Andrew’s clothes had just about reached the end of their useful existence when he found the four boxes of clothes in front of the bins. The holes in his shoes had been letting water in for some time, his jeans had more holes than material and his shirt was ripped to shreds as a result of a fight over some thrown out food he’d been eating. He’s lost the fight, the food and more significantly a lot of warmth due to his damaged clothing. The boxes of clothing contained items from a charity shop that hadn’t sold. After three months anything still on the racks was dumped to make way for newer stock. After ratching through the boxes all the way to the bottom, twice, he realised they only contained women’s and girls’ clothes. The solitary pair of foot ware in the largest box was a pink pair of girl’s trainers, [sneakers] but they fit him and were watertight. There were no jeans nor trousers of any description in the boxes.

Life had made the young Andrew cynical, and he suspected if they had their hands on him Social Services would naturally return him to his mother simply because it was the most obvious f*** up they could make.

The deaths were probably evenly split between starvation and human created toxicity. Much of the later had been created centuries ago, and now the ‘safe’ containers of yore were finally breaking down, the killers of life were emerging as leachates to begin their deadly task.

Just an amusing conceit

“We went in, and answered all the usual questions Covid folk always asked concerning recent health. I noticed a sign on the door that said, ‘These doors are alarmed!’ I couldn’t help myself when I said to the bloke who was going to stab us. ‘Those doors are lucky. They aren’t going to be violated with anti-Covid vaccine. Me, I’m not just alarmed; I’m bloody terrified.’ Another jobsworth with either no sense of humour or no brains or possibly neither.

It seems strange, even if it’s true, that the ends of our adult lives shall precede their beginnings.

The tragedy of it was it didn’t matter what Nixxi wanted to be, for she already was a girl and she had been since just after conception.

Denis asked, “You any idea how lucky you are to have that girl, Pete? That older brother of yours must have been a complete f******g idiot abusing her to the point where living on the streets in Manchester was a better option than living with him. No bloke worthy of being called a man would do that to any kid never mind one of his own, no matter were they trans, nor anything else.”

All the locals and the regular Saturday evening drinkers knew Harriet’s story and she was a popular and well loved young woman. There were nods and sounds of agreement all around the room, before Alf summed it all up by saying, “She’s a sweetie, and my missus says she’ll be a brilliant mum the way she handles kids. Any news on the adoption front yet, Pete?”

Zizzie had been born in a body that indicated being a himm. Her medical advisors were of the opinion that as she went through fecundity, a second stage puberty that all the Kemainne folk experienced at about sixteen years of age, her body and face would become those of a femm. Zizzie was of the opinion they were just telling her what they thought she wished to hear and they didn’t really know what would happen.

“I remember Mummy finding me and giving me water to drink when even my muscles were silently screaming from thirst. As I desperately and gratefully gulped the water she asked, ‘What’s your name, Sweetie?’

‘I’m Billie,’ I replied when she took the canteen from me telling me I needed to drink just little sips, but to drink them often till I wasn’t thirsty any more. ‘I’m three and a half and I’m a girl. My birthday is the first of Christmas.’

“ ‘I see,’ she replied. I didn’t know what she meant when she said, ‘You come home with me, and I’ll make sure that you have everything you need, Billie.’ ”

Kelvin O’Reilly was a self made multi billionaire though virtually none were aware of his wealth for he didn’t have an opulent lifestyle, drove a thirty-five year old diesel Mercedes 300 because he liked it and was a self professed family man. Ruth was Kelvin’s sixth foster child and he was trying to adopt her.

Be careful, for life is much cheaper here than where you live, and I will kill you if you abuse me. Lest you think that is an idle threat remember that a life sentence in a women’s prison in the UK would be infinitely better than the life I currently live as a so called free woman here.

“Oh dear! Where to begin, Child. The problem is most of us are woefully ignorant concerning the world of humans and little better concerning the world of Færie. In order to answer your questions concerning your ancestress the Queen I shall have to tell you much to correct your ignorance. So you shall have to be patient, Granddaughter.

