March March marches into pointless history

AS A celebration of the great British tradition of eccentricity it fell a bit flat. The March March march was supposed to be a celebration of pointlessness: a march from the Cambridgeshire town of March held during the month of March.

But in the end only four people turned up for the event, originally set up by Jonathan Partington, a Cambridge University mathematician, in 1979. At its height the March March march attracted several dozen people, who took delight in singing the “March March March March” song while walking the 30 miles across the Fens from March to Cambridge. “It has no purpose other than to be called the March March march,” said the event’s website, and was “invented because it seemed like a good idea at the time”.

Clearly there are too few eccentrics today who agree.