Thursday Connectors: The (R)evolution Of Stories

By Farzana Hakim

Hello all, it’s Farzana here, your host for Thursday Connectors – here to talk about he (R)Evolution of Stories. I hope, like me, you are looking forward to the upcoming holidays next month.  My house should be finished with the renovations by then and I’ll be able to start afresh in the new year, with a fresh home and a fresh outlook with regards to my career and some major life decisions.

Unfortunately, one of these changes – and I’m finding no joy in finally sharing this bit of news with you, my loyal and lovely readers –  is that this is the last time I am connecting with you as the host of Thursday Connectors. I am sad to resign; however, a new job and a busy schedule for next year means I have to sadly say goodbye to my page and my role as editor here.

I will be back next month for my grand finale, though. I’ll be looking back on my journey at Write On! with all best bits and my highlights throughout the five years or so I’ve been your Thursday Connectors editor. And yes, I’ll be needing a box of tissues to hand, because I know I’ll be getting very emotional and sentimental.

So, here we are then, my last proper Connectors, where I am showcasing and connecting with your writing.

Our theme makes me think of how stories evolve and change over the years because like in Chinese Whispers, with repetition they can become muddled and be interpreted and told in ways not often original.

There’s a one story  I’ve heard many times in my family. It speaks of longing, loss and new beginnings and inspired me to write my novel The Silence Of A Deep River which went on to win the Pen to Print Book Challenge. Though based on my grandparents’ experiences during Partition, I intentionally reshaped and fictionalised it, showing how stories evolve each time they’re retold.

But all stories in my opinion hold weight and are fun to hear and read and, in my case, to write! Especially historical stories…

Our first Connector reflects my love of history. Nick tells us all about how stories from The Great War Group inspired him. Yet I wonder how many of these wonderful stories have been retold during the member’s lifetime and evolved and maybe changed? Nevertheless, being a historian myself and having conducted many oral history interviews, I loved reading Nick’s contribution.

Hi, Nick. Let’s connect:

From Curiosity To Contribution: A Weekend With The Great War Group

Last month I attended The Great War Group’s annual conference in Bristol. The group is in their sixth year as a registered charity and their mission to promote education, research and commemoration of the First World War is going strong.

The weekend was packed with seminars on everything from the experiences of tank drivers and the impact of wartime propaganda on the home front, to a thought-provoking evening focused on the legacy of Douglas Haig. Each seminar, presented by a group member, drew different subsets of the audience; all with their own particular niche of interest.

I have been a member of the group since its inception, and they have always been a source of fascinating information, online talks, and a few WhatsApp groups in which to socialise. Despite the openness of the group, I’d never considered myself to be among those who could contribute. Over that weekend I spoke with many people, and every one of them took my keenness for the subject to be encouraged and expanded on, not to just sit back and watch. There was only one person in that room that was stopping me.

Me.

The first steps are always the hardest, but with the encouragement of the group and a few key pointers I was off. I visited the Barking War Memorial (although there are also photos available online) and my attention was drawn to a pair of brothers. I looked them up on the Commonwealth War Graves website (free to use) and uncovered details of their service.

Barking born Edmund Thorogood and his brother Ernest were both killed during the war. Edmund served on HMS Queen Mary when it was hit by a German shell, killing almost all of those on board, at the start of the Battle of Jutland in 1916. His younger brother, Ernest, was killed fighting in Ypres (pronounced Ee Prah) a year later on 6th November 1917. The website provided these details, their rank, regiment/ship they were part of, and their service number. A few crumbs to start to reveal their story.

However, those were only the first names to catch my attention. There are 83 names on the memorial plaque in the church in Dagenham Village, and a touch under 600 on the Barking Park memorial.

The boys from Barking and Dagenham went out to many different corners of this World War. Countless lost nuggets of history to retrieve and share, and I’ll admit I’m not sure how to find most of those things. But that’s the point. I don’t hold a university degree, let alone one in Military History, but I do have a keen interest, a pen and an encouraging community at the Great War Group. Add that to a few hours a week to spend digging down rabbit holes and I have got myself a research project.

Will this become a book, an online blog, or private research just for myself? I don’t know yet. There’s a wealth of information out there waiting to be discovered, and I’m excited to get started.

If you’ve ever stood in front of a war memorial and wondered about the names etched in stone, or have a family member with an unknown military past, maybe now is the time to start looking.

History doesn’t just have to be for the historians!

© Nick Burdett, 2025

Find out more about The Great War Group at greatwargroup.com or on X: @greatwargroup

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Next, I connect with Eithne, who tells me a story in the form of poetry on imagining about her grandfather. It’s a beautiful portrayal and as I love anything historical, this was a brilliant piece from a colleague and now a great friend, too.

Hi Eithne. Let’s connect:

In 2021, my poetry group, Forest Poets, was involved in a writing initiative in connection with Vestry House, the Waltham Forest Local Museum. We performed our poetry in the Vestry, the actual the place where Poor Relief was decided and distributed.

