Just a moment by Barbara-Lucy Hosken

She was on the descending escalator in the arms of another man when he saw her tears stung his eyes he looked away She saw him on the ascending escalator called his name again and again everyone looked except him. He stared ahead quelling his desire to leap the barrier like a romantic hero Prentending not to recognise her voice Refusing to respond to his name or her closeness- they could have touched. Eyes brimming with tears She looked at him saw his pain knew his hurt He glided away merging with the crowd.

.

Return to This Week’s Flash

Password by Barbara Lucy Hosken

He has a book full of passwords for everything under the sun. If he needs one he creates another, ranging through the names of his children, dog, boat and car, to combinations of family initials, birthdates etc. He constantly complains about them, regularly loses them and always has to look them up. He often finds they do not work because he has changed them and forgotten to record the changes. He doesn’t trust a computer record because he once had a disgusting virus which meant that he lost a tremendous amount of material, including the list of passwords he had at the time. He prefers to trust his little black book, which is secreted in a drawer far from his desktop. It’s in a totally different room at the opposite end of the house from his office so discovering a password is a major operation. First find the book. Passwords are truly the bane of his life. She, on the other hand, has one password which she uses for everything. On the rare occasion when she needs a longer one, she adds the numbers of her childhood home address. “I never need more digits than that.” she says. He constantly suggests she lets him record it in his notebook, warning her that someone will find out what it is and then she’ll lose everything. “That’ll only happen if you tell someone,” she says. “But I don’t know it.” “Precisely.” She smiles and walks away knowing he’ll never guess it’s “iluvyoo”.

.

Return to This Week’s Flash

The Postcard by Barbara-Lucy Hosken

It’s amazing where he bought them. He’s sent them to me for years. I often saw them when I lived in England. You could always find picture-postcards in the sea-side shops. Some of them were very rude too … mostly of ladies with excessively buxom breasts and bottoms, captioned appropriately. A New Zealander collected dozens to take back home. He’d never seen anything like them before. When I got married he sent a postcard of a young couple going upstairs in a hotel, beneath which was the caption We’re just going to get our things together! The Best Man read it out at the reception and passed the card round all the guests. He didn’t seem to object to being named as the sender. Then when I was in hospital, instead of grapes I got a postcard showing a nurse at the bedside of a very sick man, with a rather large lump somewhere in the middle of the blankets, captioned You’re still holding your own then? At Christmas, too, he managed to find the most inappropriate messages. There was one with a couple in bed – the caption said Oh Joseph! That was immaculate. Another was four Kings bearing gifts, with the caption Have a four king good Christmas. I always secrete them in a drawer. I was used to his humour but wouldn’t want them on display. I’ll miss it this year. I just had a card from his daughter proclaiming his death. There’s nothing funny about that.

.

Return to This Week’s Flash

Bad Haircut by Barbara-Lucy Hosken

We went away for a couple of months and left her on the farm. They fed her well, but didn’t do much else. She enjoyed being there and no one gave a shit what she looked like. The only water she saw was the duck pond in which she swam regularly. She loved that, then simply lay in the sun to get dry. The result was a sunburnt nose and shaggy hair that looked as if someone had worked hard to give her dreadlocks. I tried brushing it all out when she returned home but there was no way I could get through that mess and no way she was going to let me either! We had quite a tussle over it. There was only one thing for it. I just had to chop all the knotty bits off no matter what fuss she made. I couldn’t let her go out looking like that. Trouble was they were all over the place. I had to chop at different levels, different angles and left a few bald patches too! She didn’t look much better when I’d finished but at least it could be brushed through now. She didn’t care though. Dogs never do!

.

Return to This Week’s Flash

Guilt edged love by Barbara-Lucy Hosken

.

First on the left as you enter graveyard by open wrought-iron gate tall railings ran behind tombstone on Grandpa’s grave all visitors passed as they walked the drive to the old stone church I recall one childhood time when a friend and I were seen decorating his grave with spring flowers to bring it alive with colour showing my gilt-edged love It was Easter, graves overflowed with daffodils and tulips which we decided to share all around so not one grave would be empty grandpa was getting a beautiful bunch which my neighbour commented on I couldn’t admit to stealing them all from others which had lots just a few at a time so no-one would know my embarrassing guilt edged love

.

Return to This Week’s Flash

I can’t wait by Barbara-Lucy Hosken

I’m in England now and I’m on my way to see my Aunt. She is
Ninety-eight and going strong in spite of having cancer
about 30 years ago. She is my only living relative of that
generation, and I’ve always loved her. She was my mother’s
sister, but a much nicer person that Mother ever was! Every
year she baked and iced a beautiful cake for my birthday for
as long as I can remember and sent it to me wherever I
happened to be,till she was no longer able to do it. She
used to be a confectioner, so her cakes were always superb.
Now she’s living in a Retirement home where I hope to see
her within the next few days. She is still very aware of
everything around her.  She gets up every morning and
dresses carefully, making sure that her outfit is welll
coordinated. She ‘makes up’ before she has breakfast, so
that she is always ready to be seen – even by her carers.
I’m getting more and more excited as the days fly by.  I can
hardly wait to see her.

Return to This Week’s Flash

Cartography by Barbara-Lucy Hosken

Where the hell am I? I’ve been driving for hours and still can’t find a sign to anywhere. I must’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere. I thought it was a direct route to the motorway, so didn’t bother to take much notice but I know it wasn’t as far away as this. Oh bless him, there’s a police car. I’ll see if I can attract his attention and ask him. I wonder if I can get up enough speed. He’s going at a helluva pace. Oh shit! He’s put his siren on and he’s zooming away from me. That makes it worse. I’m not even on a main road now. This is a housing estate for god’s sake. If the police are here I doubt it’s a good place to be. I’ll try phoning the police and see if they can help me. Better pull in just in case the Police car comes back. Bugger! There’s no juice in my battery. Drive on and hope. That’s all I can do. Oh wonder of wonders there’s a phone booth! I bet it’s been vandalised. What luck! It’s OK. Now, I need the local police station but I don’t have a number. No use ringing any of the numbers scrawled all over the front here. I’ll just have to ring 999 and explain. What’s the point of looking at a map if you don’t know where you are in the first place!