HOW NOT TO DO VALENTINE’S DAY

“You’re sure you don’t mind me working on Valentine’s Day?” I ask my wife, who simply smiles and shakes her head, preoccupied by a message that just landed in her DMs.

It’s a long way to Bruce’s Studio, but still I wake up, as usual, too early. Maybe I can get misty shots of Stonehenge, I think, by way of consolation, except I’ve already driven past it; visibility is down to zero. Yes, I am *roiling in impotent chagrin* TM

At Branscombe I discover... nothing. East Devon is not the same as the Devon Riviera. Sure there are tractor drivers and two-hundred-year-old ladies and passive aggressive second homers all driving at ten miles an hour, and sure there is the sea and the fields and the stumpy locals who introduce you to “my wife and my sister” whilst nodding twice at the one woman they have their arm round. But East Devon, and Branscombe in particular, are lacking what much of the rest of Devon boasts. To whit, anything interesting. There are some chalets and a middle class family gamely trying to make having a dog and playing with a frisbee look like fun. No doubt they will get the boules out later.

I message my wife to see if she has got her Valentines flowers yet, hopeful that this will make up for my absence. There is no reply. I take the cliff walk to Beer, which the sign says is one and half miles. Of course this is the countryside, so it turns out to be five million miles and all uphill. In a welter of sweat, a walrus fresh from the sauna, I stagger back to the car.

I facetime my wife. She seems happy but preoccupied, and almost a little out of breath. “You don't mind I’m away working on Valentine’s Day?” She shakes here head. There is the flicker of shadow, moving behind her, off webcam. “Who’s that?”

“Oh it’s just the kitchen guy come to take measurements”, she replies.

I remember Antonio is a bit balder, fatter and shorter than me, and smile, reassured, until I glimpse the slim young dude walk across the back of the frame.

“That’s not Antonio”, I whine.

My wife laughs. “It’s his assistant, Sergio.”

“Why has he got his shirt off?” I demand. “He’s just supposed to be measuring up.”

My wife mumbles something about a tap splashing him and drying off. I am more concerned about what looks like a smudge of lipstick on his cheek, and the sheen of perspiration on his sculpted pecs.

“Got to go”, chirps my wife, “got a zoom.”

Too much knowledge can be a terrible thing, and so it is with Kilmington, which I know for a fact is near Axminster in East Devon. However, when I check my brief, it transpires there is another, a second, a rogue Kilmington in Wiltshire, a bit over an hour away, and this is where I am meant to be. No Lunch for You, fat boy! At the roundabout by Mere Services - so modest, we are nothing, we are mere services - an old woman veers out in front of me, almost killing me, and then proceeds to drive at twenty miles an hour on the unrestricted road. I swerve past her but watch the tailback grow in my rearview with a grin.

The filming goes without a hitch. The weather forecast has been for clear skies, but cloud remains throughout the day, because, you know, you had one fecking job Met Office. That means no astro photography but it does mean a quite nice sunset. Every restaurant in Weymouth is of course booked, including the Beefeater at my Premier Inn. Imagine taking your loved one for Valentines at a Beefeater. Surely there are easier ways to break up with someone.

Two hours after I message her, my wife messages me back with a heart emoji and a Miss you.

I wonder if perhaps Sergio has stayed for dinner.