Entry 2:

Dear Alexander,

I'm sorry to take so long to respond, but I've spent the whole morning unwrapping my Valentine's Day presents. Actually, that's not true. There was no card. No romantic breakfast. And no roses from my husband--who knows that if he tries something as cheesy as that, it's an instant deal-breaker--or, sadly, from anyone else. Warren, my boss, did bring back some chocolates after his weekend covering the on-again, off-again Irish peace process, but they were for the whole office. And, of course, they were from Belfast, hardly the chocolate capital of the world.

I used to really like Valentine's Day. When I was in college, I wrote an essay for the school paper on how you should use the opportunity to declare your love for the person you adored but had been too shy to reveal yourself to. The next day, I got a bouquet of flowers, along with a copy of a poem by the lesbian author Sappho. I never found out who sent them, which has always been troubling to me.

I'm slightly puzzled that the papers make so much of Valentine's Day and that the readers of such august papers as the Times would willingly expose themselves by taking out personal ads that reveal their weird and faintly distasteful pet names for each other. Is this a British thing, a sign of the racy kinkiness that underlies the repressed exterior, like when members of Parliament seek out prostitutes who dress in nurse's costumes? But it's a good way to sell papers, I suppose, and I have to admit that I read the Mail's section on "How To Be a Sex Kitten at Any Age" with true interest. (Do I really need to wear "wrap-around clothes and brilliant red lipsticks," though?)

You're English. So please, please, please explain to me what the story is with the topless women (excuse me, girls) who appear on Page 3 of the Sun (there's a Valentine's special today: three at once, for a grand total of six breasts). Do you even read the Sun? Or is it a class thing--only construction workers and taxi drivers read the Sun, whereas you, because you went to Oxford (or Cambridge--I always forget) read only the reputable broadsheets, occasionally slumming it with the Mail and the Express? Does your wife read the Sun? How can the paper sell millions of copies every single day when it prints these ridiculous photographs? Although, to give the paper credit, it did recently announce that it would no longer use models whose breasts had been surgically enhanced--a real coup, I'm sure, for the three feminists still living in Britain.

On another matter, the papers were very sorry to see that more than half the people on the Afghan plane that was hijacked last week decided to go home, instead of staying here to seek asylum and take unfair foreign advantage of Britain's unlimited generosity to refugees. After railing so furiously last week against the Afghans because they wanted to stay, the papers are clearly disappointed that they can't run any more stories about how the Afghans are living in a four-star hotel with fancy room service, because unfortunately (for the papers, and for the Afghans), the remaining passengers are now confined to a holding center in the town of Moreton-in-Marsh, which must seem like the middle of nowhere to them.

It seems like the middle of nowhere to me. And how can it actually be in a marsh (or is it "in marsh" like "in hospital"?).

xxxx Sarah