A Year of Dan & Jo: March

March is a month of expectation – Emily Dickinson

Here is the third instalment of my Year of Dan & Jo series. January and February had passed and March was going to be potentially frustrating. I was going to be very near Dan on a school trip to Newcastle (16 hours on a boat with 130 kids for 5 hours in Newcastle only to get back on the boat for a 16 hour return journey; it’s more fun than it sounds) and he was going to meet us there and spend the day with me, my sister (who was coming along as a chaperone) and my students. After having him all to myself for four days in February I did not know how I was going to bear sharing him in a setting that was, essentially, me at work. I was looking forward to seeing him but not looking forward to how limiting and frustrating those five hours would be. I would be responsible for my class of students, their presentations and the other chaperones that were along with my group. I couldn’t exactly play tourist while kissing and canoodling my guy.

As the trip drew ever closer it became clear to me that something else would have to be devised to take the pressure off of that one day. We had been sending each other increasingly naughty texts, stories and pictures and that would make seeing each other but not being able to do much else very difficult. Impulsively I planned a weekend trip to see him and this time we decided to stay at his place. I booked my flight for the weekend before the school trip and flew to Newcastle on a Friday night. When I saw him, I nearly knocked him over right there in the middle of the arrivals hall with the force of my hug. Quite different from our last meeting at an airport. Then we grinned at each other the whole hour’s drive home.

We only just made it up the stairs before the clothes flew in every direction. I’d worn a low-cut, tight dress for the occasion and it had the exact effect I was hoping for. The stockings nearly killed him. We had a lot of fun that night. 😉 Wasn’t until nearly the end of my stay that I realised his bedroom window had been open the whole time and if I could hear the people talking outside then … Oh dear.

We spent Saturday in bed watching movies with a short venture out into the world for food (we really like food). It was reminiscent of our hotel stay only this time we had two beautiful cats for company and all the comforts of home. We built a bed-nest and that’s where we stayed all day. I think I slept through one or two of the movies, wrapped up in his arms like the cat that got the cream. I was not looking forward to going home at all and the time to leave was approaching at speed.

As luck, or fate, would have it, the next morning I was greeted with a message from my airline that my flight had been cancelled due to weather conditions in Amsterdam. No alternative flight or plan was mentioned and I was left wondering how on earth I was going to get home. I was left without answers for the better part of 8 hours. After many attempted phone calls, tweets and emails to the airline, I was informed that I would be flying home the next day, via London. Work was not going to be thrilled about that. Not much I could do about it but, being a teacher, this meant other colleagues would have to substitute for me. On the plus side; I wasn’t going home yet and I got another night with Dan. I couldn’t bring myself to feel bad about that even for a second.

As an added bonus I would also be meeting his mother for the first time as she was returning from a work trip that night. By the time she got home we had managed to get dressed and make our way to the living room. Once we’d been introduced she announced that we should order Chinese food and then she told us all about the project she’d been working on to get more kids, especially girls, into engineering. They’d been taught how to build robots and this weekend had been the culmination of their efforts. We had a great chat about how important it was to show young girls that tech wasn’t just for boys. Solid score with mom.

The next day Dan drove me to Newcastle and I caught my flight to London. I missed my connection and had to wait at Heathrow for ages and it was super late by the time I got home. I was already miserable that I’d had to leave Dan again and this just seemed to make everything even worse. It also felt extra pointless to have to go home considering I would be leaving for Newcastle again on Wednesday, this time with students and colleagues in tow.

At work on Tuesday everyone was curious about my travel adventures and they were all agreed that at least I got another day out of it. Many jokes were made about “doing it on purpose” but it was all in good fun and people seemed genuinely pleased for me. My sister arrived that evening to spend the night at my place before we set off on the boat the next day. More jokes were made about my cancelled flight and she was excited to meet Dan.

The Newcastle trip is part of the advanced English program my school offers, Fast Lane English. It’s a program for motivated and talented students that prepares them for the Cambridge proficiency exam. In the second year the students get an introduction course and we take them to Newcastle as part of their immersion. They prepare “tour guide” presentations of different attractions in Newcastle and are required to speak English for the entire trip. I had a really motivated class this year and they were super excited. Once you leave the harbour, though, you end up on maritime tariffs so using your phone becomes very, very expensive. This meant that Dan and I were on radio silence for the longest we’d ever been since we started chatting in January. It was very odd to have to say good night at 7pm already and then wait until we got close enough to land the next day to pick up a signal again. Thankfully it helped knowing we would be actually seeing each other on the other end.

Once we’d docked and disembarked we took the bus into town and that’s where Dan met us at Theatre Royal. He joined my group and listened to the presentations that the kids did in the morning. He and my sister hit it off right away and she spent the day being our private photographer. She took some of my favourite pictures of the two of us and kept telling us how happy we looked. The three of us went to lunch together and then continued the presentations in the afternoon until it was time for us to head back to the bus and back to the boat.

We managed to be quite well-behaved in the end. My little trip over to see him the weekend before definitely helped. We made the best of our free time at lunch and even managed a little cuddle outside of St Nicholas’ Cathedral while the kids were inside having a look. Still, it was very strange to say goodbye to him in the middle of the street while my school group went one way and he had to go the other way to his car. It was rushed and entirely unsatisfactory and I couldn’t even feel sorry for myself because my class and colleagues were all watching. I had to be in Teacher Mode and there was no time for a pity party. I was really glad to have my sister with me because she did a brilliant job of, firstly, distracting the kids and colleagues and then distracting me. She was an absolute brick.

***

March ended with an appointment to get my tubes tied. Dan and I both feel very strongly that kids are not something we want and I wanted to make sure we wouldn’t accidentally get one. My surgery was scheduled for April. Dan had already been planning to be here for my birthday and it was a simple matter for him to extend his visit in order to take care of me post-op. This would be our longest stay together yet. Two weeks in Amsterdam followed by a week in England.

Would the honeymoon be over if we spent three weeks together? What would we be like if we were actually sharing the same space for longer than a few days and we had to do things other than staying in bed? I was going to need caring for and I would not be at my best. Were we ready for this?

By the end of March we had only officially been together for a month and a half. We had only known each other for three months. We had spent exactly 11 actual days together if you counted his stay at New Years. Was this madness? We were going to find out.

( … to be continued …) xJI