If you have followed McIntosh for any length of time, you will almost certainly have met Dr Thomas.
He appears in holiday photographs, Sunday stories and occasional reports from the foothills of Laundry Mountain. He is the man beside me on our adventures, the calm voice suggesting that we walk down the Rock of Gibraltar while I maintain a dignified distance from its resident monkeys, and the person who makes even the ordinary bits of life feel like part of the story.
Before we go any further, however, there is one important thing we must make absolutely clear.
Dr Thomas is not a doctor working for McIntosh.
He has no medical, clinical, scientific or advisory role within the company. His professional qualifications are not the basis of the McIntosh brand, our products or anything we say as a business. Nothing on the McIntosh website should be understood as medical advice from him, and his title must not be taken as a medical or scientific endorsement of McIntosh.
When Dr Thomas appears in the world of McIntosh, he is here for one reason only:
He is my husband.
There. Important housekeeping completed. Kettle on.
Away from McIntosh, Thomas really is a doctor. He works as a senior consultant physician in a large central London teaching hospital. That is his professional life, entirely separate from my world of wool, knitting needles, crochet hooks, parcels and the occasional skein-related emergency.
I do wool. He does medicine at the hospital. The two do not mix.
Thomas comes originally from Frankfurt in Germany, although last year he also became British. His German roots remain an important part of who he is, but Britain has been his home for many years, and it was rather wonderful to see that relationship made official.
Thomas and I have been together for very nearly two decades, which sounds terribly grown-up and impressive until you spend any time with us.
We both behave as though we are twelve.
Thomas will strongly dispute this and insist that he is actually five.
Somehow, we have made it through almost twenty years without either of us becoming noticeably more sensible. I think that may be one of the secrets. We laugh, we tease each other and we can turn a perfectly ordinary outing into a full-scale adventure without really trying.
And we do love our adventures.
We have returned again and again to Sitges, one of our favourite places in the world, wandered around Barcelona admiring Gaudí, sailed from Spain on cruises filled with music, quizzes, enormous puddings and absolutely no emails, and explored everywhere from Ibiza and Cádiz to Málaga and Gibraltar, Birmingham to Beijing, inter-railed through Europe and even been to India together.
Gibraltar, of course, brought us the monkeys.
Thomas thought they were hilarious. I thought they looked like furry little pickpockets. I wanted to take the bus down from the Rock; Thomas decided that we should walk, apparently considering a path lined with monkeys to be a perfectly reasonable route.
This tells you quite a lot about our marriage.
Our adventures are not always quite so Mediterranean. Sometimes they involve the Horniman Museum in leafy Sydenham. Sometimes they involve lunch at the local pub. Sometimes they involve Thomas bravely taking charge of the post-holiday washing while I pack every McIntosh parcel waiting to go out.
This does not make him McIntosh’s Director of Laundry, Head of Expeditions or Chief Monkey Officer.
It simply makes him a very patient husband.
McIntosh is my one-person business. I choose the yarns, run the website, answer your messages, pack your orders and send them out into the world. Thomas is part of the life behind the stories because he is part of my life—but he is not a doctor within the business, and McIntosh does not draw medical or scientific authority from his profession.
He appears here as the man I love, the person with whom I have shared nearly twenty years and the companion who has been beside me through the serious moments, the ridiculous ones and all the wonderfully ordinary days in between.
So, that is Dr Thomas: Frankfurt-born, newly British, a senior consultant physician in his own professional world, and my husband, travelling companion, fellow twelve-year-old and occasional laundry hero in mine.
He is part of the McIntosh story because he is part of my story.
But he is not McIntosh’s doctor. And he is not my doctor either.
He will not prescribe yarn. However, I, will be delighted to recommend some.
With love,
James
