• Flash Fiction

‘You don’t often see white dog shit on the pavements nowadays,’ said June.

‘True,’ said her twin sister Barbara, rootling in her ear for incy-wincy-spiders; they’d been parked, in the shade beneath the elm.  Her own ear that is.

‘Was it poodles that shit those white ones?’

Barbara nearly peed her pants laughing.  ‘Hee-hee-hee.  You really are the stupidest thing Junie.  It was bones made dogs shit white.  Or maybe it was tripe.’

What else don’t you see?  Plastic rain-hoods.  Blancmange.  Epsom salts.  Quarterlights.  Flash cubes.  Confetti.  Goldfish in bags.  Sanitary belts.  And starlings. 

Oodles to remember; good job they’re not busy.  June used to be a telephonist, Barbara, a librarian.  Both put out to grass long since.

‘Rows of houses demolished.  The end one still standing, insides exposed, wallpaper on the outside. You don’t see that anymore,’ June said.  A private life turned inside out.

‘Candy cigarettes.’  

‘Liberty bodices.’ 

‘Tooth powder.’ 

‘Brylcream.’ 

‘Dolly Blue.’ 

‘Antimacassars.’ 

‘Legs in callipers.’

‘Panty-sniffers stealing off washing lines.’

‘That’s all on the interweb these days dearie,’ said Barbara

Sticking things with flour and water paste.  Half-day closing, Surgical spirit.  Mutton chops, Golliwogs.  Getting your bottom pinched.  Pear drops.  Carbolic Soap.

‘Wash your mouth out!’ they chorused.

Memory Lane was darkened by two keepers: gestapo mentality in lilac tabards.

‘Now ladies.  Time for tea.  Which one of you is which?’

‘I’m June,’ said Barbara.

‘Hee-hee-hee.’ 

Their keepers wheeled them across the nursing home lawn, into the room where they serve up slops.  A pork-faced child was thrashing a piano in search of a melody.

‘Eric Morecambe,’ said Barbara wincing and turning down her hearing aid.

‘He’s dead.’

‘God rest.’

‘Tucking a hanky up your knicker leg.’

‘Oo-er Misses!’

‘Liberace.’

‘Miss World.’

‘Benny Hill.’

‘Black and White Minstrel Show.’

‘Jim’ll Fix It’

‘Now ladies.  We’ll have none of your inappropriate cultural references here, thank you,’ said the keeper with the saggy tits and baggy eyes as she dished out fondant fancies.

‘D’you wax that moustache dear or just bleach it?’ Barb asked her.

‘Hee-hee-hee.’