Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles attend a Sunday church service in Didmarton, Gloucestershire. Photograph: Tim Ockenden/PA Pool
As Guardian Unlimited's Mr Love (I failed my doctorate), I've been asked to bring you the freshest flowers of love from the news meadow, through which I skipped this morning to compile our news digest email, the Wrap. So dim the lights, put on some music to snuggle up to, and get a load of this good loving I'm bringing your way.
First up, lots of lovely pictures of Charles and Camilla going to church. Camilla, says the Times in a heart-warming love letter to the future Princess Consort, "could still become Queen", if the royal family can overcome public opposition. "She must NEVER become Queen," screams the Express, like a jilted lover.
More bad news, for anyone who's gone to Venice for a Valentine's weekend. The Guardian reports that all 400 of the city's gondoliers started a three-day strike on Saturday.
But there's also good news. The Telegraph emerges as the perhaps unlikely champion of the happy single woman. "Single women," it says, "are not tortured souls desperately searching for love. Many are 'just fine, thank you very much' and considerably happier than single men." And you can hardly blame them; the Mintel survey on which the report is based also says that "as many as one in four single men between the ages of 25 and 40 still lives at home with his parents".
Moving on, the love that dare not squawk its name, again in the Telegraph. Bremerhaven zoo in north-west Germany has attracted criticism for attempting to break up the happy homes of its colony of gay penguins.
The six birds - all male - had happily paired off, were living together and attempting to mate, and had acquired surrogate eggs in the form of pebbles. Zoo authorities flew in four shameless hussies of female penguins in an attempt to convince the penguins to form emotional attachments more likely to result in baby penguins, but gay activists complained that the zoo was attempting to "cure" the penguins of their natural inclinations. The zoo demurs. "We're simply
trying to save a threatened species."
The slightly less photogenic reproductive trail of pearl mussels occupies the Guardian's thoughts. Again the answer seems to be to chuck the males and females together and let them get on with it.
For comment, check out Lucy Kellaway's intriguing tale of the Lurrrve Box in the FT canteen. Or Cherry Potter in the Guardian on why love hurts.
