A flash for the weekend...

I thought that it wouldn't mean much more than a slew of golden bangles and a token red sari, when he asked. I didn't think for one second about his judgmental parents, his innumerable aunts and uncles, his expectations. I just thought that one day maybe we'd have beautiful latte-coloured children: bilingual,resourceful. I was only thinking how much I loved him, when he opened those gorgeous soft lips and said, "Will you marry me?"

I've accumulated all these amazing appliances, but somehow end up with even less time. Go figure. At least I've managed one 75-word flash (saviour of the universe), 44 sun salutations, five oatcakes and four pickled onions (ooh, that 5:2 diet just gets better and better, doesn't it?). Copify keeps sending hopeful emails about copy to write for ambulance-chasing law firms and geeky blogs, but I have very little time and even less inclination. Now my stomach is rumbling and it's eleven o'clock, so I'm off. Nightie night xx

Bill's flash

Echoing voices under the high glass atrium, good suits and glossy leather shoes,and the lone Big Issue seller: scruffy beard, missing tooth, cheeky grin. I think of that face, looking down from the bunk, telling me which warder to trust, when to lie low. An old lag - twenty years on me - he'd be 61 now. Yes, it's him. I keep my head down, hurry on. I don't carry small change around these days.

Oh it's all going flash crazy. But now I really do have to load Neville and set off Bertha and also dry my hair with  - erm - Daphne (would that be a good name for a hair dryer?) and then style it with Trevor (no, this is going too far, isn't it?). Let me know if you want me to make a piece of flash fiction for you - and give me a word or two to play with xx

flashtastic

I didn't like the look on his smarmy face when he said it was just a midlife crisis and that she meant nothing, and I knew I'd never be able to forgive him.
Such a shame that he got tangled up in his tackle and capsized the skiff, what a tragic accident, they said.
I said he never did know how to keep his tackle packed away where it should be.
I'm not sorry, you know.

today's flash!

Earthquake. 

I wake, to the absence of the air conditioner's white noise. My hair clings wetly to the nape of my neck. I wait for our gate guard to turn the generator back on. But there's nothing but darkness and the sudden howling of street dogs nearby. I think irritated thoughts of the guard, asleep on duty, again. But then, a distant hum, like a faraway train on the underground, and the bed beginning to shake.

Today's flash

But you never play.

I will, I promise.

When? When will you?

I don't know, when...

You never will. Chicken.

Don't call me that.

Chick, chick, chick, chicken!

Alright then, next time.

The lights are flashing.

Get off, I’m going.

Quick, before the barrier.

Are you happy now?

Keep still. It’s coming.

I can hear it.

Don’t be chicken, now.

I’m not moving, okay?

Just a bit longer.

I can’t hear you.

Jed, Jump! NOW!

Hi, how was your weekend? I would love to tell you that I took advantage of the spring sunshine to throw a barbeque, invite the street, work on my tan, drink Pimms and take up tennis. Of course I did none of these things. Instead I mowed the very large lawn and got through several times my own body weight in washing and line-drying. And - erm - that's about it. Today Twin 2 is being home-schooled, doing a dyslexia programme. She was really, really happy about it this morning when she realised she could wear her new flowery shorts instead of school uniform. What's more, she got to go to Tesco instead of straight to school because the tutor (lovely Aunty Tessa) has overslept and wasn't due to arrive until nine thirty. She's less happy now she's actually embroiled in the whole 'schooling' side of home schooling, but hopefully it's doing some good. Ey ooop, lunch time already, better go xx

compass

From the distance you can’t tell. The dog could almost be walking itself, alone in the Tuesday morning sunshine, pacing the perimeter fence. But a little closer and you see the figure, sand-green combats against the pale green grass, stepping one-two, one-two close up against the netted wire. 

Closer still and you notice the tidy blonde bun below the beret, and a tautness in the cloth of the combat trousers, pulling a curve in the fabric over the buttocks.

The dog is straining on the leash, shiny coat like a crow’s wing, saliva beginning to drool from the muzzle. She gives a sharp tug, tells him to heel, and the leash goes slack again. The ground is soft underfoot, the air yellow-warm. 

