How many days until Valentine's Day?

Valentine's Day is fixed to 14 February and remains, in Britain, largely a card-sending occasion. Tens of millions of cards move through the post in the fortnight before it, a good proportion of them unsigned by tradition, and Royal Mail's recommended posting dates get watched closely by anyone relying on second class.

February is a bleak point in the British year — short days, weather that rarely cooperates, and half term for schools somewhere nearby — which is probably why an evening out has such a hold on the date. Restaurants take bookings weeks ahead and often run a set menu on the night, florists work through their heaviest week outside Mothering Sunday, and a fair number of proposals are timed to it.

The associations run deeper than the modern version suggests. Chaucer linked the day to birds pairing off in the fourteenth century, and handwritten valentines were being exchanged in Britain long before printed cards made it an industry in the Victorian era.

It is an ordinary working day with no time off attached, so most of the celebrating happens in the evening. The countdown here ends at midnight as the 13th becomes the 14th, which for anyone still without a card is the genuinely useful deadline to be watching.