As a gift, what would please you the most – a couple of gallons of petrol or a huge bouquet of flowers?

They’d set you back about the same, but the fuel would be the most practical present to give your beloved on Valentine’s Day Like everything else, romance must fall victim to the economic downturn.

No longer will you wake up to lavish bunches of red roses delivered to your door from Interflora.

Instead, your man will trawl the web to check out whether a bunch of blooms at Netto are cheaper than those at Aldi.

This may sound unlikely, but some budget supermarkets have already tried to lure male customers with low prices and the promise that there is no indication on the packaging to reveal where the flowers are from.

If you’re expecting a night away at a romantic country hotel, think again.

As blokes tighten their belts, such treats will be abandoned in favour of the Travelodge. Who needs four poster beds, which I always imagine are thick in dust and creepy crawlies.

Some frugal fellas may take things further and take the tent. At least you’d be sure to cuddle up close, under the cold February sky, if you don’t get frostbite first.

You may have to accept that the romantic candlelit dinner you’d dreamed about is now a bargain bucket under the fluorescent glare of KFC.

Champagne will be replaced with Cava, chocolates with Haribo (apparently some men have been known to propose using a Haribo ring), and scented candles will be snuffed out in favour of low-energy light bulbs.

So what if they make you look like ashen-faced zombies.

And if you love those padded, heart-shaped cards, I’m sorry – even they will now be home-made, as men and women wrack their brains to remember what they learned from Blue Peter and get to work on an old Cheerios box.

Some may go the extra mile and add a bit of lace from the curtains, or if they want to be cheeky, their knickers, to give their greeting a professional look.

Not that any of these recession-busting changes will affect me. When, for 364 days, you communicate only over what to buy for that night’s tea, whose turn it is to put out the bins, and who forgot to replace the loo roll, it is hard to pull off one night of candlelit dinners and gazing longingly into each other’s eyes.

In our house, Valentine’s Day comes and goes without us even noticing – which, on a positive note, is a really cheap way of dealing with it!