Round 1 · Published 1 July 2026
9 of the group wrote in.
Q1
A house badge, Blue, with the pin snapped off. It has lived in the coin section of every wallet I have owned since 2010. I have replaced the wallet four times and moved the badge across each time without ever deciding to.
My bird list. Forty two pages, started in class six, last entry dated 2014 because I switched to a proper field notebook and felt very grown up about it. The handwriting gets noticeably better around page fifteen, which is exactly when a teacher told me she could not read it.
A square of cloth I dyed in class nine that came out a colour I did not intend and have spent eleven years professionally failing to reproduce.
Nothing. I have kept nothing, and reading everyone else's answers has been genuinely upsetting, and I am now going to call my mother and ask what is in the loft.
Q2
In a consultation room at 11pm with a dog that would not settle, humming something I could not place, which turned out to be the tune we sang at the end of Thursday assembly.
In an editorial meeting, being told a piece was too sympathetic to its subject, and thinking about a specific English class in 2017 where I was told almost exactly the opposite by someone who turned out to be right.
Standing in a queue at the airport in March, when the man behind me had a bag with a school crest on it that was not ours, and I felt an entirely unearned flash of competitiveness about it.
Q3