A sideways turn of her head and she looks, beyond the fence, into the back gardens of houses, chopped up into sideways squares by the mesh: trampolines and rusty barbequeues, grass kicked to dirt and discarded footballs. One garden has gnomes. The sound of pop music drifts choppily from an open window.

When she was a little girl she’d always wanted to live in a house like this: a house with an upstairs, and a dad – not just a succession of unrelated ‘uncles’. The other girls at school had friends over for tea. Their mums remembered parents’ evenings. They thought ‘brown’ was just the name of a boring colour.

She turns away from the back gardens and focusses ahead. Hesh is tugging again and she gives his lead a yank. The cloth of her trouser legs swish against each other as she walks. Her nose prickles with pollen. There is a sudden stutter of fire from the range, but Hesh barely blinks. He’s a good dog. She has no idea why he always growls at Adam like that. Adam says it’s jealousy. He says he doesn’t want to be in competition with a bloody dog.

The sunshine catches something in the long grass, a sharp reflective stab of light – broken glass perhaps? She bends down to look, and Hesh pauses, panting.A transparent rectangle of a compass, half hidden by a dandelion, dropped during one of the orienteering exercises the other week. She picks it up, watching the needle spin wildly, finding direction. She puts it in her pocket and feels it push against the other thing in there. The thing she’d been trying not to think about: the white plastic stick with the thin blue line on it – or not on it.

At NAAFI break she’d been across the road to the chemist’s. She wasn’t one to check dates. It was Adam who’d noticed how long it had been, said he wouldn’t mind if she was, that they could get married, get a quarter. He said she should give up work, though. He said she wouldn’t want to have anything to do with that bloody dog when she had a baby to look after.

And she hadn’t said anything.

After NAAFI break she went to the toilet. It was like pissing on a biro; she’d got it all over her hands. Ten minutes, she read off the box, before she threw it in the bin. Ten minutes: long enough to get Hesh and be right at the edge of camp, past the range and the woods, away from it all.

Here she was now. Thirty-year-old Lucy: Adam’s girlfriend, Hesh’s handler, with a directionless compass and an unread pregnancy test.

She takes one last glance at the back gardens through fence, feels for the plastic stylus in her pocket and draws it out. She holds the innocuous white stick up to the spring sunlight and looks.

Is that line blue?

Ey oop. It's nearly half past ten and I still haven't loaded Neville or Larry or set Bertha off. I've been at work most of the day. The place I work in the mornings had an ofstead inspection today, and you could have cut the air with a very blunt plastic throwaway knife. Everyone was VERY tense (not to be confused with past tense, past perfect tense, present perfect tense, present perfect continuous tense...I could go on - actually I couldn't, what with my grammar teaching being somewhat limited), except me, because I was the only one not actually being assessed. So, no butterflies in my tummy. And nothing else, either, what with it being a fasting day. Actually I didn't have a totally empty stomach, as a very nice Turkish student had brought in some home made pastries, nom, nom.
So after work I planned next week's lesson, which is about museums. Apparently it's international museum day on 18th May - who knew? (who, for that matter, cared - apart from half-starved ESOL teachers desperate for lesson-planning inspiration). Then took Son to karate and battled with stupidly difficult abstract spellings with Twins. So despite my army of anthropomorhosised (sorry, can't spell any better than my kids) domestic appliances, I still haven't got round to any housewifery, which I really should. I do have an interesting lesson on museums planned, though. And also this short story, which I've just written, coming up next. xxx

Neville

I think I may be in love with my dishwasher. Don't get me wrong, I'm still very fond of Bertha-the-robotic-hoover, but the dishwasher has changed my life. I now actually have time to do things in the evening, whilst the great white hope of kitchen appliances methodically gets on with making things clean, and does a much better job of it than I ever could. Sturdy, reliable, helpful, always there, never complaining - I shall call him Neville (in honour of my favourite Harry Potter character).
This evening, whilst Neville was getting on with the dishes, and Bertha was sorting out the carpets, and the washing machine (Larry?) tackled the duvet covers, I did 44 sun salutations. That's one for each year of my life, because, yep, I'm 44 tomorrow. I stocked up on protect & perfect serum last week in anticipation. And tomorrow I am having cinnamon buns for breakfast. I know, living the blooming dream or what? x

today's flash!

