Yes, it’s Valentine’s Day again. There may be some of you out there in need of last minute inspir­a­tion to “score brownie points”. Don’t you hate those bill boards try­ing to get men to buy flowers around town? They are almost as lim­ited in their con­cep­tion of mas­culin­ity as this little beauty:

contributed by Robyn of the Aucklandista

[con­trib­uted by Robyn of the Auck­land­ista.]

Those of us holed up in the Moles­worth pre­cinct earn­estly “lever­aging” this, get­ting “trac­tion on” that and gen­er­ally “action­ing” the hell out stuff all day long, hardly need Valentine’s Day as an excuse to have a wee ‑tipple. For­tu­nately Cel­lar-vate on Moles­worth are hav­ing free wine tast­ing from 4:30 till 6:30 this after­noon, and they are prom­ising bub­bly no less! So grab your office-bound honey and head on down.

I am going to avoid any cliched sug­ges­tions involving flowers or chocol­ate but spare a thought for all the Japan­ese office ladies who suf­fer through the Japan­ese ver­sion of Valentine’s Day where the onus falls on the woman to buy men chocol­ate and flowers. One month later, on White Day the men recip­roc­ate three-fold, read into that what you will.

The top tip for Valentines Day, in this office lady’s opin­ion, is the Karori Wild­life Sanc­tu­ary. They are hav­ing an adults-only night at the Sanc­tu­ary (oh la la) tonight with free boat rides on the lake, bird­song at dusk and most import­antly, no chil­dren. They are open until 8.00pm so get a babysit­ter and get back to nature.
(Ed note: we take no respons­ib­il­ity for any­one caught get­ting really “back to nature”)