My monthly columns for the Hawkesbury Parish News and the Tetbury Advertiser have to be submitted to their respective editors by the middle of the previous month, which is why my February column was composed with the shadow of the January 31st tax return deadline anging over me…
I’ve never quite got Valentine’s Day. It’s not that I’m unromantic, nor have I been unlucky in love. It just seems to me that designating one day on which to celebrate your love smacks of doing your tax return on the 31st January deadline, then thinking “Phew, thank goodness that’s over for another year!” before ignoring your personal finances for the next 364 days (365 tin 2016, thanks to leap year – a 24-hour reprieve, hurrah!).
That’s why my latest collection of short stories, “Marry in Haste”, looks not at Valentine’s Day or “the big day” of the wedding, but at what I call the three key stages of love: finding a partner, deciding whether and how to get married, and surviving the long haul. The book contains five humorous stories in each of three sections: Seeking, Committing and Enduring.
If you can’t let Valentine’s Day go by without a gift for your partner, you could do worse than stop by the Hawkesbury Shop to buy a copy of my little book.
Meanwhile, I’d better get on with my tax return…
To find out more about Marry in Haste, visit the book’s page on my blog.