I'm not going to answer it. I know who it will be. If I don't answer, then it will be as if it didn't happen and we can just go back to how it was before, can't we? But the blaring noise forces me reach out, and I watch my hand, slo-mo - chewed red nail varnish, unravelling edge of my old cardigan, scar on my wrist - grasp the nagging phone. "Hello? Yes, I'm home."

His hand sweeps across the table, catching the napkin, quivering in the wine glass as it passes, then thwacks into the water jug, spilling a miniature iceberg tsunami over the glass table top, washing up breadcrumb detritus into the lap of her designer dress. His hand raises to slap her and she grabs it, tugs it down, hair flying, words hissing: "Not here. Someone will see." She inclines her head towards the doorway, the waiting photographers.

airy fairy nothingness

I've got another flash for you, but not much else. I have been even more spaced out than ususal today, despite the coffee and the mad half hour on the rowing machine (which you would have thought would sharpen me up a bit). No more sightings of the elusive pocket-sized choir master. But, given my zombified state today, he may well have been strutting about in the welfare centre or hanging out with Ray at the garage or wafting out in the art gallery, or pumping iron in the gym. He could have been in any of these places and I simply wouldn't have noticed, because my head is full of airy fairy nothingness. I should probably just go to bed!

The water trickled between his shoulder blades. He shifted his head back and let it swill, tepid and briny, over his two-day-old stubble. The stained sleeping bag lay sloughed off on the sandy floorboards. Next to it the precious letter, still in its pristine cream envelope. He imagined the black type inside, jostling and straining against the paper prison. He was Dominic Slater, 29, failed teacher, living in a beach hut. But not for much longer.

Busy day, no time for pants, as they say. Actually, I did have time for pants. No time to eat, though.
My lessons on family vocabulary and the royal family seemed to go down okay. I picked up my potential birthday present leather trousers from the collect plus corner shop, tried them on, and took them straight back again. My waist is too small and my legs are too chubby - at least my unusual body type has saved my husband a small fortune on the birthday present though. I am, as usual on a Wednesday, far too hungry to stay up much longer, but I have written you a little Wednesday flash, which follows. Nightie night xx

Gareth Malone!

Hey, guess who I saw on camp the other day? Only Gareth Malone. Yes, that Gareth Malone. I know! Who would have thought he'd be in our neck of the woods. The military wives choir are all being very tight-lipped about it, but clearly somethings goin' daahn, innit?
I was just driving out of camp and I saw someone in a car who I recognised, so I gave him a nice big smile. Only later, I realised he wasn't a random bloke from our street, no, it was him off the telly!
I'd already driven halfway down the road by then, so sadly it was too late for me to say, "Oi, aren't you that bloke off the telly?" He must get strange women smiling at him all the time, thinking that they actually know him. But I like to think that my smile was special. He looked like he almost smiled back (no, he didn't - in fact he looked quite grumpy).
So that was last week's excitement. Which semi-celebrity with a vague military connection will it be next? Ross Kemp? I'd give him a cheery smile if I saw him at the camp gates. Oh yes I would!
Better go, work tomorrow (teaching the students about the royal family - not just because the queen is actually my husband's boss, but in the hope that it may in some way help with the incredibly difficult citizenship test, which asks people important British questions such as when were the Corn Laws repealed....).
xxx
ps - and in honour of Gareth Malone, a reminder of the 2011 MWC smash hit!

 The wonderful Military Wives Choir- alternative funny lyrics written by Sarah Myers

Wherever you are, I wish I could get through,
The dog is lost, the fish are dead,
What am I s’posed to do?

