ROMANCE WEEK #3: Create artificial barriers to your couple’s happiness

Doubtless her colleagues would think her mad. After all, she was not only a renowned philosophical and religious thinker, but had been devoutly celibate for some twenty years now. She had written her doctoral thesis on the notion of the carnivalesque, dismissing circuses as a culturally bankrupt dead-end of the carnival tradition. To make things worse, she was violently allergic to straw, canvas and face-paint and had an irrational fear of trained animals of all kinds.

By the time she reached the procession, she was breathless with both exertion and the passion that boiled in her loins. She approached the diminutive figure who had become her entire world, ready to fall at his feet and declare her love, only to be stopped short. She had reached him just in time to see him engaging in a passionate embrace with a clearly besotted bearded lady.