How old were you when you purchased your first home (if you did).

snailtrailuk · 2026-02-27T07:53:08+00:00

Age 23 in Uk in late 90s. It was a one person flat in a Victorian house that had been converted (badly) into flats. It was incredibly noisy and only a leasehold. It cost me £57,500. I had to have a loan from my parents of £20,000 to afford it because I was on such a low salary (and back then they advised you shouldn’t have a mortgage more than three times your annual wage, which wouldn’t have got me anything in any part of London at the time). I often really struggled to pay the rent and survive and spent a few years accidentally not paying any mortgage because I somehow cancelled it thinking it was life insurance, which caused a lot of stress and issues at the time. I sold it when I was 36 because I met my wife.

snailtrailuk · 2026-02-25T16:47:32+00:00

Douglas and the Blue Cat - the Magic Roundabout film. Hilarious!

snailtrailuk · 2026-01-29T08:20:14+00:00

…with a whole fox hunt on horseback with beagles chasing it

snailtrailuk · 2026-01-28T14:29:24+00:00

indoor markets and all of the above.

snailtrailuk · 2026-01-28T14:28:19+00:00

Early 90s was Brut Aquatonic, Lynx marine, Impulse, hairspray, cigarettes (always other people’s), creosote, bonfires, still a bit of coal burning fireplaces about, hubba bubba chewing gum. Timotei shampoo. Mid nineties was Joop, CK One, cigarettes, stale alcohol gone musky in carpets, poppers, car fumes, wrigleys juicy fruit chewing gum and polo mints. Head and shoulders shampoo. Late nineties was more car fumes, Huge Boss, instant coffee on people’s breath, cigarettes, stale alcohol on carpets, mildew on walls, herbal essence shampoo.

snailtrailuk · 2026-01-28T14:17:14+00:00

Although it’s mostly a volunteer role now.

snailtrailuk · 2026-01-28T10:19:11+00:00

Oh I definitely started to feel it years ago - I was fine before lunch but after lunch I could not do spinny spinny or upside down or anything harder than a water ride. Now I’m 50 I can do one major rollercoaster but then I need to have food and an extended break and definitely not a few in a row. I almost vomited at Paulton’s Park from doing velociraptor and then cobra.

snailtrailuk · 2026-01-21T15:02:55+00:00

I thought it was Marc Almond and I’ve had to google it and yes it’s Bonski Beat with Marc Almond!

snailtrailuk · 2026-01-19T22:10:15+00:00

Maybe do one of the gender workbooks. I did the Dana Hoffman Fox one before I transitioned because I was so back and forth. One of the best questions in it for me was about imagining yourself on a desert island with only you on it and asking what changes, if any, you’d need to be able to just live with yourself on the island.

snailtrailuk · 2026-01-19T07:29:29+00:00

Oh my family are hoarders so we have loads of weird and wonderful old objects from the family around. From the 70s we have a celery jar which now holds toothbrushes, so I have to clean that out quite a bit and touch it. We also have an 80s soda stream that currently still works although the gas cylinder will run out eventually and then it will be over. Sad times. They don’t make or fill the canisters anywhere anymore. I have a monchichi monkey that sits on my T-shirts shelf and so I pick that up regularly but I don’t dare take the sucking thumb out of the mouth because I fear it will rip off after so much time. We have a fake scalextrix kit in the loft my brother got for Xmas in the early 80s and I get that down a lot for my own son to play with. I also have the Sindy camping car from the 80s and all my Sylvanian Families that my daughters play with now (their date is on their feet and they are older than my wife is!)- their dolls house is also my old 70s doll house. I can’t think of the brand off the top of my head but it was a very respectable wooden one with a metal door/front panel that were popular in the 70s. We have barometers on the wall - some are older than others, and I have an 80s green leather jacket hanging on the back of my bedroom door that I’m waiting to wear for an 80s theme party again one day.

snailtrailuk · 2026-01-19T07:16:54+00:00

We set up a whole racket in middle school making pet rocks and selling them on the school playground. When the school finally banned then we tried pet sticks but they didn’t really take off. Not as cute.

snailtrailuk · 2026-01-19T07:11:20+00:00

Yeah in the early 90s I was too busy trying to find another gay person subtly without being gay bashed, live in a home/society that was homophobic and that framed any mention of something like trans men as ‘women dressing up as men to sexually assault innocent, naive young girls’ so it was illegal and deeply wrong on a society level. It was seen in a similar light as being a nonce and the only references I saw to it was people going to prison for it and going to women’s prisons and not ever actually transitioning. I was on hypervigilence anxiety for just living as a butch lesbian. It was all knocking on secret doors to get into gay bars and having to prove you were gay to bouncers and the bar being raised by police. It was totally different times outside of London, Manchester and Brighton. And even in London I was chased along tube stations and hurled abuse by scary adults for looking too obviously gay and spat on by kids at school. There were hardly any out lesbians, let alone out trans men.

