Maybe I should start by explaining the nickname. It gives a glimpse into our personal life and importantly for me explains something other than our political views. One of the things I find most strange about posting common sense views, which have now been labelled by some as outlandish and extreme, is that you are stripped of all else. Realistically speaking, our views are less than 1% of who we are as individuals and a couple but it is all that shines through in the current world of short-format content. Something I'm hopeful to change by posting on here. Our life's work is actually our dog breeding - we breed puppies and help owners train their own assistance or therapy dogs. I have a special interest in Autism, ADHD and complex trauma as well as chronic conditions such as ME, chronic Lyme, long Covid and fibromyalgia - but those are posts for another day. I promise I am getting to the nicknames.

When we first met in 2020 I had just been through a particularly traumatic marriage and subsequent divorce. Mick had grown up in an abusive family environment and it's fair to say we both brought some baggage (mine was definitely the larger, heavier luggage which most certainly wouldn't have been allowed on a budget airline). The phrase "triggered" has now lost all meaning. What once meant a painful and distressing flashback is now synonymous with the slightest emotional shift. After suffering years of mental and occasionally physical abuse my mind played tricks on me - like a rat in a cage driven mad by scientific experiments I had lost the ability to separate reality from make-believe and my brain, in a desperate attempt to never be caught out again, took the decision to always presume anyone close to me was attempting to confuse and destabilise me.

To easily and quickly snap out of these moments we came up with a fix - if I was feeling lost and stuck in the past - my brain trying to persuade me I was in fact not safe and being played with and tortured, Mick would simply and calmly say "I'm a nice boy". He would then ask me - "Are you a nice boy?" It was a strangely simple solution which worked both ways - irrespective of who was currently projecting their painful past onto the very safe and happy present.

It's the most misunderstood aspect of trauma - particularly complex, relational trauma - it's what makes it so destructive and damaging. Whilst living through the torture - your brain tells you it isn't happening. Accepting the cage you are in is too painful - so you dissociate from it. Once you are out the healing process begins. The issue is you are now hypervigilant to the signs it might be about to happen again. The comfort and safety of an intimate relationship is the trigger, being vulnerable or close is the danger - despite it being, this time, everything you've ever wished for. Those two words became so important to us both and a reminder of the healing journey we have both shared and facilitated for each other.

The country bit came when we moved to our smallholding. It was my lifelong dream to have a few acres, some animals and look out across open countryside. To afford said dream we did have to buy a place which is a narrow strip along one of the busiest A roads in the area but it was a worthwhile compromise. As long as I don't look left at the never-ending stream of cars, vans and lorries and just look right across the sprawling Suffolk countryside I am happy as a lamb. Mick however is less enthusiastic at times - it turns out buying an almost dilapidated 16th-century thatched cottage with toxic mould (which almost killed me - a story for another day), no fencing, a septic tank and a broken boiler isn't fun for everyone. The first winter we couldn't keep the house above 9 degrees Celsius and as I looked across at a miserable Mick - watching TV on our battered sofa wearing a coat, beanie and gloves - I could see the adventure may have been less than ideal for him. Luckily, as ever, he is a trooper and has learnt to love the ups and downs of renovation life (or at least that's what I tell myself). When he says "I hate this house" - I tell myself he doesn't mean it - and I'm sure in more years than I'm ready to admit - we'll both be glad we took on this mammoth task.

I had first started posting on social media during my divorce - before I had met Mick. I spoke about my gardening, rose garden, dogs and importantly opened up about my lifelong struggle with anxiety. I had been diagnosed with agoraphobia as a teenager - a commonly misunderstood condition. It's a fear - for me anyway - of going out, but particularly getting trapped anywhere. Be that in traffic or in a social setting where it was unacceptable to just leave. I now understand it was a mix of PTSD from being beaten up at 12 years old by a group of lads the first time I ever left home alone - and Autism. My black-and-white brain made a very definitive decision. I am unsafe away from home - particularly if I am alone. I cope okay now - I was housebound for a number of years but now I happily go to the shops and do everything I need to do (with my nice boy by my side that is). I've accepted a much smaller existence than many would consider acceptable - but for me it's all I've ever wanted. I don't tend to travel further than half an hour from home and potentially that has shaped my views.

