FebulousFebruary 2026: The Old Photograph

Pound Lane

Sleepless in bed I take an imaginary tour around my childhood garden, pass the lorry-sized tyre-swing, peek in at a wren’s nest full of eggs. My dad crouches down to the ground listening to radio 4 while he grubs out apple trees every sunny Saturday morning I sit and watch still worried now about killing food trees. 

I wander on til I arrive at the dense laurel hedge that dominates the edge. There are glasses clinking, people laughing and the sounds of a party going on in the garden beside ours. I’m confused because Mr and Mrs Button live next door, my pretend grandparents, whose house smells of fresh yeasty bread and something strange and fusty. 

I gaze at the evergreen, hurt by the noise, still too only-child to bear missing out, even now. Everywhere is the ‘lily of the valley’ smell I crave, but those party noises. Gone are the knot puzzles Mr Button would quietly help me solve, with patient stretch and soft pull however much I strained to tighten the string and the glass of barley sugar water Mrs Button handed me that I never did drink.  

What stays is the sound of new owners celebrating and the painful price of change.

Maj Ikle

Wales

Yes, her hair was cut so short her sister would put a scarf over it for her to cover it up. 

Yes, her doctor called her ‘fat’. 

Yes, she didn’t really have much of a voice back then. 

Yes, she lacked confidence. 

Yes, on the way to school she was tormented and bullied because of her uniform. 

I told that girl many times since she will never be pushed about. 

I told her grow your hair, ‘that’s right’ long and curly. 

I told her you will lose the puppy fat and she married in a size 12 dress. 

I told her she may have comfort ate then, but all would be okay. 

It’s not easy when your dad dies when you are only 8 years old. 

I told her it would be okay. 

One day she would look back and see the horror by the haters and sigh. 

I told you to work hard to help and support others as they faced similar demons in their youth. I told you so and you did.

Anne Lamb, Thanet

If only you could hear me now…

You recognise me but don’t know why or from where.

I know you, better than you know yourself. But your ego will find it difficult to believe that. Calm your ego!

When I tell you I was you, that I felt the things you feel, that I have seen the things you see and have seen, the mist thins, but doesn’t clear.

It is because I am you, not as you are, but as you will be. Or to be precise, yet simultaneously vague, as we may be if you make the same choices I have made. I don’t write to tell us not to make those same choices but to give us information I wish I had at the time. And to tell us that we’ll be ok, whichever choices we make!

I should start, as we have become prone to pontification when passing on knowledge!

Love is as important as we think it is, but not a finite resource! Our capacity to love is boundless. The key is love without limit or expectation. We are genuinely loved in return, by those who give it freely, without expectation of their own.

Do not abuse the gift of love freely given. Ever.

Be honest, even if it hurts. Lies only hurt more! And lying to ourself is just foolish!

Always have plan ‘B’, because plan ‘A’ will inevitably go wrong. It helps to have plans ‘C’ to ‘Z’ as well, but we rarely find time to make those!

Before we can love others, learn to love ourself. We are good enough! We are stronger than we think. We are not alone!

Be kind to ourself! There are enough bullies in life, don’t be our own bully too!

When our faith in humanity wanes, look for the good instead of berating the bad. It is always there. It just takes longer to see sometimes.

Hate only damages us, not anyone else!

Our parents have always loved us and always will, but they are not always right, we don’t always need their approval. We can make decisions on our own! They might well be the wrong ones, but we learn quickly! Trust me on this!!

Spend more time with family!!! They will be gone sooner than we think, and we will miss them more than we can imagine!

Read as much as we can! Read Shakespeare, Keats, Kerouac, Dickens, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Orwell, Hosseini, Capote, Marquez, Twain, Austen, Woolf and as many more as you can. Explore literature from across the world, to broaden our mind. Travel as much as we can, learn more languages, and immerse ourself in other cultures as much as we can.

Read religious texts so that we understand them, the Quran, Hadith and Tafsir, the Bible New and Old Testaments (And read more than just the King James Bible), the Tanakh and the Talmud, the Vedas, Upanishads and Puranas, the Tripitaka and the Sutras, the Agams, the Guru Granth Sahib, the Tao Te Ching, Zhuangzi and the Daozang. We can’t argue with religion unless we know what they believe.

Understand, who we love, who we kiss, who we fuck, should NEVER be something we are ashamed of. Be true to how we feel! Read Kinsey but keep an open mind. Study queer theory, also keep an open mind. In fact, just keep an open mind. 

Don’t hide our feelings about our gender. We were born in the wrong one. Trust me, when I say that trying to live with it in our head doesn’t work! We cannot control it, ever! Learn about it, teach people about it. Do this much sooner! People close to us aren’t cruel but can be naive. Help them to understand. Hiding it from them costs us far too much in the end!

And finally, there will likely be a guy called James… don’t fall for his crap… he’s a liar, and he’ll use us… basically he’s a massive douche! Avoid him, for the sake of our emotions and our bank balance!!

Kelly Tonks, 50, Canterbury.

Multicoloured buggies

Brightly coloured chalks, 

An endless trail of sweet talkers

Encouraging me to walk. 

Standing was easy, walking is hard

What’s harder is not knowing if I can get that far. 

Crisp, white and beige walls, 

I’m waiting to see if I can finger-paint them. 

