Affairs of the Heart...vintage Valentines

It's my week at Lucky Snapping Over here and I have been lucky enough not to have duplicated anyone else's ideas, it was always a gamble to talk about Valentine's and all things hearty and flowery on week three of February!  But don't worry, as the week progresses I do have some extra ideas beyond the 14th February but wanted to see what everyone thinks first!


Sisters in 1969, in their mid-40's



I have an old story about a secret Valentine. 

 Way back in about 1944 my Dad would have been about 22 and serving with the Royal Navy in the second war. He was courting my Mum, a few years younger, who lived in the village about three miles away. They would be married in 1946.  Now my Mum had an older sister Edna, a brusque busy kind of woman even then, quite formidable to me as an Aunt in the years to come and I guess similar in her ways as a young woman. 

 

She wasn't a very relaxed kind of girl and as far as I know she wasn't really interested in boys, or they in her I imagine, though I may be doing her a great disservice here.
Mum told me that she and Dad used to meet for a walk down the country lanes after Chapel on a Sunday evening and often went along with other couples like Gary and Betty, Mum's oldest friend from school.  They used to keep it quiet and 'don't let Edna know' because she would tell their Mum... ahhh,  life was so risquee in those days don't you think! ;-)

Edna never married and was a stalwart of the village, especially the Methodist Church and the school where she was a caretaker in later years.  I was only talking with Colin about her yesterday and how Mum only knew of perhaps one possible suitor, but somehow that wasn't right, one of them wasn't good enough for the other....or something, the kind of things which bothered people in those days.  I think he may have been a minister's son, or maybe she once 'held a torch' for a minister's son, either way she would have made a great preacher's wife, after all she was kind of married to the Chapel in her own way in any case. 
 
Are you getting a feel of Walton's mountain here, all Mrs Godsey and all that?

In later years she cared for my Gran and kept busy with all kinds of village relationships through the chapel or WI and several part-time jobs working for old people she once worked on the farms for.

Well one Valentine's Day Aunt Edna received a small envelope. Inside was a matchbox with (I think) a heart drawn on a piece of paper, or maybe a note, I'm not sure.   Amazingly the postmark was smudged so she had no idea where the package had originated. Well it was the subject of much discussion, and I am sure even for a 'spinster of the parish' a fair bit of excitement in a world scarred with the War Years.

Well Aunt Edna never knew who had sent the Valentine's token.... not until many years later, the late 60's around the time my dad died, did she find out he had sent it down from Scotland when he was being posted there for trips to Iceland. It must have been quite a lot of fun for him, mum and probably the people around them to see her so bemused as to the origins.

Not quite the big deal Valentine's tease we get these days, but just as effective.