before enquiring anxiously whether she has brought any money.

“I still can’t get the taste out of my mouth,” she complains.

I carefully inscribe the name on my list of death. ‘Fergus Henderson, owner, St. John Restaurant’. He wrote the sheep’s heart recipe and is an idiot. An unmarried idiot. Or an idiot who was married before serving up one of his own dishes as a romantic ‘treat’.

Our takeaway arrives, and we step out into the raging wall of sleet.

“This is nice,” I say, as we eat in front of University Challenge.

“It’s marginally better than last year, I guess.”

“Jim Callaghan!!! Definitely Jim Callaghan!!! – you what?”

“Our romantic ‘chicken dinner’ at the M11 Services.”

I decide against putting on my banjo music CD.