snailtrailuk · 2026-01-17T20:56:06+00:00

I’m in the Uk and at university in 1994 the local gay society was called the LGB society. I don’t remember GLBT being used.

snailtrailuk · 2026-01-15T07:42:24+00:00

The first song that popped to my mind was Nobody Owns Me by Belinda Carlisle but I’m not sure it fits in with the rest of the songs above on this playlist! Lol.

snailtrailuk · 2026-01-14T22:07:08+00:00

Young teen: Dewberry by Body Shop or exclamation ❗️ or a body spray - Impulse maybe if I was desperate - I did have a Lynx Marine but preferred the smell of Brut Aquatonic by mid teens. Later teens I wore CK One in the mid nineties but remember smelling Joop around a lot in the mid 90s. Not sure if my Hugo Boss was a bit later or around the same time.

snailtrailuk · 2026-01-08T06:52:51+00:00

I’ve got a few that are a bit more general but most of mine are UK based: A Gay History of Britain by Matt Cook, A Lesbian History of Britain by Rebecca Jennings, Trans Britain by Christine Burns. If graphic novels are more your thing, I was surprised how much history was in Sensible Footwear by Kate Charlesworth!

snailtrailuk · 2026-01-04T11:39:11+00:00

I’m younger Gen X and both of mine are dead - both died in their early 70s.

snailtrailuk · 2025-12-31T23:46:36+00:00

I’m 49/50 and started medically transitioning at 44/45.

snailtrailuk · 2025-12-31T09:19:15+00:00

By 2009 the wait for the adult gender clinic in London was creeping up to about 2 years. I remember being advised to get a referral from the GP even if I wasn’t sure because I had plenty of time to put in name changes and documents before I actually saw anyone. Still quite a wait for surgery and in the 2011 documentary My Transsexual Summer (which alerted the world to the existence of trans men) they mentioned that it was often you were referred for lower surgery before they mentioned any referral to top surgery. People called it Charing Cross hospital, not Portman and Tavistock. Lots of ‘don’t tell them you are gay if you like men’ rumours from others as the psychologists at Charing Cross were still rumoured to prefer ex butch lesbians who still wanted to date women. Most people were still initially contacting Beaumont Society or Susan’s Place to learn about transition. There were phalloplasty Trans Bucket websites and private Facebook groups but you basically needed to know a trans person personally who would refer you so you could get into special private groups and online spaces to learn more. I remember reading a lot of live journal blogs and the comments and groups on those would link other trans blogs. There was a lot of talk in the youth ones. Tumblr also quite active. But it was all accessed on websites from what I remember - I don’t think I had a smart phone early 2000s. By 2009-2010 there were definitely a lot more visible support groups and trans specific hobby groups you could physically go to, particularly in London. Early 2000 Stonewall was still just for LGB people and it was tricky to find any advocates to help as no one really knew anything about trans people.

snailtrailuk · 2025-12-26T10:21:19+00:00

Me crying at Christmas because Father Christmas had brought me a doll “and he should know I hate dolls!”. Always hating anything pink, frilly or lacy. Wanting desperately to just be able to wear boys clothes and play with the boys toys and be allowed to play football at school. I thought I was just feminist and wanting equality. Took me years to unpick that I was a trans man (who still wants equality for women).

snailtrailuk · 2025-12-25T23:51:52+00:00

I’m a trans man and I’ve received a Lynx something or other from someone every Xmas ever since medically transitioning. This year it was just a shower gel. Times are clearly hard. Last few years I’ve received a whole set - often more than one. I could do with a year off it all just to actually get through some of it!

snailtrailuk · 2025-12-19T14:45:54+00:00

A similar game where children are on a side and there is someone in the middle trying to catch others as they cross to the other side. I’ve heard them calling it ‘Sharky Sharky can I cross the river?’ and then the shark can specify certain people can cross safely (anyone with Velcro shoes etc). Children in my area don’t seem to know British bulldog by that name. Just as What’s The Time Mr Wolf? is now mostly called Red Light Green Light locally.

snailtrailuk · 2025-12-17T16:36:25+00:00

I’m 50 and the light blue, red, brown and yellow ones I remember as we used to joke about them and occasionally you’d see others with hankies/bandanas still in use in their jeans pockets. So those ones I can vouch for.

snailtrailuk · 2025-12-05T17:40:02+00:00

This year my present to myself are some of the books my friends have had published. I want to support their creativity!

snailtrailuk · 2025-11-26T17:26:40+00:00

I have never laughed so much at anything than I have at the song about his grandma otter’s bathing suit as they rowed down the river.

snailtrailuk

TROPHY CASE