It's the day every evasive, procrastinating, hesitant bachelor dreads. A day when every woman you ever knew, ever so slightly, is liable to jump out of your past and propose. Plus a few you hadn't known until now.
February 29th is the day when the traditional rules of courtship are reversed and women get to make the running. Under a more traditional dispensation, this was their only chance to seek a hand in marriage for another 1,506 days.
Times have changed but the threat remains. What is a man to do? Hide under the sheets and wait for February to leap into history? We could get into the role reversal spirit of things by doing a little housework. Just for today, you understand.
For the modern bachelor, it's a day to take up darts, or fishing, or any activity that is largely female-free, or we could skulk in the locker-room with the lads. Or else, we could face the music - and the flowers and chocolate - and take it like a man.
Perhaps I'm overestimating the danger. After all, Irish women are abandoning marriage faster than Government Departments are leaving Dublin for ministerial home-towns. The marriage rate is down 40 per cent in a quarter of a century. The number of single women has increased by 50 per cent in little over a decade.
Now, at the other end of the romantic timescale, we read that women outnumber men in the divorce courts by two to one.
In 13th century Scotland, they used to fine men who declined proposals on this date.
However, the tradition of female forwardness in matters of matrimony dates back to St Brigid, or so legend has it. In the fifth century, after her nuns mutinied over the right to marry, she brought her problems to St Patrick.
He delivered a true Irishman's notion of equality by giving the good sisters the right to profess their love to a man once every seven years.
St Brigid haggled him down to once every four years and then showed her gratitude by proposing to our patron saint.
St Patrick said no.
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