Anna Turner- In sickness and in health | Canterbury Opinion | Local Voices from Canterbury, New Zealand

Red roses, chocolates, proposals. It was the international day of love on Tuesday.

I've never really made up my mind about Valentine's Day.

On the one hand I think the whole thing is a bunch of commercialised nonsense.

Like most of our holidays, it's strayed away from its original point. Not the whole Valentinus thing, but the old tradition of giving an anonymous card to someone you like but are too embarrassed to express your feelings to (which I always thought was a super-cool idea even though I never got one).

Now, it seems to be about whose boyfriend pulls out the most stops and who does the most gloating about it on Facebook.

On the other hand, any kind of romance is quite nice. Men are pretty forgetful by nature so a day to remind them to be nice to you is a pretty good idea. It's all very well to say romance should be spontaneous but sometimes it needs some prompting. And I do love getting flowers.

But this year I didn't get roses. I didn't get chocolates. I got sick.

We went to a friend's birthday party in Timaru last weekend, where a couple of guests were recovering from tummy bugs. I didn't really think much about it at the time. But the next day, the birthday boy started feeling sick (and not just because of the copious red bull vodkas we had in town). A couple of other guests started feeling a bit off-colour too. As we drove back to Christchurch I thought we'd escaped unscathed.

I thought too soon. The next day, it hit us. Violently. I won't gross you out with the details, but suffice to say it was pretty bad.

Ironically, the same day my big brother was quarantined on his flight from Tokyo because there had been some sniffling Japanese students on the plane. He was fine (actually, I think he found the whole thing quite exciting) but it was our house that should have been a quarantine zone.

We spent our Valentine's evening taking care of each other as best we could. I even made a midnight mission in my dressing gown to get some orange juice and bananas for my boyfriend, just so he might be able to eat something. I'm pretty sure the man at the Night and Day thought I was a drunken street worker.

It made me realise something. Sure, romantic gestures are nice (and always appreciated hint ... hint ... ) but that's not what love is about. Even though our night wasn't romantic in the traditional sense (who am I kidding - in any sense), there's nothing that demonstrates love like holding your Valentine's hair back while she pukes up chicken noodle soup.

Although next year, I think I'll just settle for a meal at a nice restaurant - provided that it stays down.