Our loved ones are worth more to us than gold - but do we understand love's true value, asks AL Kennedy.
We're told it's a good thing, a many splendoured thing, all
around and what the world needs now. Love. Just four letters to name
something commonplace and yet unfathomable. It fascinates us, apparently. Our media earn their keep by telling us Miranda supports Orlando and Prince Felix has just married Princess Claire and Downton Abbey has a new romance (and me and popular culture, we're like chalk and fire engines) but even I've noticed, love sells.
Just as light beguiles physicists by behaving like both a wave and a particle, love beguiles us by being a verb and a noun, behaving like a gift and an amputation, an impregnable defence and the destruction of every safe place we've ever known.