Wherever you are, I need to know your PIN,
The bank has called, won’t speak to me
“we have to speak to him”

Light up the darkness, oh, where are the bulbs
You’ve put them somewhere safe and sound,
But no one have you told,

Light up the darkness, oh, where are the keys?
I am locked out of the house
and I may need to call the police.

Wherever I am, I don’t know what to do,
The kids are ill, your mother’s phoned
And wants to speak to you.

Wherever I am, not sure what day it is,
The Sky wont’ work, I have to call,
But they’ll just say “its his”

Light up the darkness, night has come
But I still have to grab a coat and go and mow the lawn,
Light up the darkness, for all my sins,
I must change a fuse, fix countless things
And put out all the bins.

flash fiction BOGOF Thursday!

Over here.

You see the brindled grey sea, and the wind-rippled dunes. High and far away a lone gull wheels and disappears. Wan cloud curtains the insipid sunshine. Far down on the strand a man is walking. His fair hair is flapping up in the wind like a wing, and he's got this red scarf, looping free. You want to shout, to wave, but the tape still covers your mouth, and the handcuffs bite deep. He turns.

today's flash fiction

There she was, in the next pew. The sun was streaming through the stained glass. Before he died, he'd
specified a Beatle's song to play as they brought the coffin in: Lucy in the sky with diamonds. A psychodelic funeral march, typically him. She turned and I noticed her greying temples. There was something different about the set of her mouth, as if she'd spent the last twenty years not saying something.
"Hello Lucy," I said.

I thought the recent kitchen refurb had disturbed some spirits from an old Indian burial mound our house may have been built on when I heard strange noises coming from downstairs this morning. Turns out it was just a man drilling a hole in the wall for the tumble dryer duct. Shame, just when I thought I'd done with my annual dusting session, too. Also shame it wasn't anything actually supernatural, which would have been fairly exciting for a Thursday morning - almost as exciting as getting a delivery of a new dishwasher and a whole week's supermarket shop at exactly the same time (did the delivery men synchronise watches before setting off, I wonder?).
So, today I plumbed in the dishwasher, moved the tumble dryer and re-plumbed in the washing machine. I also did lots of wiping windowsills and chucking stuff away. And ironing, too.
I felt the tedium of housework totally justified eating Twin 1's forgotten Easter egg for her.
I've just noticed that there's still a pink jelly worm on the ceiling of the living room, and  the leftover brick dust from the drilling, and a basket full of washing to sort, and an untold amount of ironing left to do, but I'm kind of done with being a housewife today.
What I really need is some genuine supernatural activity in the form of an OCD poltergeist. Something that, instead of hurling things across the room in a spooky way, instead picks them up and puts them neatly in a drawer somewhere. That would be nice...

I'm in danger of turning into a real life version of Ria from Butterflies - remember that programme? (You won't if you're under forty) - wafting vacantly around, having vague existential angst and cooking soggy souffles. Although I'm not falling in love with a tubby businessman I see jogging in the park. There aren't many tubby businessmen about on the barracks. There are a few intimidatingly fit young soldiers, but none of whom, I suspect would be remotely interested in my soggy souffles, either literally or metaphorically. Today, I'm at home, waiting for a dishwasher delivery and finding reasons not to dust the upstairs of the house and sort out the washing pile. Maybe I'll channel my inner Ria later and attempt a souffle....

today's flash for you

Vamp.

I knew you were the one. Not because of the white t-shirt stretched tight over your chest (although that helped), or even your dimpled chin. We found ourselves in the kitchen, escaping the throbbing party music, talked all night, until the colour began to bleed into the eastern sky. At sunrise, heart beating, lips parting, I fell towards you, and you closed your eyes. I was right about you; it was your neck that did it.

Just a quickie - busy day, two classes taught, no food (almost - does three oatcakes really count as sustenance?), 32 sun salutations done, one week's ESOL lesson planned, one online food shop finished, two TED talks watched with Son, one chapter of Secret Seven book read with Twin 2, 10 spellings tested with Twins, one flash fiction story submitted to paragraph planet. By golly, I'm exhausted just writing about it. Night then xxx