Seven personalised Valentine’s Day gifts to show you absolutely were listening

Commemorate your first snog in Shoreditch or cohabitation flat in Peckham with a personalised map from London-based company Blim and Blum who specialise in a range of bespoke gifts.  This delightful map allows you to reminisce about a significant spot for you and your partner, while also looking rather stylish on the living room wall (and if you choose a view of west London like the one shown here, you’ll also get a daily reminder of why the west-bound District line takes so bloody long to go anywhere). Just one thing to remember: you’ll need to get it framed yourself.

There comes a special moment in every relationship when you become blissfully unashamed of eating mounds of oozing, stinking, sweating cheese together. The pungent waft of unpasteurized French dairy products from an open fridge is, in my opinion, the sign of a very healthy - in the psychological sense - relationship. Celebrate your lover’s love of gorgonzola and gruyere with a personalised cheese board, then head to those heavenly French cheese stalls in Borough Market to buy all the ingredients needed to entirely conceal the carefully selected engraving. Oh, cheese.

Ok, so admittedly ‘a bottle of bubbly’ is possibly the least-personal gift you could give or receive on February 14. But what if you take it up a notch by getting a personalised vintage-style gift box for said wine/champers and then fill it with something genuinely decent? Head to a London institution for oenophiles - like Berry Bros. & Rudd on Piccadilly, for example - and allow their staff to help you select a wine your partner will be raving about for years. Sometimes a bit of tradition is no bad thing - especially when it tastes this good.  

Is your partner always losing their AirPods and then - horror of horrors - subtly insinuating that YOU might be the one who put them somewhere they now can’t find them? If so, then why not try this useful (not passive aggressive, useful) little gift from London-based company Not-Another-Bill. The monogrammed leather cases - which come in three sizes, so make sure you get the right one for their version of AirPods - both looks lovely and protects the world’s most easily losable headphones. It also makes them - fingers crossed - that little bit easier to locate five minutes before you leave the house.

Some presents are designed to last a lifetime. Others are better consumed within 24 hours. Select some sweet treats for your beau from the Primrose Bakery’s Valentine’s Day range and add a personalised piped message. Better yet, if you’re short on time (or don’t live in leafy NW1), they’ll deliver your order to a London address from their premises in Primrose Hill. If you’re tempted to splash out on this year’s Luxury Valentine’s Large Gift Box of cutely decorated cupcakes, your special someone (and hopefully you too) will get to try a mixture of Valentines-inspired flavours and their ever-changing daily special flavours. Yum. 

Personalisation doesn’t get more, umm… personal than this. Bristol-based artist Georgie Webster, who specialises in joyful, hyper-coloured images of animals, humans and disco balls, takes commissions for bespoke portraits of our best feature: bums. Posing in person isn’t a necessity, so you can either send her a photo of your own brilliant bootie or the one you wake up next to each day. Just note that Georgie is a one-woman artistic band and commissions take, on average, four weeks to complete - but even if it arrives after Valentine’s Day, it will be worth the wait. Also, you could also end up with your bum on a mug. 

Know someone who’s possessive of their pudding? Show them you know that bowl of violet-scented panna cotta is theirs, all theirs, with this lovely monogrammed dessert plate from Anthropology. Ok, it doesn’t literally have their name on it, but it does have their initial and there’s something a little quirkier about a personalised bowl than, say a personalised coffee cup (although they’re nice too). Obviously, there’s nothing worse than an empty bowl - even a pretty one - so stop off en route home to procure a picture-perfect dessert to serve to your Valentine in their new favourite piece of crockery. Then make them really happy by assuring them you definitely, definitely know this is not a two-spoons-please affair.