FebulousFebruary 2026: The Old Photograph

For the Common Good

Antonia Chain

 

 

‘It looks… dull’.

Signposts direct visitors to ‘New Greenham Park’, the once infamous name sanitised. Nature had reclaimed the common now, just an un-fenced openness with few traces of the ugliness that used to occupy the terrain. The derelict control tower looks smaller than Jenna remembers.

‘The missiles left in ’93 but the camps hung on for a few more years’ Jenna explains though she can see her teenage daughter is bored.

Jenna followed Maeve to Greenham Common women’s peace camp, but Maeve was interested in nonviolent protest and not her. Jenna, like the hundreds of women who set up the peace camps around the US military base, was angered by NATO’s decision to site American cruise missiles in England. In truth though Maeve was her reason for being there, though her adoration was unreciprocated, and she hated the primitive conditions of the camp. Her allocated home, a ‘bender’, was a dwelling made of tarpaulin draped over bent saplings. It was cold and damp. She loathed the mud, shitting in the woods, communally cooked lentil slop and the relentless preternatural ululating of the keening women. It annoyed Jenna as much as it unnerved the soldiers.

Walking back from a night out in Newbury, soldiers urinated on tents until it became a childish, irritating norm whilst verbal aggression became a game neither side took seriously. The Americanism ‘asshole’ had been adopted by some women. ‘Motherfucker’ had not.

When Jenna heard the ‘Yo! Bitches’ she sleepily tugged up her sleeping bag. It was the smell that fully woke her. Wood smoke was the scent of the camp – the acrid chemical of burning nylon was not. Jenna was on high alert before she fully understood why.

Two soldiers where throwing the djembe’s on the campfire. Drum stands and kit were strewn around. Hot embers were kicked into a tent and it caught fire.

‘Guys, guys – come on, let’s go!’ A third soldier pleaded with his rampaging comrades.

Jenna knew that most of the tents and benders were empty. A peace vigil was being held on a missile silo inside the base. She had not gone; avoiding arrest the night before she left camp. The distant sound of protest songs carried on the night air whilst the women’s homes – tarpaulin, nylon, plastic sheets, like falling dominos, caught alight.

‘Get her!’ was all Jenna needed to hear before she ran feeling the pursuing combustive pops as another camp dwelling imploded in hot flame.

Instinctively Jenna knew she was in danger. Not the potential danger of the nuclear missiles but real and imminent peril. The soldiers were drunk, mean and feral – and they were closing in on her.

When he grabbed her hair, yanking her painfully, Jenna was terrified. He misjudged and pulled too hard, and as she flew backwards, he lost his footing. Jenna landed on him, leapt up, and jumped hard on his knee. She heard the crack of broken bone and the screams of the soldier on the ground. She ran into the camp latrine area and crouched in the ferns trying to still her ragged breathing, so loud she was sure it would be heard above the flames.

‘Earl, get over here – we have her!’

Jenna recognised the cowboy drawl. He was the soldier who kicked the burning log into the tent, the ringleader.

‘Come out you fucking dyke’.

Jenna heard the rustle of the dried ferns as he stalked her. Committed to protecting the environment, a forested patch close to camp had been created. Troughs, known as ‘shit pits’, dug with sand buckets in place for those less able to squat. Later, when recalling the moment, Jenna could not explain how the idea came to her, but she crouched over a bucket.

‘Do you MIND?!” she loudly exclaimed.

Reflexively the soldier hesitated.

Jenna seized the moment, grasped the bucket handle and swung it with all her might at the head of the soldier. The soldier fell unconscious to the ground, the contents of the fetid bucket soiling his pristine uniform.

‘Hey, hey, you…stop. I don’t want to hurt you’.

The boyish face of the third soldier called, and Jenna ran towards the hole in the perimeter fence, cut earlier that evening to get access for the base invasion. She could hear women keening in the near distance and hoped she could get to them before he got to her.

