Worthing Flash

I’m not feeling so jolly this very minute. Even though the workshop downstairs is finally quiet and I have a lovely fire going, reading through all these holiday cards lying on my desk isn’t cheering me up one bit. My late husband always ran around being the do-gooder, (and maintaining his playful image), while I managed so much of his behind-the-scenes busywork. But even with him gone, so much remains the same. Here I am, trying to take advantage of a window for change, tired of figuring out what gifts to get for our children and our grandchildren who already have everything they can possibly need. But the little ones still want more Pokémon cards to add to their overflowing collections. Really? I’m exhausted from shopping, wrapping, standing in line at the freezing cold post office to mail gifts, waiting to have the annual holiday offerings acknowledged and, finally, watching the bills roll in. (Last year I decked our own halls with Visa receipts.) Next year I’m totally shiftin...

The Christmas tree lights were twinkling. Just a minute, they're not supposed to do that. Then the room was plunged into darkness. Somebody screamed. It was my niece, obviously. The phrase "we won't make a drama out of a crisis" does not apply to her. It was Boxing Day, my birthday if you are thinking of buying me a present. The downside of a Christmas birthday is that people only buy you one present as a rule. The upside is that the whole family is together for the day. Then the lights came back on. There was blood all over the front room carpet, Mum was going to have a fit. I assumed it was one of my brother Steven's jokes until I saw a knife stuck into my niece. Her real name was Gladys but she preferred 'Calamity Jane' when she was alive. She had a point. So did the knife. A very shaken Steven explained that he thought it was the toy knife he got for Christmas which had a blade that retracted into the handle. In the dark, he'd got the ...

  OUT FOR THE COUNT                        By David Silver A hesitant but persistent knocking on the castle front door roused Count Dracula from his deep daytime sleep one cold but bright winter's morning. Reaching into his pyjama pocket for his Raybans, the Count slid aside the lid of his coffin, climbed out and stumbled downstairs. "Might I point out that I do not do daylight hours," Dracula reprimanded his bewhiskered, red-suited caller. "Sorry, sir, but this is an emergency," responded Santa Claus. "It's Christmas Eve and I'm down two reindeer. The idiots attended a festive stag party last night and are too hungover to drive my sleigh." "And that is my problem how exactly?" snapped Dracula. Santa tried a placating smile. "Well, I was wondering if you wouldn't mind flying around for a few hours delivering Christmas presents in your . . . er, neck of the woods. It would certainly ease my burden." "Ho! ...

Christmas was round the corner. Very few places in the city looked as glittering and promising as Park Street. Standing behind the window of the bedroom of her posh quarters, Shruti felt a lump in her throat. The old woman loved her, the wife of her only son, dearly. Yet, Shruti was not sure why she had been quite mean to the withered woman right from the first day she stepped in the inlaws’ as ‘a daughter' like the widow went out of her way to make her daughter-in-law believe. By the time Shruti was eighteen, she was already turning heads. Her mother, Dola would always tell her not to make the same mistake that she did due to her parents' insistence. Dola wanted to be a dancer but her marriage with Rudra dashed all her hopes. She had to be the “home maker” for the rest of her life. Shruti's birth a year after Dola’s marriage ensured that Dola's dream never materialised. One day, when Shruti was working behind the cash counter in a bank, Manoj, a dashing entre...

  On Christmas Eve, Grandma Breen woke with one cookie-sweet conviction: she would wait no longer. Slipping the robe over osteoporotic bones, she knew she wouldn’t even ask. Again. Those days—and Lord, hadn’t there  been a load of them?—were over and D.O.N.E. done. She moved stiffly down the stairs. At her writing desk, she removed the Rothko stationery and engraved fountain pen. She wrote about “Camp Oleander,” two weeks of hike and splash along the fingertip of Florida. She wrote about the “Neverwades,” the girls who wouldn’t brave the water. “That’s a good one, Granny. Right? Haw, haw!” She finished with “Love, Bree,” thinking for the umpteenth time, “What a stupid ass name,” her granddaughter a wedge of gooey cheese. But it wasn’t the girl’s fault—she hadn’t come up with that winner herself. No, that had been her daughter-in-law’s fine bit of genius, although her son—with his dumb acquiescence—was far from free of blame.      ...

It is twelve years since the fall of Singapore. On the air strip, the tarmac has darkened under the torrent of the rain, black water rising, a growing lake, the heavy bellied Argonauts standing like unwieldly wading birds. An RAF jeep rises on muddy water wings, veers aside, broaching the rim of the monsoon ditch, wheel deep, and stalls. It is Christmas Eve, 1954. Beyond the ditch, and a flooding field, in a pink bungalow, a flash bulb explodes. The men in bow ties and white shirt sleeves, lean over the women, in their green and gold dresses, peacocky shining. Creme de Menthe. Cheese and pineapple. Silver bells and lametta on the artificial, snow stippled Christmas tree. A watch chain glints. On the gramophone, Winifred Atwell,  "Let's Have a Party." Christmas morning, and the ditch yields up its dead - a drowned dog, a stumbling drunk, and the memory of soldiers crouching in the humid sweep of the rain, feet suppurating, dengue fever and malarial bowel, cramps, ...

‘Rudolph. You’ve swilled booze in most households and in every country between here and home. It’s no surprise that you’re tagged as Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. You’re weaving all over the place and the reins are tangled again. Thanks to you, we’re well behind schedule and you know that I hate rushing the job. God knows how you slip the reins every time we stop.’ Santa didn’t function well when stressed. It gave him indigestion which made him irritable. He lobbed a present towards the umpteenth millionth Christmas tree and cringed as it hit the chimney wall breaking the contents. ‘Now look what you made me do, you drunken antlered cervine.’  ‘Look here, Claus,’ Rudolph stamped a hoof, ‘for 364 days a year I live in freezing conditions and work outrageously long hours fetching materials required to make presents or shunting the finished articles to the warehouse. The power-happy elves are a pain in my rectum with their rules and regulations. I don’t get hol...