FebulousFebruary 2026: The Old Photograph

Barcelona is waking, in it’s own characteristically care free manner. The sun, peeking shyly through a gossamer sky, gently caresses the outstreched arms of Jesus, atop the Temple Expiatori del Sagrat Cor, then the big wheel in the Tibidabo funfair and lower, to the top of the Torre Agbar and across the city, laying its first tendrils over the districts of L’Eixample, Gràcia and Montjuïc, Barri Gotic and Las Ramblas. In the cranes and scaffolding high above La Sagrada Família, pigeons frantically vie for position, then lazily observe their domain. The world below them is slowly coming alive.

Two Cuitat Municipales escombriaires wend their way through the Gotic, brushing and hosing down the paving on Escudellers, meanwhile the refuse and recycling trucks scurry along, collecting the detritus from the day before. Vehicles on Diagonal and throughout the city, more sparse than during the day, nevertheless continue to pulse from traffic light to traffic light. Handfuls of Scooters and mopeds weave between cars, trucks and buses with an abandon that would make out of town onlookers wince, their daredevil pilots determined to make it to their destination as quickly as possible. Bakers and builders and butchers and baristas and teachers and bus drivers, and many more of the army of humanity that make the city live and breathe, turn off the violent urgency of their alarm clocks and curse the early hour, or lie, soaking in the first rays of the days sun, as they contemplate the day ahead.

In deep contrast to this, giggling and blinking against the sunlight, a figure half falls, half stumbles out of the depths of the Metro at Passeig de Gracia. The figure straightens up quickly and, in reply to a virtually inaudible catcall from a passing driver, a desultory middle finger is flicked in salute. Cass has been in BCN for precisely two months, the passing of which required toasting, quite a few times apparently. And she’s loving it.

Kelly, Folkestone

I remember those days

So hot with need, I wanted to beat my chest and roar.

I remember those nights, sweated through to exhaustion,

Spiked with lightning and loud joy.

Then lying panting  and shuddering in ruined sheets.

When did it all go?

Am I now really so content,

To lie alone?

In my tidy bed.

Meg Merrilees, Wales

In Dam Square, chain lighting yet another Benson and Hedges duty free and necking cheap Belgium beer, we weigh up the serious lack of talent amongst our field trip fellows.  Stretched out and balanced on the hind legs of his chair, he turns and whispers, “Thing is, I’m gay, Su!” Stealing his thunder, I croak back, “Thing is, so am I, Shaun!”   He crashes into the undergrowth, a drunken tangle of shrub, check shirt, blue jeans and soft Welsh curses. Whenever I think of his tumoured, brain rot, death, I relive instead that definitive moment of our youth and laugh out loud every time.

Su, Hove

Signs of love

That inimitable twinkle

As you said

“I think I’d get bored

On the other side,

So I’d probably send

Mischievous signs

To those I love.”

Carefree belly laughs

Connected us

As if by an umbilical cord

One to the other.

I wish I felt like laughing now.

Though you would probably prod

Me to, for the sheer synchronicity.

Instead

Your absence

Shows its presence

In new and varied ways.

And it weighs –

It weighs,

Shapeshifter

On my soul

And on my life.

And I wait,

I wait

For your signs of love,

Which I sense

Are more vibrant

Than that burnished orange of yours

Draped around benevolent Buddhas

Transcendent of this gap

Between the visible and the invisible,

Of the seeming space between our two worlds,

And which I know soar

As high, higher

Than those peak experiences

Our souls spoke of

And high above

The steadfast mountain peaks

Of your majestic Isle of Skye.

Oh, but I miss you hon.

Nicola, Brighton

Bright and sharp is the call of the bell; hard and smart is its sting.

by Majikle

The forest is death cold, damp and choked full of branches. I am blind to more than a few footsteps ahead. The leaf mould floor is so thick with decomposition that I stumble dragging my legs through fungal soup. Smells of sweet decay haunt my nostrils.