I mind playing with my gran’s sewing pins. She was a seamstress and used expensive, thin, steel pins, not the cheaper more common, thicker, iron ones that were used by virtually all women in those days. I’d been playing with them with a magnet and some had become magnetised. She’d complained to my dad, ‘I don’t know what that bairn of yours has put on them, but I’ve even scrubbed them with Ajax powder and still they stick together.’

I’m a ninety-five year old man and my dream since early childhood had always been to be a teenage girl whom a kind, young man fell in love with. He wouldn’t have necessarily been handsome, wealthy or clever, just kind and someone who cared about me. My favourite song has for a long time been ‘Words Don’t Come Easy to Me’ by F. R. David, for it resonates with my soul in ways I have never understood.

I was born female and all my early life I was totally happy with that. I went through puberty as a girl and I was perfectly happy with that too.

It was a little unusual for a meeting of going on forty men and a couple of women to be held at a scrapyard, but naytheless they were there at Connaught’s Yard. The incongruously pretty and well dressed woman in four inch heels who opened the meeting was maybe in her early or middle twenties and despite her apparent ease with her anomalous surroundings she looked to be seriously out of place.

Jennifer, Jenny as her sisters and friends called her, had been Jerry. She was six foot four and sixteen stone [224 pounds, 102Kg] and had been bullied into a life heavily involved in sport by her school. Though extremely talented at all sport she’d always hated it and had always wanted to dance. After a break down her supportive family had helped her to rebuild her life as a girl. Her new life replaced sport with Scottish Country dancing. This work includes Big Girls do Cry and then the second part picks up her life immediately following her breakdown with I'm Not Crying Now

Kilts always have been expensive, and many a man couldn’t afford one, most of the men I knew when I was a child had inherited theirs. But all the men and the boys too had to be wearing one if they expected to be fed at Granny’s house on a Sunday, even the toddlers too. I mind my youngest brother Graeme wearing one when he was still in nappies [US diapers] and so young my Mum was still nursing him.

Now there was a distinct down side to folk saying ‘She’s Harriet, Gladys and Pete’s lass. Gladys as has the Dragon at Bearthwaite.

I considered babies to be creatures that would vomit on me from one end and extrude even more unmentionable material on me from the other.

“And?” Asked Sasha in a tone of voice that demanded the truth and all of it. “And what do you mean by he changed after leaving home?”

“He says he’s trans and goes by the name of Harriet. I suspect that’s why Bert treated him so badly. He never was much of a lad and as a boy he was a natural victim just waiting to be picked on. When he telt me he was trans it all kind of made sense. He seems to be doing all right. He says he doesn’t get bullied now he’s living as a girl and he is much happier. He’s waiting on doing silver service in a big hotel in Didsbury as a waitress.”

“Bollocks! You need to start understanding how these sorts of things work, Pete. Her name is Harriet, and your niece is a waitress. Start thinking Harriet, female, she, her, hers and all that goes with that, and just forget everything before that. There is no Alex. Get her up here. Is that going to cause any problems between you and Gladys? Or do I have to have a word with her, Pete?”

“No. Gladys knows about Alex and is sympathetic.” Pete paused and after a few seconds, during which Sasha could see Pete was making efforts to change his thinking, he continued “I think she’d have asked Harriet to come up here a while back, but she was bothered about how I would cope.”

“You’re supposed to be a man, so you’ll stiffen your spine, and behave, act and cope like a man. Which means if necessary you’ll tell those who cause Harriet problems to fuck off and drink somewhere else. Write to her, Pete. Get her up here to speak to me and we’ll go from there. Send her enough to cover the train fare and be generous.”

Jame’s changes included improved health and longevity for all, a greater sense of responsibility regarding managing population and ecological responsibility. Greenhouse gas emissions plummeted, re-afforestation occurred at an ever increasing pace and global warming had been reversed. Within a hundred and fifty years, with the exception of St. Helena, Terra had taken over all of Earth because the scum had all died. Most had been killed by each other, some had died from cold or starvation and a few had been eaten by other predators who had been increasing in numbers as the pressure from humans on their environment had disappeared.

That was the beginning of the Bearthwaite covid rebellion.

“He is White Ghost” she said, “and we shall sing.”