THAT FAMOUS MARCH
March is more than just a monthit’s an annual test of one’s sanity.
Especially when your romance is as unpredictable as the British weather: one moment it’s spring, the next it’s apocalyptic, or perhaps someone simply decided to pour grey paint over the whole town.
The love story between Oliver and Daisy started in March, which explained everything.
Other couples met beneath a shower of cherry blossom; these two collided when Oliver splashed Daisy with a puddle.
Instead of crying, Daisy hurled a slushy snowball at his windscreenone that, according to Oliver, could have contained a brick.
It was love at first ricochet.
March in their town was the season when romance stepped out in wellington boots.
“Shall we go for a stroll?” Oliver whispered sweetly into the phone.
“I dont own a boat,” Daisy replied, perfectly reasonably.
“Ill carry you,” he promised.
Their dates often felt more like SAS training exercises in boggy terrain.
Oliver heroically hauled Daisy across lakes of melting mush, while she held over him an umbrella that threatened to fly off to Brighton, along with their hopes of dry feet.
“You know,” Oliver mused, sloshing about in his right boot, “this is the depth of feeling.
Were a pair of ducks in the park, really.”
“Ducks flew to warmer shores back in October, Oliver.
Were more like two careless penguins who missed Antarctica,” Daisy countered.
Their odd affection showed in little things.
Deep romance in March wasnt a ring hidden in a champagne glass (thered only be an ice cube in it anyway), but the last sachet of Lemsip split in half.
“This is for you,” Oliver said solemnly, handing her half of the yellow powder.
“Its coming straight from my heart.”
“Whys it covered in cat fur?” Daisy raised an eyebrow.
“It’s seasoning.
For immunity.”
Daisy gazed at himwearing a daft bobble hat, red nose, and wild glint in his eyeand knew: this was it.
The universes code had glitched and paired two people able to laugh with a fever (which, for a man, is basically a brush with death).
The most romantic moment came at the end of the month.
The sun finally emerged, revealing what winter had so diligently concealed.
The town looked like a set from a film about the rebellion of council workers.
They stood on the bridge.
Wind whipped at thirty miles an hour, determined to snatch Olivers jacket.
“Daisy,” he began, yelling over the roar of spring, “I wanted to say Youre like like the first snowdrop!”
“So pale and pushing your way through rubbish?” Daisy clarified, fixing her scarf, which had already circled her head three times.
Oliver hesitated.
“No, so resilient.
Despite this bloody March, youre still here with meeven after I dropped your phone in a snowdrift that turned out to be a puddle.”
Daisy looked at him, sneezed (in sync with the passing tram), and laughed.
“All right, hero-snowdrop.
Lets head home.
I bought a kilo of lemons and found a recipe for mulled wine.
If we survive this Sunday, Ill mark our love as a historical landmark.”
They walked the street, dodging icebergs on the pavement.
Their love truly was deepprecisely knee-deep, which was the amount of water in their building entrance.
But it didnt matter.
Because in ‘that famous March’, its not about spotless shoes; its about whose hand youre gripping as you both slide toward inevitable April.
Another year passed.
A new ‘famous March’ arrived.
The town once again looked like a low-budget remake of Waterworld, funded on a few pennies.
Oliver and Daisy stood before a massive puddle that overnight had conquered their front yard.
Neighbours hovered by the fences, tiptoeing along the edge of ice.
An elderly gent peered hopefully at the sky, expecting maybe a rescue helicopter, or at least a pigeon carrying an olive branch.
“Oliver,” Daisy said, glancing at her brand-new white trainers, purchased in a moment of baseless optimism, “we are grown-ups.
We have a mortgage, jobs, and annual reports.
We cant just”
“We can,” Oliver interrupted.
Like a magician, he produced two bright yellow wellies with cheerful duck prints from behind his back.
“Bought them yesterday.
Your size.”
Daisy sighed.
This was the kind of ‘deep love’ when your partner knows not only your shoe size, but your exact willingness to embrace silliness.
Five minutes later, they stood smack in the middle of the puddle.
Water sloshed, the sun sparkled on dirty ice, and passersby observed them as if theyd escaped from some very kind but very secure institution.
“You know,” Daisy said, leaping and raising a spray that soaked a neighbour in a mink hat, “this is the best way to kick off spring.”
“Its the Yellow Duck code,” Oliver replied gravely.
“The universe tried to drown us in misery, but weve got waterproof heels.”
There they stood, amid the springtime chaosridiculous, drenched, but perfectly in tune.
A peculiar love, meaningful only to those who can find the bottom where others see only mud.
Oliver hugged her, and at that moment the sun burned so fiercely steam began to rise from their jackets.
“Were on fire,” Daisy observed.
“No,” Oliver grinned.
“Weve finally reached the right temperature.”
And in that famous March, they learnt the most important lesson: if life throws puddles at youbuy the brightest wellies, and learn to dance in them.
