Worthing Flash

Roaming. Verb. Moving about aimlessly or unsystematically, especially over a wide area. To move about, or travel, often without a clear idea of what you are going to do. To tramp. To ramble, range, rove, and wander. A-roaming. This is how Ellen and I pass the weekends. We ramble to the blackberry bushes beyond Drayton and the pool. We drift along the road to Dodds Hill, laughing at signposts. We tramp to the elm field, dodging the raindrops. Our rambles take us to the old beeches, the hollow oak and the burial mound on Barrow Hill. We rove along elven paths, star-paths, heart-paths and singing paths. Our footsteps traverse the edges of fields, through clouds of cow parsley and past the flock of Jacob’s sheep, the scummy pond and the millstream. We tread this landscape, clad in pumps, clogs, sandals, boots and sometimes nothing but our cracked, bare soles. We roam through storms, hail and summer light, shadows and moonbeams. Through mud, nettles and brambles. Past the church...

Early one Sunday morning in summer on The Promenade a congregation of eight drone hymns of praise to the waves, with an accordion accompaniment, close to a chalked 666. Something to do with rising sea levels? A little later some reckless bathers wake up and smell the sewage, while a lone child builds a sand castle that looks like a baby’s grave-mound. Conversazione: a mid-day gang of middle-aged women at The Fire Station’s stained sticky outdoor tables boozing, babbling, cackling, shrieking. A cobbler’s shop called SOLED OUT, up for sale. Brazen-tongued birds of the sea soar and glide and swoop, describing elaborate arabesques in the voluptuous air outside Laura’s Fish bar. In dismal coalescence, an old lady with a stick takes her arthritic old Labrador for a hobble. At the entrance of an amusement arcade a little lad with an ice cream cone in his hand and mist in his eyes gazes at the ranks of flashy machines and mutters: ‘I wish our house was like that.’ The advert...

  I felt guilty about dumping Tom all those years ago and I still feel guilty now but there was no other way. He had asked me to marry him and I had agreed but as we were fixing the day I realised I could not go through with it. At the start I had high hopes of marriage, a home and even a family but then I began to have those doubts; I knew by now we were unsuited and needed to call it off while I could.  We had known each other for a few months having met through mutual friends but had taken little notice of each other. Then at a birthday bash meal out with the same friends we found ourselves quite by chance sitting together. We started talking and talked all through the meal and rather ignored the others and then there was that mutual attraction. We sipped away and probably raised a few eyebrows but I lived nearby and he had asked if he could walk me home; I agreed but I suspect we both guessed where it was heading and sure enough after a couple of glasses of w...

This article was submitted to "Educate", the magazine of the National Education Union I run a project to encourage flash fiction in Worthing. It is called #worthingflash and it has a blog, a Facebook page and an email address I will share with you later. The blog has had 70,000 visitors at the time of writing. There is an annual "100-word challenge" in which writers condense a story into, you guessed it, 100 words. It is very popular and has attracted writers from around the world. Flash fiction is usually defined as a story of less than a thousand words in Canada and the USA. In the UK the limit is usually 500. One thing that discourages pupils from creative writing is the sheer amount of words they need to write in an essay. Flash fiction can sometimes be the answer to that. Another thing is the fact that the au...

The train slowed, then stopped, as the smell of burning became stronger. We heard the cooling system shutting off, as power was cut. It was a hot, still day, early June, but this was not Adlestrop, no branch line idyll. A house was on fire trackside, and whilst people phoned airlines and cancelled hospital appointments, the guard told us that everything within the house had been destroyed. After five sweltering hours, we moved, passing the smouldering ruin. I pondered, if this happened to my house, and I had the chance, what would I save?  Everything which I have ever written.    by Marie Hartley