ROSES are red... and ridiculously expensive this weekend as demand soars for Valentine’s Day Meanwhile, the commercial world pulsates to the throb of flashing pink hearts, giant balloons, satin cushions and uncomfortable lingerie, while the mountain of tat gets ever tackier – veering between the twee, the nauseating and the downright obscene.

It seems that everyone tries to cash in. Like everything else, tradition has become another shopping opportunity, fuelled not by true love, but hard commercial pressures.

My favourite this year is a sat nav “so your true love can always find her way home to you,” – which sounds as though the copywriter was confused between a grown woman and a spaniel. Doesn’t bear thinking about really.

Still, that’s better than some nasty knickers with a saucy message. And probably better than those forced and scentless roses that are doomed to die before they even bloom. A bit too symbolic. Thank goodness for chocolate. You can never go wrong with chocolate.

Real love, we know, has nothing to do with romance. One survey recently, said romance wears off after about 14 months, which is when couples give up making an effort for each other and enjoy slobby comfort.

It’s one of the reasons that elaborate wedding day couples are so often doomed to separate. How can everyday life with its laundry, washing up, and cleaning toilets, live up to a fairytale day that was years in the planning?

A recent report claimed taking the bins out was a romantic gesture. Bit extreme, but you know what they mean. It’s the loose change of ordinary life together where love shows – the remembering, the attention to detail, the willingness to do the tedious jobs as well as making a bacon sandwich exactly as you like it.

Love is remembering to take the bins out. The perfect motto for a pink satin cushion.

MORE than half of teenagers are so bad at maths that they can’t work out if they’re getting the right change, or the best deal on anything from baked beans to a smartphone, says new research.

It’s always been a bit of a joke to be hopeless at maths, but if you can’t do the sums, you’re easy meat for any big business which can blind you with figures and charge you twice as much. That’s no laughing matter.

CATE Blanchett and her husband share an email account because, she says, she can organise his life. Yikes.

Though I know husband’s password, I can think of nothing worse than sharing an account with him – all those endless messages about boring football.

And what about surprises? I don’t want him to see messages about stuff I’ve bought for his birthday, treats I’ve planned, exchanges with our sons, especially when they’re about him. That would be no fun at all.

Cate Blanchett says she runs her house like “a well-oiled machine”.

Good for her. But I don’t want to live in a machine, however well-oiled.

And neither, I think, does my husband.

SO we’re going to have a law to ban people from smoking in cars with children inside. Caring parents already don’t. Uncaring parents will take no notice.

Meanwhile, we already have a law banning people from using mobiles at the wheel. And we all know how well that one’s worked.

JADE Jagger, 42, is expecting her third baby weeks after her daughter Assisi is expecting her first.

Good luck to Jade, who looks great – but it seems an awfully extreme way of getting out of granny baby-sitting duties.