OKAY, so this year Valentine's Day has fallen on a Friday, which if you're single means you might be expected to show your face in the bars rather than just lugging your duvet down to the sofa, consuming several packets of Hob Nobs and enjoying films in which happy couples get dismembered by a shark/chainsaws/each other.

But hey, even if your doormat got no action this morning, we still love ya. Which is why we're bringing you the 24:7 guide to surviving Valentines Day...

Go out with a mixed group of couples and singles. That way you won't be totally drowned in the schmaltz of everyone else's ardour, but neither will you spent the entire evening in a bitter rant about how you'd rather spend the rest of your lives with your Siamese cat anyway.

Console yourself with the notion that the couples who are making the most effort to be romantic in public are most likely just trying to conceal the fact that, for the remainder of the year, they're planning to have an affair with the florist.

Remember that, although you haven't received a gift, you really wouldn't know what to do with a six-foot padded card, a Don Juan teddy bear or a pair of inflatable boobs anyway.

Spend all that money you might have wasted on a romantic trip to Paris on several vodka and cokes and a large pizza at the end of the night. You'll still be smiling, though admittedly the photos won't be as good.

Don't go for the desperate snog. You both know that the reason you have progressed from drinks at the bar to playing tonsil tennis on the dancefloor in under five minutes is because you don't want to feel single by the end of the night, but you might wish you'd bothered to find out that he's a two times armed robber called Knuckles.

Nicola Mostyn