Sentry patrols had eventually been reduced because the soldiers became over friendly, or over aggressive, with the women who asked them ‘why do you want to kill our children?’ Military training had not prepared soldiers for peaceful direct action by women. Rolls of barbed wire littered the base landscape, but they too were never enough to keep the women out.

Jenna felt arms circle her waist and tackle her to the ground. Fighting like a dervish her elbow connected with his nose and a well-placed heel dragged down his shin. He placed his hand over her mouth. She bit into his palm tasting blood. He yelped in pain.

‘Please, please…. Be quiet. I have something I need to give you’.

Something in his tone ended the fight. Despite the uniform and the actions of his comrades Jenna instinctively understood he was not her enemy. He reached into the pocket of his fatigues, thrust folded papers at her and ran away as women began to arrive back to the carnage of the burned out camp.

The papers, stapled together had ‘top secret’ stamped on the front.

Claudia rolls her eyes when the story was told.

‘Seriously mum, you think you closed the base? Ego – much? What even is a nuclear code book anyway?’

Jenna remembers seeing the news report of the last convoy ever leaving the base. She remembers handing the papers over to one of the camp activists and seeing the story of the leaked documents hit the news a couple of weeks after she left. She wonders what happened to the scared young soldier. Sometimes, she wonders what happened to beautiful Maeve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We stand up for the lookout

 

Joining hands, heart, spirit and voice

we danced on the tip of a cruise missile

demanding decommissioning of nuclear weapons

we frustrated authority by being leaderless, articulate, non violent protestors

 

circling the base a thousand women strong

 

 

Abseiling angels in DM’s

we upturned the Lords’ apple cart

appealing to Queenie’s assumed better nature

flat top suffragettes

we chained ourselves to her front gate

gnawing wretching at rotten section 28

eventually spitting it back to the gutter

where it came from and where it belonged

 

marching ten thousand queers strong

 

 

Spirals of freedom, cultivating womyn’s lands,

women in tune with nature’s cycles, peace, fairness and love

connecting linking rejecting violence against women

malevolent misogyny patronising patriarchy

 

rising up a million women strong

 

 

Forever weaving our web

forever spiraling

forever resisting

Gung-ho leadership invading Iraq

Wherever we started we still come from that place

 

Hush! Put your ear to the conche and you can hear the demands of the Greenham echoing through the years

“We want better.” “Not in my name” “We want better.” “Not in my name” “We want better.” “Not in my name”

 

protesting millions of people strong

 

 

 

Fiona Thomson, Margate

 

When I was eight, I had a doll for Christmas. She was a big smiling baby with curly nylon hair and a mouth that opened and closed. Best of all, when you pressed her belly button, she spoke. There was a flap in her back into which you could put small plastic records like miniature vinyl discs, so that she could say things like ‘tickle me mummy!’ or sing nursery rhymes. I liked the doll. I liked changing the records. There was even a white one which made her sing Christmas songs. I never wanted a baby. I never had one. Instead I got a seven year old boy who pissed himself and bit his arms when he was angry. He tore his t shirt with his teeth when we said no, wiped his shit carefully on the bedroom window and never stood still. He also peered deeply into our eyes as if to understand what was in there and reached across the dinner table to say firmly ‘you love me’. He gave us his pleasures and happiness at full volume, screaming with joy at the swimming pool, eating sausages and chocolate fingers at parties till he was sick and laughing at bedtime stories till his face was red and tears fell. And if I had known when I had that doll the rising tide of love for this boy, if I had known how I would hang over his bed at night to breathe the smell of him, how I would hold the things he drew at school like precious artefacts perfect in their beauty and full of meaning, the places I would go as I followed after him never standing still but running into life. If I had known I would not have asked for the doll. I would have asked for something else. A bumper book of tips for children who did not start as a smiling baby. A kit for decoding messages of desperation, signals of confusion. Something to strengthen my legs for running. As it turns out though, the things my mum and dad gave me, at Christmas and between, seem to have been enough.