I have been lost here all my life. Left alone here since I first crawled out of from between her legs as a newborn fool.

Birds shriek about sex and territory but I don’t listen, all I do is keep on looking for her. A shadow eclipses the moonlight and as open my lips to call her name, a whisper of moths flutter out.

There behind a smooth trunk of an elephant shaped beech, she is hiding from me; don’t ask me how I know. I lock on, lethal joy flushing my chest. I surge toward her as angry pine branches tear at what is left of my clothes. Bright beads of blood jewel up my filthy skin but I keep going. I can almost see her, grinning with childie delight at my approach.

Finally I am through the thicket, cut and ruined. I throw my arms around the trunk to feel the beat of her squeal from the other side, but only naked bark welcomes my embrace. All that is left is the scent of her cedar skin to encourage me.

She keeps the game going, lures me on a trail in the undergrowth. I fall into a walking dream; longing to fall against moss with her mouth inside mine, I keep moving. A spider has used one of her hairs to weave a signpost into it’s home, her clever fingers are as deft and subtle, but I recognise every bright filament.

I take off what is left of the tatters of my shoes, to rummage deep into the sticky mud with my toes. The rude sounds of sucking wet soil helping me piece together the fragments of our fading memories.

Ours was a precarious affair full of screeching bitter revenges and feminine fears. Rolling among soily grass roots we slept in ditches. Peeling open our sleep stuck eyes to stare down bruised skies at dawn.

She was huge, fertile as a boar, able to ferret out my concealed things with her curved and wicked tusks. We never had enough of skin sliding against skin, of fragrant sticky nests under arms and between legs. She picked every flower she could find to press between my creases, fragrant petals crushed into rich pungent pastes.

Suddenly I hear her carelessly snap a twig somewhere to my left and immediately my naked feet plough the soft ground running to catch her. I pretend I will scold her now, for playing so ruthless when both of us are tired. Tired of missing the honey whispers of hot breath into silky hair.

A badger eyes me balefully and I know why none of the woodland creatures are disturbed by my presence; I smell like I belong to them.

Why does she not come? What am I, if I am not hers? Whose story am I in, if not a story of us? Where else is there beside the softened mossy recesses of our copse?

I lie down to beg the ground directly, beating the wet soil with fists and feet. “Why?” I call down into a rabbit hole to her “I’ll do anything you want.” I choke on lungfuls of dirty air and whisper bravely as I can “Okay. I give up. You win; come, I need you back.”

As I crouch in the bramble of scrub, wet thorns branch tangle in my hair forcing my head backwards sharply. I whimper, hoping it is her come back to provoke my desire, but she is not there.

She is not coming.

Finally tears fill the cavities of my face. I am ashamed of what I have become. I know she will crow when she sees me crying, after all the tears she shed for me, but I have nowhere left to look. I pull away the last rag of my clothes and enjoy the sharp acid sting of the cold night.

She is gone; I must forget her.

I have never had a key to my mother’s house.

The door was always ‘on the latch’.

On late, illicit nights I’d creep in only to get as far as my bedroom door,

‘Is that you?’, coming from their room.

Who else it might have been always remained a mystery to me, a solitary child.

I’ve never had a key to my mother’s house.

Sometimes, in dreams, the house and the self overlap each other,

Like tracing paper, trying to match it up, overlay the paper on the image,

A perfect fit, house and self.

But I have a key to MY house.

Always the last thing checked: have I locked up?

The small pleasure on returning home, key in the lock,

That particular feeling when the  lock ‘gives’ and I’m indoors.

I would know, with my animal senses, if someone else had been in the house,

A sixth sense finely tuned, now that I live alone.

I’m creating a key to my other house, my self, the hardest handicraft of all.

Each week in those 50 minute hours the key is shaped.

This is hard work, like carving wood in the dark with a razorblade.

At first I tried to take an impression in soap of someone else’s key

If it fits her door then why not mine?

But no, it wouldn’t fit, that was her house and keys aren’t interchangeable.

