Last year, it was the small kindness of a stranger that made Valentine’s day memorable. My wife had to work in Liverpool on 15 February and had a conference in Manchester that weekend. She was 7 months pregnant so it wasn’t going to be her ideal night out. We went up to Liverpool on Valentine’s Day and had a nice meal in the Radisson.

We caught the train up at about lunchtime and found we weren’t the only ones to have had a similar idea: the train was packed. In fact, I’ve only ever seen it that busy on a matchday. We couldn’t find two seats together so settled down at different ends of the carriage to sit separately. The man I sat next to then gave up his seat so I could sit next to my wife ‘because it was Valentine’s Day’. It was a particularly generous offer because – as he was sat on the inside seat – it was observant of him to notice that I was with someone, and he didn’t know my wife was pregnant.

You don’t often get small kindnesses like that – particularly in London. For example, my wife was rarely offered a seat on the bus, no matter how pregnant, and the closest most came to acknowledging her pregnancy was when a female bus driver chided her for wearing heels. But to that man on the 13.17 from Euston to Liverpool Lime Street – thank you. I still remember your kindness of Valentine’s Day 2008.

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