List of those not buying cards and/or red roses on February 14th:

• Richard the Second (not the one of car park fame) – too busy being murdered in Pontrefact Castle (1399)
• Captain James Cook – also too busy being murdered, but by natives in Hawaii (1799)
• Alexander Fleming – too busy publishing a mouldy old report (1929)
• Al Capone – too busy arranging the massacre of members of a rival gang (also 1929)
• Alexander Solzhenitsyn – too busy being charged with treason, being expelled from Russia and revoking his citizenship (1974)
• Husband Klaus – not too busy, but of the mindset that Valentine’s Day is part of a great Hallmark conspiracy to make him look bad

Those sending cards may well have included the eponymous saint. During his captivity in the 3rd Century A.D., Valentine is alleged to have fallen in love with a young girl to whom, on the night before his execution on February 14th, he sent a card signed, ‘ From your Valentine’. Or Latin words to that effect. Or not?

Legend, the mating habits of birds and Medieval notions of courtly love became so entwined by the 14th Century, that Chaucer in his ‘Parlement of Foules’ wrote

‘For this was on seynt Volantynys day

Whan euery bryd comyth there to chese his make’

( Translation: ‘ For this was on St Valentine’s Day when every bird comes there choose his mate.’)

and, in doing so, sowed the seeds for cellophane bouquets six hundred years later. The first ‘cards’, a love letter and a poem, were written in the 15th Century – one in English, one in French – and are kept in the British Library archives (though not on view). But they are there. Facts. History.

So whatever your associations with February 14th – whether the folklore, historical or contemporary elements most appeal – could you use them as the starting point for a story? And not necessarily about love. Up to 2,200 words by May 1st – get writing! .

BSSA team member and intrepid traveller, Anna Schlesinger tells us about using travel journals to inspire her writing.

During over forty years of travelling around the world, my first trips taking place to Russia and East Germany, followed by Poland and Czechslovakia when they were ‘behind the Iron Curtain’, I have always kept a travel journal. More recently I have explored China and Cambodia, Malawi and Mali and the countries of South America including Chile and Easter Island. I’m planning a trip to the Congo next year.

When I’m home I print out selected photographs as I like to have both pictures and journal side by side to recapture ‘moments’, perhaps thrilling and sometimes frightening.

A travel journal is not a diary. I use it like a companion, storing moments worth remembering: road signs that warn of cassowaries ahead, fishermen standing in their boats dragging nets while one foot steers a pole in the water, a shanty clinging to the side of a volcano or the green eyes of a begging child. I am not denigrating the tourist industry that offers traditional dancing and singing, or festivals that bombard the senses with colour and noise to remind us we are far from home – but there is a more personal side that lies in unexpected moments. In shards of patterned pottery along unexcavated parts of the Silk Route, the flash of a Red Bishop in dark canopies at sundown, lianas curling through spiritual ruins like snakes gaining control, or the footprint of a lion beside a tent in the early morning.

A short story is a journey of the imagination and my journal can be its trigger. It can jog my mind into remembering smells and sounds until I am off on a flight of fancy with people I’ve not met before; characters who have escapades and experiences I’ve not been part of – for their journey is my short story.

Anna Schlesinger, February 2017.