A little tip for the next 13th of February: if you need to pop into a supermarket on the way home from work to pick up a few bits and pieces, forget it. You will find yourself in a queue with approximately 70 men clutching flowers, chocolates and whatever Valentine cards are left on the shelf (and there’s usually a good reason why nobody else has bought them). If you’re male and one of those people who worry intensely about what complete strangers think of them, be aware that anyone casting their eye along the queue will assume that everyone in it — yourself included — is the kind of lazy, disorganised idiot who finds themselves buying the remnants of the supermarket’s Valentine stock.

While I don’t wish to generalise, us men are clearly the useless sex when it comes to preparing for Valentine’s Day; only one woman was buying anything remotely Valentine-related, although she may well have been buying that Johnny Cash CD for herself (and you never know, perhaps someone’s husband will receive the treasured Valentine gift of half a pint of semi-skimmed and a wholemeal loaf). The vast majority of men in the queue were buying last-minute Valentine gifts (assuming they weren’t planning on kicking back in front of the football with half a bottle of cheap champagne for company), and in fact, I believe that is the masculine trait: if women are the fairer sex, then men are the last-minute sex. We wait until the last minute to buy things; we wait until the last minute to clean our houses; we wait until the last minute to use the toilet, for goodness’ sake. We’re seemingly incapable of doing anything ahead of time, with the possible exception of buying alcohol; say what you about us, we can organise a piss-up, whether it be in a brewery, our front room or in the street (as is compulsory every 2 years when the European or World Cup comes along).

So here’s to us men; the last-minute, piss-up sex. We might not be able to get you flowers on Valentine’s Day but we’ll certainly be able to sort you out with a Budvar or two.

Oh, and guess what? The “bits and pieces” I wanted to pick up on the way home from work were a card and some chocolates. That’s right — I was buying Valentine gifts at the last minute as well. That’s a twist ending even M. Night Shyamalan couldn’t beat.

Watch as I shoehorn increasingly ludicrous twists into my subsequent blog posts in his honour.