Vladimir Putin is the reason why I have a girlfriend and as weird a statement as that sounds, it’s absolutely true.
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, a social club in Balham, South London, called the White Eagle Club opened its doors and became an aid centre.
A couple of weeks after it opened, I decided to join the hundreds of volunteers because like many people I wanted to help and recognised that doom-scrolling was doing nothing but making me sad.
Before and after work I went almost every day helping out. A few weeks after I joined the White Eagle Appeal it moved into new premises in an abandoned shop in Tooting Broadway.
In late March, a large box was thrown at my head by a fellow volunteer.
Her name was Kamilla, a Russian volunteer who worked as part of the sorting team which then gave the boxes and bags to us on the stacking team to store next door.
As un-romantic as this sounds, it wasn’t love at first sight. Both Kamilla and I started volunteering at the White Eagle to help because we both felt doing a little was better than doing nothing. Romance was the furthest thing from our minds.
Of more prominence was keeping up the pace as vans and trucks pulled in and out of the White Eagles Appeal’s Tooting base to take aid to Ukraine or to a secondary loading dock in another part of London.
At one point we didn’t have any vans to do the heavy lifting so a fellow volunteer and I filled the gap with my MINI Clubman and a Ford people carrier.
They were long and busy days because like many of the volunteers, I was fitting this around work, but more surprising was to come.
As the White Eagle continued to grow in prominence, a community of volunteers began to form and within that community, friendship groups developed and, inevitably, questions of romance began to emerge.
Until I was asked, I genuinely hadn’t thought about romance with any volunteer, it seemed like something that could only go horribly wrong and result in some awkward rebuilding of a promising friendship.
Still, when I was asked, I admitted to my closest friends that there were two people who I found objectively attractive, and of those two, who I would ask out. I later discovered that when my girlfriend was asked the same question, I had also been an option.
However, it wasn’t until a random Instagram follow and a lamppost that we actually properly started talking.
I had been on holiday with friends abroad when I saw that Kamilla sent me a follow request. Although I later claimed I waited about 10 minutes before following back, in reality, it was apparently a matter of seconds.
We started talking and after a cancelled flight, a bout of Covid, and a burst eardrum (all of which happened to me), we finally went on our first date in July 2022.
Since then, we have supported each other through some tumultuous times, some happy times, and some downright strange times, but despite a lot of chaos we still spend most of our time laughing.
Even better, she’s even slowly getting into cars; I’ve always been mad about motorsport and all things automotive, so it’s great to be able to share that passion with someone.
