Who are Tom and Iain?
A not so brief introduction
Before we get this blog about two unlikely best mates cycling across Europe rolling, you should probably get to know the titular characters Tom and Iain.
If you’re [un]fortunate enough to already know more than you’d like to about who we are, you should skip to: The plan — all your questions answered What, where, why, how, who, huh?
Tom
I’m your narrator, Tom. I’m a loud looming figure of 6'8 with vague plans to become an “movie bigman” actor someday. But until I can step in the hole that the departure of Brian Blessed will leave in our lives, I put my booming verbosity to work as a writer in the most dubious definition of the word (basically, I work in marketing).
I’ve been living in the hipsterish heart of east London, lost in the echo chambers of “The Metropolitan Liberal Elite” for the past few years. I tick many of the boxes for being an insufferable urban millennial; a fancy university education, a wanky digital job, I’ve spent over £3 on a coffee without regret, and I am an incessant “remoaner”.
But above all, I have an obsession with adventures and maps (an escapsist streak I’ll link to being from the less than exciting Milton Keynes) and a knack for coming up with mad schemes and convincing friends to join me, which brings us neatly to Iain.
Iain
Iain is a carpenter who still lives in our home town of Milton Keynes. He’s a man who enjoys motorsport, engineering trivia, sailing, military history, conspiracy theory documentaries, dubious quality cider, buys his clothes in Asda and can ride a bike significantly faster than most lycra warriors whilst he enjoyably wears a £3 white t-shirt and some flowery swimming trunks.
I’ve called him no-nonsense in the past, but I’m not sure if that’s an entirely precise definition as he does produce a lot of nonsense himself. Suffice to say he doesn’t necessarily appreciate avant garde theatre, the concept of a flat white, post modern art, or general lyrical waxing. One of the stand out aphorisms I’ve ever heard him produce is:
“Olives, when you think about it, are just shit grapes. You give an olive to a child, I guarantee they’ll be upset it’s not a grape.”
He voted to leave the EU in the 2016 referendum, but is hardly a rabid ukipper. I think he voted green in the prior election. So the only way I can really describe his political beliefs would be “WILD-CARD!”
In general, he has what I’ll diplomatically call an interesting world view. I think this may stem from the fact he doesn’t really read newspapers much (if at all), so a lot of his philosophies are original and slightly off the wall (though heavily informed by conversations at the building site). I call his unique insight “Iainism”.
Non-the-less he does believe voting to leave the EU will work out for the best in the end (which naturally, I don’t).
He’s said “really, we shouldn’t be friends.” But yet we are. We’re very good friends. We’re such good friends that he once whipped his cock in front of me without hesitation and pissed-out a nascent forest fire (that we admittedly started).
We’re the kind of friends that relentlessly mock each other and constantly bicker but will always have each other’s back. I have carried him home when he was too drunk to walk, and in turn he has lovingly dressed wounds on my stinking foot.
Ultimately I’ve probably spent more time alone with Iain than I have with anyone else, which would be sad if it wasn’t on balance, much much more amusing.
Where it all began
Iain and I met many years ago. When he was a small lad of oh, I don’t know let’s say 13. He’s the younger brother of one of my best friends from school, Ryan.
And the various travels of Iain and Tom began in circa 2005, when Ryan brought Iain along on a small adventure I had devised during an Easter holiday GCSE revision session for students (and teachers) unfortunate enough to think this was a worthwhile use of valuable holiday time.
I had persuaded my school-day partners in crime: Ryan, Mike and Josh, that being in school on a sunny April day, that by rights should be a holiday, was for chumps.
What by rights we should be doing, was cycling 20 miles or so along the canal from Milton Keynes to my childhood village of Pitstone. There was a windmill there, I promised. It would be like “Stand By Me” but without a dead body, train related peril or any coming of age parables.
So we skived off the afternoon physics session (which did none of us any harm in the long-term, seeing as how Ryan is now a software engineer, Josh fixes jets for the RAF and Mike works as a double glazing salesman), went to Ryan’s house to plan this adventure.
A 13 year old Iain was there, and having nothing better to do, he decided to join us. He often tagged along with us, saying something to the effect of:
“Ryan’s friends are better than my friends.”
But, anyway, this cycle took much longer than expected, and may have been more tiring and dull than I had promised. Upon reaching the destination, Iain plaintively asked, “but’s what’s here?”/ “why did we cycle here?” / “is there anything good here?”
I gave him the tried and tested Edmund Hillary response “because it’s there” which didn’t really wash, so I then said there was a windmill. After saying something to effect of “your windmill can fuck off” which would have made me feel a bit like Don Quixote, but I was 15 at the time and hadn’t really heard of Cervantes.
Iain concluded the whole endeavour was utterly pointless, bought a cornetto from the village shop and was sullenly quiet for the whole ride home.
So, you’d think that’d be the end of our bike adventures, wouldn’t you?
But somehow, in 2012, when I was in the grips of graduate existential despair, in a tedious job writing voiceover scripts for Argos goods, I decided it’d be good idea to cycle from Estonia back to England. Against his better judgement (ie his Dad, Nigel’s judgement) Iain joined me.
It’s a rollicking story, involving exploding wheels, spontaneously dropping trousers, pissing out forest fires and the such like. You can read it in full in this older blog. Suffice to say we both had enough fun that we decided to do it all again…read more about what’s to come in The plan — all your questions answered What, where, why, how, who, huh?
The serious bit
I can’t stress enough that me and Iain do stupid things like cycle across Europe for fun. But if you would like to sponsor us we’d like to send all donations to Help Refugees who do worthwhile work supporting those fleeing war in Europe, Turkey and warzones.
