Cheering up a dull evening

The Eve of St Valentine is always a little wearing. You can never hold a decent religious service in the evening, because every now and then the penny drops with a different bloke as to what day tomorrow is, and he legs it out the Moot House looking furtive. You hear the sound of gravel being sprayed across the drive as he belts out of the grounds, returning twenty minutes later and claiming to have been answering "a call of nature" - when we all know for a fact he's been off to Tesco at Kingston for an emergency purchase of chocolates, flowers and sparkling rosé.

So I scrapped the normal evening celebration after Filling up of Beakers, and instead we went for a showing of  an old DVD of "Midsomer Murders".

It was the one where there's a series of murders in a strange, nature-loving religious community in a remote village - I realise I'm not narrowing this down much. But the result is that there's a deal of mutual suspicion about the place. Being an impressionable lot, the Beaker People have acquired the belief that someone is out to get them. Everyone's making sure they're not stabbed in the back, and they're huddling in small groups for self-protection. I tell you, sometimes I reckon I might as well be in the Church of England.