We have initially met on the internet via IRC on channel #England, where for a while we “co-existed” on channel without paying too much attention to each other, aside for recognising each other as ops and exchanging polite greetings.
If it wasn’t for Steff, Iain and I wouldn’t probably be together right now, as it was his humour that actually got us together. By that I mean, that one day Steff msg’ed me asking if Iain and I were IRC-lovers? (To this day I have no idea what prompted this question, but it made me laugh heartily at the time.) Not knowing what to answer him, and meaning to humour Iain as well, I’ve msg’ed Iain and asked what answer should I give to Steff? (I was planning to stay yes, but didn’t know whether Iain would chose to play along if I said that…) Luckily enough, Iain chose to wind Steff up as well, and we both answered affirmative. *giggle* And this is what drew Iain’s attention towards my person.
Since Iain was living with his girlfriend at the time, we started off as friends. Yet that was fine by me, as I didn’t know him at all then, nor was I looking for a boyfriend. We started talking to each other more, and began get to know each other with every exchanged note, picture and e-mail.
Very early in our friendship I was put to a rather tough test, when Iain and his girlfriend broke up. I did my best to be supportive then, because that is one of the times when a person needs all the support s/he can get, but I was hoping that he and his other half would sort their problems out, get back together and everything would be back to “normal”.
For 3 months afterwards we spent endless hours talking to each other and grew to like each other because we got along really well, yet we were both worried as to whether we’d get along after meeting in person. The idea was to be friends online, meet in real life as friends, and if we didn’t take to each other in a “romantic way”, we could each go our own way and continue being friends. But I’d be lying if I said that I did not hope to steal his heart as the time grew nearer to the day on which we were to meet.
I was very curious as to what Iain was like, so I asked him if he could kindly go over to my brother’s house (Jon aka Bunnyz) and fix his computer for him. After the visit, I’ve grilled my brother for all the information I could get out of him about Iain, but all the replies sounded very promising *smile*. I also asked Iain to send me some pictures of himself, but since he didn’t have any recent ones, I’ve asked Hibbie to take as many pictures of him as she possibly could. Thanks to her, I think I’ve got the largest collection of piccies of Iain :) Here are a few of them :)
On 7th September 1998, I flew back London to begin my orientation week at University of London, Birkbeck College, and have asked my brother to come and pick me up from the Heathrow airport at 6:25am and bring Iain with him. Everything went very smoothly. I landed safely, the blokes showed up, and finally I was introduced to Iain by my brother with a line “Exibit A: Iain”. *laugh*
Since I have left Europe for 5 years, Iain’s mission was to ease me back into my native environment, because Jon had to work and could only take one day off. Iain, on the other hand, booked 3 days off work and spent them with me. Since then we became each other’s shadows. Virtually inseparable.