Some people are hopeless romantics – Dom’s just hopeless
I’m pretty bad at dating; usually I get really nervous and drunk, so that everything I try seems to backfire spectacularly. I put it down to the pressure. I know it may sound weasily, but girls are pretty demanding normally and coming up with decent Valentine’s Day ideas is like throwing petrol on the bonfire.
That’s why I’d like to share with you the revolutionary idea of SLEP. Standing for Systematically Lowering Expectations Permanently, this program is designed to slowly crush your girlfriend’s high standards to the point that even the tiniest gesture makes you look like Don Juan. It’s genius! It means you can do Valentine ’s Day without raising your game at all.
And where better to do this than London, right? After all its one of the world’s most romantic cities under Paris, Rome, New York, St Petersburg, Sydney, Istanbul, Berlin, Tokyo, Birmingham, Ancient Sparta and Madrid; a city of bright lights, culture and 24-hour bowling. It can’t be that hard to come up with things to do on Valentine’s Day that don’t require that much effort.
A Laundrette
Remember that film 40 Days and 40 Nights? Yeah, I know it’s terrible, but you need to model yourself on Josh Hartnett in that movie – his character is the Einstein of getting girls.
One of his biggest coups is taking his prospective girlfriend for a date in a laundrette, where he sits in mysterious silence while his lady friend babbles on about her life as an internet porn nanny or something, because, you know, girls like good listeners. It sounds pretty hard to pull off, but he just sits there smiling like he’s playing some Jedi mind trick to make her fancy him. Hell, by the end of the scene, I even fancy him a bit.
Luckily, this is pretty easy to do for yourself – there’s plenty of Laundromats in London, especially in Bethnal Green and Shepherds Bush, and as an added bonus you can get your clothes cleaned at the same time.
A Cemetery
If Oscar Wilde and Morrissey have taught us anything, it’s that cemeteries can be romantic places. There’s nothing quite like a romantic stroll through row upon row of dead people, especially when you throw in a couple of bottles of 20/20 and the promise of a Gregg’s pasty on a bench.
Luckily there’s plenty of graveyards to choose from in London, and some of them are really nice. But there is a snag: they’re only really do-able in the day, so this isn’t really an option if you’ve got a life in any way. Luckily Valentine's falls on a Sunday this year, so this rarely realised date is very much back on the agenda. 
A Bus Ride
Getting back to that movie 40 Days and 40 Nights, and in another scene Josh takes his love interest for a day of riding buses where they spend a ‘lovely’ few hours holding shopping for old ladies, laughing at drunks and talking about feelings and stuff. See, I told you this man is a genius.
Again, this is very much within the realms of possibility for people with any budget and time scale. Simply head down to your nearest bus stop and hop on the nearest bus for an afternoon of kooky fun that will make you look like you’re one of those spontaneous romancers who is just a fountain head of craaazy but loveable ideas.
A couple of words of warning: Don’t try this on any of those late night bendy buses like the 25 or the 149, unless the idea of being puked on whilst listening to a bunch of pissed up fashion students sing Beatles songs is your idea of a good time. Similarly try and think about where you’ll end up – let’s just say getting off a bus in the middle of Wapping Market is hardly the equivalent of stepping off a gondola in the centre of Venice. Try and head towards Kew Gardens instead.
Feeding Small Cute Animals
There has long been a correlation between cute animals and getting laid – in fact if you were to draw a graph plotting the relationship of chances of scoring vs. the cuteness of animal you’ll find the relationship between the two is almost directly proportional. Run that data through a chi-squared analysis and I think no one will be surprised to see that sucker pump out a significant result.
Therefore any date that involves cute animals is bound to be a success, being that it’s scientifically proven and all. Luckily London has plenty of opportunities to feed animals, from birds in this park and penguins here, to feeding cute little squirrels in your local park. Just don’t do the Shark Talk and Feed at the London Aquarium. We all know they’re fascinating, but have you seen sharks eat? It’s disgusting.
Images courtesy of Poelog and James Cridland
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