We spent a few years posting about our life and our love and people seemed to connect to our honesty and our life. We worked very hard to never let our right-wing views slip as I was a chronic people pleaser. I didn't want to upset anyone and I was firmly in the camp of - if you haven't got anything nice to say - don't say anything at all. Then one day I did say something. I said that I thought some of the gender stuff had gone a bit far and it was something I was uncomfortable about - as a gay man considered part of this club, which was getting more weird by the day. This was in 2023 - before the Supreme Court ruling telling us all that a woman was in fact a woman.

It turned out that by being polite and not saying anything before, my silence had been taken for blind submission to the cause of LGBT. Any stepping out of line would be handled with nothing but ruthless silencing that a true fascist would be proud of. I was caught totally off guard and it lit a fire within me. As the death threats rolled in - our address posted online, false one-star reviews left on our business, people going to extraordinary lengths to close us down - I realised one thing. Silence wasn't polite - it was dangerous and would lead to the total collapse of civilised society. It turned out that's how it has always gone - no tyrant in history ever needed to convince anyone of anything, they just needed enough well mannered people deciding it wasn't the day to make a fuss - right up until the day making a fuss was no longer allowed. These people weren't kind, they weren't tolerant and they certainly weren't compassionate. They were an angry mob of pure venom and hatred - it was clear that they had got used to bullying, abusing and threatening the world into silence - which they narcissistically took as agreement. Maybe it was the history of abuse and subsequent healing that made me decide I had to do all I could to stand up for myself and all the countless people who were unable to.

We brushed ourselves off - well I did - Mick mostly laughed at their deranged attacks while I felt genuinely scared. Two days later we posted a spoof apology video. It started with us both looking terribly sincere and stating we had realised how deeply offensive we had been and that we had learnt we needed to listen to others less fortunate than ourselves - then cut to us both laughing. We refused to bend the knee. A few other videos went (relatively) viral and the support started pouring in from other gay men and women who felt the exact same way as us. That gender and sexuality were totally unrelated and that the decreasing tolerance was nothing to do with the far right and everything to do with the appalling behaviour and non-stop goalpost moving of trans activists and the LGBT community as a whole.

The abuse stepped up and we took a few months off to catch our breath, install CCTV and a security system and take stock of our online life. When we came back we made a definite decision to not be careful and just say what we actually felt and hope others agreed. They did and we now have over 350,000 followers who - I hope anyway - mostly enjoy listening to our views.

Unfortunately of late, Mick has been much less present. He is less careful with his language - particularly around Islam and I have a genuine fear that he would be arrested. Unfortunately freedom of speech has slipped and it's slipped hard. We are expected as a society to constantly say what we mean without saying what we mean and it is something Mick refuses to do. It's what makes him such a great man - he is unwavering in his values - but I do not want to be visiting him in prison - partly because without him coming with me - I'm not sure I would be brave enough to make the trip.

Our views have spread much further than gender. What we noticed first wasn't an ideology - it was a clear pattern. Certain topics simply weren't allowed to be debated. With gender, once you dig into the lack of evidence or reality behind the whole framework you see the Marxism at play - the same Marxism which in our view sits behind so many aspects of society. But when I peeled back some of the views held by some Muslims in Britain I realised the same story was playing out - critical views silenced under the guise of morality and a complete lack of desire for the topic to ever be debated. The same was true of immigration and economics. The idea that having a view grounded in reality and facts was somehow dangerous was, for us, a red flag. The moment truth becomes hate and reality becomes dangerous is the moment freedom dies. Society and its leaders have to work harder and harder to suppress views and the slow slide into authoritarianism begins.

This is why we put our heads above the parapet - we both genuinely believe that if we don't get back to a place of freely discussing ideas then a dark future lies ahead. The big question is - is it already too late? Have we gone past the point of saving society without violence and some sort of awful civil war? My fear is yes. We already have people who have been arrested for their views - and for me that is the biggest sign of where we are. Just today I saw Kelly Jay-Keen being allegedly threatened with arrest for criticising Islam. They aren't imprisoned out of some unhealthy love of power from our leaders - it's worse than that. They're imprisoned to keep the peace - because the people they offended may not have stopped at being offended. And when a state starts jailing words to hold back violence, the violence is already on its way. That is what I fear will become the European civil war.

So that's us - the nice boys in the country. Two husbands, a few acres, some goats and chickens, too many dogs and a house that Mick hates. The views will follow in future posts - some you'll agree with, plenty you won't - but at least now you know the people behind them. Speaking plainly to each other is what saved the pair of us. Speaking plainly on here feels like the same thing - just with more of you in the room.