 

 

 

Del, Wales

Hogmanay, Blairmore, 2014

By Sheila McWattie, submitted by Jill, Sheila’s sister

 

 

half-gasps. flickers give rise to half-

breaths; recognition. a passing.

lips drying at the thought of almost-gone.

who knows? this one was odd; quick;

often too busy. ticking off appointments.

the sudden was the best: Carol Ann

Duffy on the train. Lesley from America.

Venice lunch close to the Rialto bridge.

Scottish heritage bringing pearly tears

en route to Portavadie……will ye no come

back again?

 

remembering / discovering deep peace.

happy. rapture. from that bank of stillness

deep down: the more stock up, the

more is available……..

 

five pens in my leather bag: a good omen.

catching my breath at what I don’t yet

know. where? who? what? how?

when? all we can do is breathe.

all we can lose is gone.

all we can cherish is here.

all we can see is now……..

(and) all we can know is love.

“Fool”

By Maj

 

I was bullied as a child

Taunted with names as so many are

But I learned to bully back

Learned the sweet thrill

Of pinching soft nipples too hard

 

I grew with the power to wound

Attractive to the weak and the teary

I loved myself powerful and

It seemed I was loved in return

But some people still spurned me

 

Why those others attracted me

More than those who liked me

I could not fathom

A perverse wanting of what you’ve not got

Or perhaps in your heart you just know

 

The self-assured ran from my company

They could see how I always talked about me

How I never admitted to any flaw

How I could never let my hair down

And just naked be me.

 

Finally I was forced to explore

That the discerning knew more than I did

Knew what I was up to, the tricks

Saw through the gifts and cajolery

Were too wise for spider lies

 

So I let it go and with it went

All the glorious swag my blag had bought

I had to learn to simply be nice

To be fussy in choosing friends

To be only easily hurt

 

Now when people try to bully me

I bare my teeth, but I understand

Why they chose this niche

That the journey home is hard and long and often cold

But every fighting dog, one day gets old.

 

 

http://majikle.blogspot.co.uk/

 

 

She-Spider

 

Ninety woven minutes

spread out before me

in seconds of slow shuffling

and jabbing twists of

gnarled and pointed legs.

 

The She-Spider held a rhythm in her

like the egg holds the growing yolk,

and her side-shuffle stretch,

with her precision and balance,

were the harmonies that soothed

the aching gnaw of my clumpy

human-ness, crouched as I was,

knees bent and calf muscles cramped.

 

It was a vast yarn of a task,

easily twenty four inches across.

A chasm to fill with unknown fibres.

Mad and mysterious sticky silk

that she spun and pulled and held

in her translucent but speckle-brushed

limbs.

 

Eight twisted pins!

The central pair a smaller, dumpy couple,

a balance,

the flawless fulcrum.

 

She danced her bulbous arse

from tightrope to tightrope.

Almost vulgar, as she trailed

the liquidy, fluidy substance

of her insides. Shameless.

Abandoned.

And heavy with a hunger

for insect juice

and sex.

 

And the spiral shrunk.

And her rhythm came in shorter bursts.

And she blustered on.

And she laughed and I laughed

and her scrunched and opaque dance’s legs

wove on and upped the pace.

And her web, now almost whole,

quivered in the quilted sunset breezes…

Almost there,

almost there,

and done.

 

And she gobbled a glob of the

fluffy white spun silk centre

and she stretched herself,

centred herself,

eased herself and her philosophies

in the spin of quietness.

 

And I left her there,

waiting, hungry, alone,

and the night opened up

like a book.

 

 

Renée McAlister, Brighton

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WALKING THE DOG.

As we walk across the field,

the low winter sun shines slantwise

cutting flashes and sparkles off the flat white snow.

It creaks beneath my feet but beyond that is a deep silence.

I realise I can’t hear the river and as we approach, I see that it has frozen over.

In the shallows every ripple and eddy has been etched in ice, a fantasy of Winter.

My heart is warm with wonder.

Whilst behind me, the dog kangaroos in and out of the soft drifted snow,

snorting with joy.

 

Anon