I’ll leave the door on the latch until my handicrafts done.

So I don’t dare venture far too fast, squatters might move in.

They’ve been here before, stayed a long time, took up residence and made the place their own.

I waited on them, saw to their needs, not realizing I could kick them out.

They were fear and anger, shame and sadness,

They exhausted me with their demands

Fear and shame still skulk in shadows, but will leave, afraid of the light.

Rage lurks in corners, afraid to show its face just yet, in case the roof falls in.

Sadness seems to have taken root, but even stubborn roots can be shifted.

I need the energy of anger to assist me in the task.

Which leaves the big airy sunlit room with a name on the door: HOPE.

I can wait. There’ll be nothing vacant about my possession.

I need to come home.

Carrie, Lincoln

Screen

It is very important, right at the start, to make clear that I am not one of those weirdy mask-wearing trots who want to save the world from rhino poachers or capitalism or whatnot. I absolutely will not be tarred with the same brush as those kinds of people. I have a gift which I use skillfully and only ever to help people. ‘Hacker’ leaves such a bad taste don’t you think?

She was such a slight thing. Looked around under half closed eyes, as if she was barely looking at all. Very pretty eyes. Shy and timid I thought. I noticed her straight away.

As soon as she was logged on I went into her screen. I won’t go into the boring details but whether you use the name of your granny, your dog or, as she did, some complicated collection of numbers and letters I can follow you in. I do it all the time. It is so easy. You would be amazed what goes on around here. Do you know Adele in logistics and Marie in accounts are sisters and use the same password? Their mother’s maiden name I am guessing. People are so predictable. Anyway, I am rambling. Back to the point.

So I see that her name is Teejin and she is here as ‘Dispatch Coordinator’ whatever that is.   Almost as soon as she started her inbox was full – same old same old. Poor thing must have felt so overwhelmed. Fortunately for me she logged into her personal Facebook and gmail fairly quickly. Obviously no one had told her of policy and I wasn’t going to alert her was I?

The next day, not in my own name of course, I sent her a gif of a puppy with a kitten. I new she would like it. She had loads of likes of these on her Face Book. She was obviously not very bright but pleasant enough from the look of things. I was very disappointed to see later that she had emailed a girlfriend that ‘some creep at work’ had sent her it. I am most certainly not a creep. So, I sent an email telling her that I was not a creep but a friend watching over her and as a friend she should watch out for the repugnant Mikey in the next cubicle to her because he was. I didn’t initially reply to her rather curt ‘who is this’ response and I was positively shocked by her ‘loser’ comment! I was very disappointed in her lack of class. Later I mailed her back and gave her a piece of my mind. I sent her something that would give her something to be offended by, you can be sure of that. Just to make it clear that I was not to be insulted, I sent rude tweets from her personal account. Last year I had to do the same from our Head of HR’s account, she had quite a job explaining that I expect.

Yes I was very surprised when you showed me your warrant card Detective Inspector. I guess I had never really thought of computer forensic investigators being girls. I would never have imagined Teejin was that sort of person at all.

I really don’t think these cuffs are necessary.

Lel Meleyal

Brighton

Electricity

Before our mouths met as lovers

we shared a bed

and a crackling current

gently charged between us.

Fiona, 55, Margate

I can hear you talking

Hunched together penguins

Gossip for fodder

Fodder for sustenance

Words, arrows, nouns as verbs

and doing words. DOING words

Like sex

Stroking the names

Opening the characteristics as you feel it, see it, sense it

But not finding intimacy

What is it you seek?

At my name ?

Do you fall at feet

Do you strengthen structure

Are you doing, words?

What are you doing ?

Words ?

You no longer belong to the recipient or the originator

Just time, space , opening mouths, excited breath, and a feeling

That doing words

Has made you one.

anonymous as usual, Kent

Whose choice is it anyway?

