Jolly exciting

Sunday was the most exciting day I have had in a long time, and I didn’t even listen to the morning service on radio 4. No, what I did was I coxed a boat in a race on the Cam and our time was 5 minutes and 39 seconds which is really jolly good indeed. It was sunny and jolly and jolly sunny and we were on the river being jolly fast and there is little that is as jolly and exciting as that.

But most exciting of all, one member of the crew, a fine specimen of the human race named Tim Harling, bought me my very own baseball cap.

Admittedly, his reasons for doing so were entirely selfish. In the past I have been forced to borrow his cap to hold on my coxing microphone, which has resulted in his head getting sunburned. He therefore saw little option but to buy me my own. Nevertheless, I was touched by his action, particularly by the fact that he sought out what he felt to be an especially appropriate cap bearing the legend “Kinky Tom’s Bike Shack”.

Since then I have been rather curious as to the exact nature, and indeed whereabouts, of the named Bike Shack. Who, I wonder, is the eponymous Kinky Tom?

A quick search on Google only throws up one Kinky Tom, on a message board on the Swindon Town Football Club website. He explains that he acquired this nickname because his name is Tom and he owns a T-shirt with the Kinky Tom’s Bike Shack motif on it.

It is exciting to know that such a T-shirt exists, of course, and I shall spend the rest of the day on Ebay trying to get hold of one. But it is sad that I haven’t managed to find the original Kinky Tom. Alas, the only other thing Google throws up if you type in “Kinky Tom’s Bike Shack” is a strange mixture of amateur pornographic writings including kinky characters called Tom and unusual sexual exploits on bikes and in shacks.

I’m not saying that there aren’t some entertaining reads amongst them, but it’s still a disappointment.