It was a weekend of disasters. The Gods of love were conspiring against me, ensuring that Valentine’s Day wouldn’t and couldn’t be romantic, whatever the odds.

Things began going wrong when I fell out of the front door, landing on my ankle and spraining it badly. Mr Greedy found me lying on the ground howling in agony, surrounded by empty baked bean cans and yesterday’s papers – hardly the vision of Valentine’s loveliness he’d been hoping for.

As he began working out how to haul me inside, I immediately began wondering how I would ever manage to go out for dinner when I couldn’t walk.

In a very undignified manner was the answer, as I was dragged into Oxford like a sack of potatoes by Mr Greedy and unceremoniously parked at a table in a well known Oxford restaurant full of love’s young dreams.

Unable to wear more than a plastic bag over my foot, my attire was therefore not really up to scratch. I felt old and tired and, scanning the room at the young, hopeful, anticipatory faces glowing and chattering away to each other, far too knowing for my own good.

The only upside was that as I couldn’t drive, I could at least get quietly drunk, which helped me a lot when it came to the reverse dragging procession afterwards back to the car.

The next day – half term – then needed to be spent indoors with all the kids, as I was unable to walk or drive, so by the time Mr Greedy finally returned home from work I was nearly delirious with relief.

Neither could I get ready for our endless weekend guests, so I had to ring one of them and ask her to go shopping for me – in short, to buy her own supper – and then when she arrived she had to make her own bed.

The final hurdle was a big party we had to go to on the Saturday night. I had a new frock, but would I be able to get into it, or wear heels?

The answer would have been yes, but when I got it out of the shopping bag I found it was covered in lipstick and had gaping holes in the seams. Back to the drawing board then.

Finally finding something suitable to wear, we drove off to the party in the middle of nowhere, me talking far too hard to notice where we were going and not taking a blind bit of notice of our surroundings.

But, having had to get a taxi home, I then spent much of the next day trying to find said tiny village and my car, and got hopelessly lost up a one-way track near Eynsham, meaning my son missed most of his football match.

Next weekend I might just stay in bed. It sounds safer for everyone.