LGW Vulture:
I'm afraid the story you were told by the crew of your Airbus is almost certainly a load of BS. The flap / slat system on the A320 is self monitoring and takes only a few seconds to tell the crew if the flaps do not move to match the pilot's selection. If they actually did experience a failure of the flaps to move, combined with a failure to give the appropriate warning, then your flight should never have left the ground as the function of that system was (or at least should have been) in serious question.
I suspect that what really happened is that the flaps weren't set during the after start flow. That in itself is not a huge issue, as the before takeoff checklist includes a check of the required and actual flap settings. Also, there is a takeoff configuration test that is done just prior to entering the runway. If the flaps were retracted, that check would have resulted in an alert message in the flight deck.