That Norfolk Tradition

Five years ago Rat introduced me to a certain tradition, that of Father Valentine. Now every year since I’ve blogged about this and the only sites of relevance that come up on google are the BBC one and some memory shares.

As many of you will know there is a facebook group, ‘Friends of Father Valentine‘ dedicated to prevserving this particularly Norfolkian tradition. A quick run through of the basics: Father Valentine is from Norfolk, he leaves silly and humourous gifts outside people’s doors very early on the morning of Valentine’s Day. In Lancaster it’s almost as if he works in concert with himself as I’ve known gifts to appear the evening before, the morning of and the evening of…sometimes even the morning after!
There are rules, he will knock loudly on your door and then he will vanish – when you go to the door to discover your present then you must shout “Thankyou Father Valentine!”. Loudly.

One year Man of Taste managed to scare some dog-walkers and two years ago the Girl with the Golden Hair sleep in so did it somewhat randomly in a meeting that evening! All was appreciated by the mysterious Jack Valentine! The most impressive discovery of Father V probably belongs to Archie in 2009 where Father V may have sprawled on a pavement in his surprise…possibly…

But why am I blogging about Valentines Day so early? Because the idea is to spread this modern tradition, there are those who work shifts and so can’t align themselves with Father V – I know someone is sending out gifts in the post, there are those who can’t work out what sort of thing he would get – another tradition is to bake biscuits. Father Valentine deserves more than Norfolk! Lets get him out there!

I intend to very much enjoy Valentines Day.