Mum’s eye is on me so probably not. 

Don’t send me to preschool I’m all you’ve got! 

I don’t have many friends, making them is hard. 

What’s harder is not knowing if I can get that far.

I earned my handwriting pen today 

All joined up letters 

Challenging my best friend 

to see if she can join them better. 

The teacher keeps telling me off, telling me getting to secondary is hard

What’s harder is not knowing if I can get that far. 

I lost all of my friends 

revision is causing so much strain

I argued through another year

Most of my friends came back again

Exams are approaching

bringing a growing cloud of pain. 

Dragging through year eleven, heavy on my brain. 

I don’t much like it here, and getting to this point was hard. 

But I do wish I could go back and promise me I would get this far.

Erin Lobb

Horsham

THE HAPPIEST DAYS OF YOUR LIFE?

Yesterday,

Reluctantly participating

In post committal chatter

(out of sight, out of mind)

I was assailed:

“You don’t remember me do you?”

bubbled a jowl-faced woman,

who held a ghost of familiarity

upon her provincial and so workaday face.

The assault continued:

“Remember Bidgood?” (Bomber)” “Bloxham” (Beak) 

How could I forget?

Fascists to a man they were, we realise now….

And so we reminisced

 upon their put-downs, breakdowns, mood swings

The torrents of such physical and verbal blows

That now, in legal terms, would constitute assault.

And then…

“That poem… ooh you read so well”

“was it …..Yours?” 

And there, I suspect, her sentiment and surprise were really quite authentic;

“I never knew old Kingham (English)

Taught us so well” she bubbled on.

“He didn’t! “I smiled

Yet stepping back

I saw within that quip

There lay a world-sized grain of truth. 

That red brick building, constituting school,

Whose architectural ugliness

Gave me…

:Misery, fear, and the daily milk of mocking humiliation;

: Also gifted, a Golding-like contempt

for the brutality in adolescence that constitutes my sex.

The all (that ALL that is now me) 

The sensibility and the sense of one, 

THAT

came much later,

Through taking a different path in life.

And them? Those fellow mourners?

I stared back at this crowd of careless school mates?

Whom I knew not then and never will know now,

And saw the linear lines that stretched back to their youth, 

-A continuity that I myself quite lack. 

And so, whilst passing through the gravestones,

Treading my way back to an eager yet reluctant state of one,

I glanced right back,

Back down the hollow tunnel of my past

 And saw a person that was barely me.

I seemed more like a story that I’d read

In time gone by, concerning someone else.

  - A tiny terror of a child 

That hardly mirrors me at all

However, all in all, I was quite reassured that,

In those forming years of life

For all the misery that ensued,

They were, without a shadow of a doubt

THE UNHAPPIEST DAYS OF MY LIFE.

I.M.                                                    July 05 (rev 22)

Wales

Dear Wednesday,

Good name! Don’t worry, it’s ok to style yourself after a loveable freak; yes, you can choose what sort of weird you want to be. Own it. Control it. Rejoice in it.
Don’t let anyone else choose your label. Choose your own, but remember you can always change it. One day you’ll find more interesting labels, and people attached to them who will become your friends. 

Don’t worry about friends. They will come and go but the really good ones will stay and make your life more, better, in so many ways,  and forever. There may be troubles ahead, but honestly you won’t ever be alone.

Don’t worry what people think, and Relax – you don’t need to try so hard not to fit in. You don’t fit in,  because you are fabulously yourself. You don’t have to act it out. (But you can if you like, it’s fun)

Don’t worry about the mirror. No, you aren’t pretty. But you’re not ugly…and one day quite a few people will come to think of you as foxy, enigmatic, attractive, interesting and one glorious day, you’ll be singing in a band and discoing in your bra and…um…Don’t worry about s.e.x. It isn’t compulsory and you’ll figure it out and even (according to one or two instances of unsolicited feedback) be really quite good at it. Don’t worry about boys. They aren’t compulsory either.

Don’t worry about the family legends, they love you really, or the stupid people who mistake you for a boy; or maybe just pretend to, to be mean…you are an excellent girl. Never mind the mean girls who don’t understand you, it’s ok to be a bit brainy and interested in everything and refuse to choose a side,  because all the sides are interesting. And one day people – including you – will be really proud of your brainy…

Don’t worry about God, or the Devil. They’re kind of like Santa, and you don’t have to keep believing in them. Some people do, but trust me,  you’re going to find they get eclipsed by feminism, art and general curiosity. Just be kind…not because your inner nun is watching, but because it’s the right thing. 

And don’t worry about dying. That funny lump was just glandular fever, and look, we’re still here, being weird, arty, fabulous…and happy.

With love, always, 

Fin x

Fin McMorran

Yorkshire.

…watch this space for a cascade of creative juice flowing from some of the LGBTQI+ community, including their friends and family on the theme:

            To My Childhood Self

and there will be daily posts throughout February, in celebration of and contributing to, LGBTQI+ History Month.

This year’s theme : To My Childhood Self.

FioxiRose, X

              ~ To my childhood self ~

hoping you enjoy the daily posts and please feel free to leave any feedback.

And if you get inspired throughout the month there’s still time and space left to add your piece to celebrate LGBTQI+ History month 2024.

FioxiRose xx