I’m feeling soppy.

We met at his Xmas party, he threw with his housemate, who is my then-boyfriend’s best pal. F had brought me down to London to meet people, and Tim and I hit it off in a pal way. https://twitter.com/GabyHerstik/status/1047552644380807168

This was, if you were following me around Xmas 2012, when I seizured on the couch at the parents house of my new boyfriend and was thus marooned in London on CHRISTMAS EVE. Thank god my sister lived nearby and rescued me bc *awkward*

Anyway the party was fun. We played games and I led rounds of Werewolf, though because of wine everyone kept dying in baked bean related accidents which I found hilarious. I was bad at playing it. Tim’s best friend Isabel told him to steal me.

Anyway, fast forward to spring. F and I broke up, I decided to move to London and got an interview. I came down to stay with Tim and his flatmate. Tim offered me his bed and I thought it was a really awkward proposition (it was not). I got the job!!

I went back to York to pack up my life and got back together with F, as you do when you’re moving cities, and then I became a London person in April 2013 (that long!?). We’d sometimes hang out playing board games and being dorks.

He once tricked me into buying caramels, by lying that his housemates loved them when they hated them, ensuring he got all the caramel snacks for himself one games night. I have still not forgiven him nor forgotten his smug face while he munched on monkey nuts.

August came and F and I broke up proper, and I messaged Tim like dude I got dumped you gotta cheer me up, so he’d send me messages and stuff. Nothing wild.

One day a bunch of us went to the premier of my pals Miles & Tony’s film Whoops! (a v fun accidental serial killer movie) and Tim was all smiley and tall and I was like hmm rude this guy is cute.

He and I had gone off to pick up tickets and gone to the wrong cinema, so had to run through the crowds of Leicester Square to Piccadilly. There was this weird moment of sun, and his hand on the small of my back, and flipping pigeons flying and i felt something calm.

I then set about trying to give signals that maybe I was interested, but the love of my life is a dingus, and presumed that when I sat in the middle seat of a 3 person couch it was for the best view and not for OBVIOUS FLIRTING CUES

Me and my pal @DanPugsleySound were due a joint birthday but I had a big seizure so had to miss out, so Tim offered to come over and watch Super8 and hang out. At the end of the night I rang my pal Sarah and told her I’d met the love of my life which is corny but TRUE

Anyway, post birthday, we planned to hang out again because he wanted to knit and I vaguely knew how, so we went to a posh shop in Angel and he made jokes about wanted the Bested Wool which made me snort, and we hung out for 9 hours. A date, who knows???

We spoke constantly on WhatsApp, and he kept hanging out for films and I was like oh man I’m just gonna like make a move on him. AND THEN HE WENT TO NEPAL FOR A WHOLE MONTH.

Next level ghosting isn’t it, really. Anyway, I was hanging out with other boys and going on quasi-dates and being a mess, and then on the 1st November I get an email entitled “buttlet” which includes The Photo which I must have shared enough times already?

oh go on then

On the 6th November we went to the ice skating rink at the NHM which sounds like a fun and romantic date, if you can ice skate and it hadn’t been raining all day, meaning the rink had an inch of water above the ice. Neither of us know why we picked this.

There were two cute boys on a date and one, seeing I was Bad at skating, whisked me off to show me some basics as he was also on a date and wanted to show his date he was a good sausage (and I hope it worked out!!!), but despite that I still ended up on my arse soaked, twice.

My hat flew off the second time, and as I landed the bell for everyone to get off the ice sounded and I was just flailing on the ice like an upturned turtle. Of course the hand drier didn’t work, which I didn’t realise until I was in my pants desperately trying to dry my jeans.

We sat in the Le Pain Quotidien in the warmth and ate and giggled and I did that thing where your hand is slightly extended palm up which I had read was body language for hold my hand but he thought I’d just hurt my arm.

(You’ll notice a running theme that he is a unobservant dingus and I am a disaster person)

We walked towards the station, past the bookshop, and I thought I will kiss this man!! Except, he is literally 6ft 4 and I am 5ft 3, which presented a problem. How to kiss the very tall dingus!?

(The answer, kids, is to ask. Do not do what I did)

You know in South Kensington Station, if you’re going to get the Piccadilly line, the corridor splits off? We stood there saying goodbye, but my brolly was sticking out my rucksack so he helped restrain it. And then I thought he was leaning for a kiss....

Except he was not, so first the brolly hit him square in the face. I panicked. He laughed. I leapt up and kissed him on the lips and HE LAUGHED IN MY MOUTH. I squealed and ran away.

In fact actually it was worth than that because in those few seconds he somehow went “mmmmm!?” like a parent mime-eating their child’s imaginary food and THEN laughed in my mouth.

(Yes I will absolutely be reusing this in a romance novel in the future.)

I sat on the Piccadilly line and was thankful there was no signal for at least a few stops so I could consider the fact that actually I was quite possibly having some kind of episode, and then I sent him a very long “sorry I smashed your face and then kissed it!?” message.

He apologised for the laughing and the MMMMMing, citing surprise as the cause for both, and proposed that we scheduled in some brolly-less Proper Kissing Time so no one would be surprised.

Anyway we count that day as the day we got together as it was pretty set then. A few months later we moved in together. This year we’ll have been together 5 years as we move into the flat. Right now he’s doing some very loud open mouth snoring.

He is without doubt the best person: extremely kind and thoughtful and so very good. He is so clever in ways I am not, and loving and gentle and tall. He never made me feel like my disabilities were my fault. He has always made me feel the most loved. He is ridiculously pretty.

The Harry Potter sidecar photo is from our second date, only a week or so later, and the photographer was crying laughing so much she could barely take the photo.

Also yes I’m wearing a cheese dome as a hat in the first photo and the answer to the question you are asking is “wine”

Gets me every time ahahhaahha

Anyway twitter, this has been your bedtime story: A Tale of Two Dorks. Another time I’ll tell you The Accidental Sex Talk, or Life-Saving First Date (not featuring Tim), or The Time I Fell Through a Boat. I have many very silly stories.

I don't have a soundcloud, but I do have a crowdfunding book project featuring exclusively autistic people that you should check out https://twitter.com/littlehux/status/1013026228670992389

I realised I’ve missed a fairly crucial part of the story: several people referred to Tim as “tall and pretty” when I said I had a crush. But one of them told me Tim had brushed off a girl really harshly and so told me to be on my guard. Tim has ZERO RECOLLECTION of this.

I thought hm yeah maybe he’s just being cagey, but I am Tim’s first long term relationship and as far as he was aware only the second person to voice they were interested in him. Turns out several girls had been flirting with him for years and he had absolutely no idea. Dingus.

This part is crucial because it delayed me telling him I had A Feeling for him, even after our birthday hang out when we talked about sex workers rights and gender presentation and video games and I was swooning, and then he was in Nepal and I was mad about it.

We worked out one instance of this in that a girl asked him if he wanted to go for a drink together after something else and he said no, bye!!!! because he didn’t like drinking or pubs. my dingus.