A collection of twenty five flash fictions. Most of these were written during 2016/17 although a handful date from earlier. The Flash Fiction label is a mixed blessing, not least because it doesn’t seem to have settled down yet into any specific meaning. Discussion centres around that word flash. American originators of the term meant the flash of a single white page being turned. Some writers I know feel the story should have some sort of jolt, or flash, at the end: Ta Dah! All except one of the stories here are less than 500 words. Other than that, they are simply short stories, as varied as any other group of stories I might produce, joined perhaps by the one facet I look for in all short stories, however long or short, that they have a narrator who knows why he, she, or it, is telling the story!

A young girl from a poor family walks to and from her job in a factory in clothes ill suited to the cold winter weather. Her father, despite their lack of money, thinks something should be done about this.

Ahead of a visit from her returning sister, a woman considers the effect of her father on their family.

Double the rent or half a flat. Your choice.

A Republican soldier returns in spirit to the battle grounds of the Spanish Civil War.

Anna Maria is an opera singer who, following an accident, has forgotten how to sing. She starts to find her voice again in the most unlikely place and with the most unlikely people, in a place of sanctuary where the strangest character of all is a young boy whom only she can see.

Opportunity could be about to knock for a young musician.

A disabled girl's view on her parents trying to run a small-holding in Norfolk.