You have a boyfriend. Or at least a boy-shaped thing you have decided goes with your outfit. Either way, Valentine’s Day is a ‘thing’ and you are going to do it properly. You spend 42 hours choosing an outfit, then cry when you still don’t look like the one genuinely pretty girl in your class.

You meet him at the bus stop and stay there drinking cans of shandy if you’re brassic, or head to the cinema if you’re flush. Like sex in a year or two, you feel nothing but relief afterwards at another thing you can tick off your to-do list.

The Single Valentine’s Day
The most common type. You have no boyfriend. No prospect of a boyfriend. Your vagina has been unattended for so long that you worry your virginity has grown back. Over the years, you work through the five stages of Valentine’s grief – denial, anger, drink, reluctant attendance at speed-dating/agonisingly engineered events in rooms that essentially become centrifuges for despair and spit you out at the end with the kind of partner that has your vagina begging you to leave it unattended for another year, and finally acceptance – you genuinely no longer give a sh*t any more.

The Sh*t Valentine’s Day
They can all be given names like as-yet-unmade Friends episodes. The One Where You Find Out He Is Married. The One Where He Shares His STI Results. The One Where It Becomes Clear He Is Still In Love With His Ex/Mother/Special Doll. Or The One Where He Totally F*cking Forgot So It Became The Day You Broke Up Instead. Mine was The One Where It Turned Out He Wanted Me To Re-Take His A-Levels For Him.

“Valentine’s Day: how to survive”: Lucy Mangan on achieving romantic enlightenment