Jack Valentine – the man who must be stopped

If you were of a romantic nature, and you were around in the 1900’s, then Norfolk, and Norwich in particular, was the place for you. Norfolk people would make a lot of effort on Valentine’s Eve to swap presents. Valentine’s Eve was a bigger deal with Christmas Eve, you’d go to your sweetheart’s home, leave an extravagant present on the doorstep, knock on the door, and run away. With a bit of luck, by the time you got home you’d find presents on your own doorstep.

Children would set off before dawn to sing in exchange for sweets and pennies:

And the good folk of Norwich would shower them with little gifts, like a scene out of one of Dickens’ lighter chapters.

‘Old Mother Valentine

Draw up your window blind

You’ll be the giver

And I’ll be the taker’

But, inevitably, there was a Norfolk twist to all of this romantic malarkey. It came in the form of Jack Valentine, who would get involved in a bit of Valentine mischief. Sometimes Jack would wrap up presents with multiple layers of paper, for the recipient to spend ages unwrapping a big box which turned out to contain only a stone. Or he’d knock on the door and run off, leaving an expectant young soul disappointed that no presents had been left for them. Sometimes Jack would hang around nearby and laugh loudly and cruelly at the person who had open the door. Or he might be represented by a dawn scrooge, heating pennies up in the fire before dropping them down to the charming children singing in the street.

Reading about Jack Valentine reminded me of what my grandparent’s generation would tell me every now and again – ‘back when I was your age, we made our own entertainment’. It took me some years to realise that this could easily translate as ‘back when I was your age we were bored out of our wits too’, and, if they came from Norwich, ‘back when I was your age we were so bored that we ended up playing cruel practical jokes on desperately sad people’.

Just in case you’re in any doubt, here’s a sentence in its own special paragraph in this blog: the worst kind of joke ever is the practical joke.

I’m sure someone in Norwich is keen to revive this tradition – for all I know there might be a group of desperate individuals in one of the city’s select postcodes who plan tomorrow to make a real nuisance of themselves to unsuspecting star-crossed lovers. I really hope there isn’t – it’s so much easier to do it on Facebook.