I took a towel into the hotel bathroom. You were standing at the sink, leaning, head bowed as if searching for answers. I walked over, gave you the towel and ran my fingers across your cheek, then, playfully down your back. You looked at me, with a strange expression I couldn’t place. “What’s wrong, baby?” I asked, gently.

“What the fuck are you?” The words were spat, accusingly, reproachfully.

I stood, rooted to the spot, dumbfounded. Where the fuck had this come from? I thought back to the night we had just spent together, close, intimate, sweaty, hearts pounding. There was no doubt in your eyes then.

“What the fuck are you?” You repeated the words, slower this time, more menacing.

“What do you mean?” I replied, meekly, knowing full well what you were asking. I had heard this question a thousand times before. I had asked myself the self-same question a thousand times before. I still ask the same question. What the fuck am I? I still go to sleep with the question rolling round my head, like a poison, creeping out of the dark.

“Are you a Transvestite, Transgendered?” Again, the venom was undisguised, the words raw and barbed.

“I’m a woman,” I proffered, almost in a whisper. I wanted to be anywhere but here. I didn’t want to be having this conversation. “I’m a woman,” I repeated, far less sure of myself than I wished I was. Suddenly my nakedness was painful. I felt the usual sense of betrayal as I looked down at myself. I turned to go back to the bedroom.

You turned to face me as I moved and said “Were you born a man?” I couldn’t lie. I had promised myself, when I had the surgery, that I wouldn’t have to lie about who I am anymore.

“Yes, but I am the woman that you see in front of you now.” I tried to brazen it out, but it just sounded weak. I heard the familiar roar of emotion in my ears, which always preceded crying. I felt the tears on my cheeks like acid. The look on your face hurt almost as much as the words, a mixture of bewilderment, accusation and revulsion, telegraphing your inner emotions nearly as effectively as your body language and anything you said.

“You aren’t a woman. You’re a man. You can’t change from one to the other. It just ain’t right. How could you do this to me?”

Wait, what? Do this TO you? I haven’t done anything to you. We have just spent hours fucking. I have given you the most intimate elements of myself to you and you took them enthusiastically, willingly. And now you say that I have wronged you? With this statement, you completely unravel me. You unpick the delicate stitches that I have put in place to hold myself together, each time I am called a name, mis-gendered, looked at askance and whispered about behind my back. Each time my daughter tells me about the bullies at her school, or I hear people scoff about “Trannies”. Each of these stitches holds together a wound, in the hope that it is worth the fight.

I wish I could say this to you. But I can’t.

Weakly, I said that I have done nothing, that I am a woman. I left and went to the bedroom, wrapping myself in a duvet as I got there, shamed by my naked vulnerability.

Then the knife twisted in the wound. I heard you retching, and then vomiting. The thought disgusted you so much that it made you sick. But what thought was that? Was it your conviction that I was still a man, or was it the realisation that you had enjoyed it? Or maybe it was what others would say?

My friends tell me that you’re not worth worrying about. That I should ‘let it go’. Others sympathise and commiserate. “You’re better than this baby”, “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about”, “He’s a wanker”.

But this isn’t about just you anymore. You were only ever a one night stand, my chance to exercise my right to express my sexual being as I wish.

No, now you represent that homogenous mass that is masculinity. You represent their pervading, misogynist belief that I have ‘lowered myself to join the ranks of women’ as if women are simply inferior. You represent the uneducated and naïve, or simply bigoted, phalanx that believe they have a right to decide who I am, without listening to me.

And right now, with my heart ripped out and strewn across that hotel bedroom floor, I simply don’t have the strength to fight back. I have fought, all of my life, to understand me and to be understood in return and it leads me to this, to have all my belief and sense of self torn to shreds in front of my eyes. To you I will never be who I believe myself to be, because I simply believe that I am a woman.

Instead, to the likes of you, I will always be, at best, a Trans Woman, a woman with Trans history, a Transsexual. At worst, I will always be a man.

Is my belief enough to make me what I believe?

Kelly Tonks, 42, Folkestone