I wrote this poem imagining what it would have been like if my grandfather had been sent to the workhouse as a boy. I have no evidence that he ever was, but if you watch Who Do You Think You Are?  you’ll know that many, many working families had to go to the parish for relief in times of need.

Sign Above The Door

My grandfather taught his children simple rules:
Don’t touch your forelock, never doff your cap,
Don’t bow your head in deference to the man.
At nine years old, he’d faced at the workhouse door
and held his father’s hand and clung to him
as if the grip could keep them safe,
but hunger, cold and debt had brought them here.
Strikes at the docks, favourites at the factory door.
The parish, now, would be their food and drink.
This building, now, their shelter and their home.
His father read the sign above the door,
“if any would not work neither should he eat”
and choked the words like hunger in his throat.

The boys and men went one side of the hall,
their wives and sisters shepherded away.
Jimmy feared he’d not see them again, but did –
they met to work together and to pray.
First they were washed, soaped and scrubbed,
and kitted out in rough, stout cloth and caps,
striped cotton shirts, itchy breeches and shoes;
the girls and women in their cotton gowns,
those who were not fit to work wore bonnets,
the able ones had caps to wear to work.

And sleeping in the crowded rooms, above,
they stifled tears and lonely sobs each night.
Father was put to work in the brew-house,
young ones riddled stones, while mother sewed.
Their bellies filled with three meals every day;
the children grew – were trained to grumble less;
learning their lessons, how to read and write,
till Jimmy read the loathsome sign himself.
And vowed when he had children of his own,
he’d put food on the table, read to them,
see them well-dressed, tie ribbons in their hair,
never see them walk through the workhouse door.

© Eithne Cullen, 2021

Connect with Eithne on Instagram: @eithnecullen57

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To close, we shift from history to the deeply personal. In Footprints In Water, Rachan explores the emotional (R)Evolution that comes from love, loss and finding oneself again; showing how our most intimate stories transform us long before we ever write them down.

Footprints In Water

Traces of who I was, and who I am becoming.

My heart burns there too, Embers

I have walked through this alley several times. Torn pamphlets, a yellow coin booth and a bus stand where people used to wait. Littered and used papers that were rendered unimportant after their purpose was fulfilled, cans of food that had gone bad. It was filthy, this lane. But I kept coming back to it.

I have walked through this alley several times. Broken heart, fear of love, and a heavy baggage of insecurities that ripped me off my disguise of perfection. Little dreams choking on the big judgements of society, dying heart resurrecting on the hope of a better tomorrow, Vodka shots that burn my lungs and my desire to breathe. This filthy alley of adulthood had it all.

I have walked through this alley several times. Tinted with his memories, painted with his kisses, reeks of the love that we had for each other and then lost. Screams of the pain we buried in each other’s skins to remind ourselves how bad we are for each other. Reminders of the disgraced kingdom where the prince burnt his princess and their love on the pile of hatred and danced around it. This filthy alley of lost love. It is filthy, this one. But I keep coming back to it.

Threads of love unwind, Unravel

I wish someone had told me how hard falling out of love was. I wish someone had told me about the long hours of over-thinking, endless days of deliberation, painful weeks of self-doubts and contemplating all leading to a dark, empty space that kept getting bigger. Bigger and stronger each day. I wish someone had told me how heartbreaking it was to unlove a person. It’s like unlearning a piece of poetry you fell in love with. To forget all the strings that weaved one word to another, to forget all the love that was poured from a writer’s heart; to forget the bliss that it brought to your life. It’s like walking on the most memorable journey of your life and pretending like it didn’t happen. To forget the yellow beautiful flowers, the orange sunset, little drops of drizzling rain and the whispered messages that the wind brought along. I wish someone had told me how hard it would be to forget you some day. I wish someone had told me that 47304000 seconds later, I would still be as broken as I was, on the day you decided to leave. I really wish.

Your absence pulls me, Gravity

You carry the outline of his face, smell of the perfume he would wear on a Friday night and the softness of his skin. You walk on roads he would walk, wonder what song he would be humming now or what he would be wearing today. You stalk his Instagram profile and tiptoe around his Facebook page without getting noticed.

You carry that unrequited, unreturned love so huge bound with unsaid words that spill out as poetry on nights that are calm and ask me: “Why do I feel so heavy”

I have no answer.

I bloom like a lotus, Lotus

When they had walked away, they had walked like stripping colours off a colourful sky and the rainbows blushing beneath them. It was like reducing confetti to sawdust. Like swapping violins to sirens that screeched through my ears-almost as if the duality of the loud noise outside and the silence of my heart existed all at once.

In the middle stood me.

Standing in a puddle of muddled murky waters, there stood a reflection of mine.

For that day, I had been a lotus. I needed the dirt to bloom.

© Rachan Hedge, 2025

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That’s all, folks. I hope you enjoyed my pen-ultimate Connectors.

Next month, I’ll be back to say my proper goodbyes to you all. I do hope my pages over the years have inspired or motivated at least a few of you to write a little or do something different. After all, Thursday Connectors has always been about you from the very beginning!