As a young woman, old Mrs Coogan reloaded rifles in the War of Independence and ran ammunition for the Flying Column of the Third Brigade. She took a bullet to the shoulder from a British Vickers machine gun for her efforts. She was heralded as the brave epitome of the new Irish republic, and missed her image featuring on the nation’s first five pound note by only two committee votes.
Lockdoon turbo relationships. That’s whit they call it. Ye finally cross pass wi somewan guid, and then boom - Big Boris tells ye tae stay at hame.
“Fancy gettin a hotel?” ah text the fella ah’ve ainlie met twice. Boozers shut at ten, and a few hoors o chat wisnae gonnae be enough fur us. The prices o rooms are oan their arse because o lockdoon two.
“Aye,” he replies, no hinkin twice aboot it.
“Smashin. Meet ye by the station in an hoor?”
“Aye. Cannae wait! x”
Ah’ve gat Mark Zuckerberg tae thank fur this wan. This fella gied me a compliment oan the auld Facebook, and ah replied tellin him that he made a hot wumman. It wis true. That body swap filter is sommat else.
Twenty-five feet wouldn’t kill him, especially given the blanketing of snow. He’d probably break something though, maybe a leg or an arm. Still, just a few more inches along the roof and he’d be able to reattach the wire. He was flat against the concrete tiles, his feet propped up by the guttering, sliding himself along towards the animatronic Santa and his reindeer, currently dark and motionless atop the ridge. He was holding the cable between his teeth while he dug his fingers into the gaps. Probably not the safest way to carry a high-voltage electrical wire, but fuck it, it wouldn’t be Christmas without Santa and his levitating caribou.
The drone dropped down to examine the strange green object the droid held in his rubberised gripper. She was buffeted slightly by the winter wind that was swirling eddies of dust amongst the ivy-clad debris.
“What’s that you have there?” asked the drone.
The solar powered engine of the droid hummed in baritone monotony.
“It’s a pear,” he replied.
Red diodes flickered on the drone’s LED display as she searched the cloud for a definition. “A fruit!” she exclaimed when the answer revealed itself. “A seed bearing structure which once grew on trees.”
Mid-December hung around Ely, Cardiff. It was cold but it had yet to snow. It had yet to do anything.
What Joseph and Mary called a flat was one room. A window that looked north across Bishopton Road. A gas cooker on which two of the four burners worked. A sink. A double mattress set on a floor industrially carpeted grey.
The thin sunlight sighed through Joseph and Mary’s window, dangled as threads about their room.
Their furniture was plastic, Joe’s mate Paddy had lifted it from the Culverhouse Cross B&Q. Straight into his van and dropped it here one late November evening. A table and four chairs. A housewarming present.
TICKET UPDATE: 8 TICKETS REMAINING, PLEASE BOOK ASAP IF YOU ARE COMING!
The mornings are frosty, the lockdown has (sort of, partially) lifted, and tinsel is in the supermarkets: it's finally December and time for Liars' League's annual Christmas feast of festive fiction!
This month for our seasonal theme of Heart & Soul (click for Facebook event) we have five brand-new stories, set in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and the far future, to warm your cockles and ginger your bread: they feature lockdown hook-ups, accidental babies, drones, droids, zombies (obviously) and some truly appalling things coming down chimneys.
Thanks to lockdown closures we can't be at our usual venue the Phoenix, alas: but we have provisionally booked the upstairs room at the Nag's Head in Covent Garden: stories will be read LIVE by REAL ACTORS in front of a REAL AUDIENCE at 7pm on Tuesday December 8th.
NB Tickets are STRICTLY limited to 25 and cost our usual £5. (See below for how to book online).
HEART & SOUL STORIES
A Pear for an Urchin by David Turnbull, read by Claire Louise Amias An Irish Christmas by David McGrath, read by the author Lookin Up by Emma Grae, read by Lois Tucker Last Christmas by Rhys Timson, read by Tony Bell The Annunciation by David Gill, read by Lin Sagovsky
We will also be distributing free mince pies and of course brand new novels for the quick of brain and high of hand in our Christmas book quiz.
The venue address is: The Nag's Head 10 James Street Covent Garden, London WC2E 8BT
TICKETS & EVENT INFO (the small print stuff)
TL:DR
- Tickets are limited to 25 - and are a low low £5 - but you have to book a table even if it's just you. Singletons book tables for 2. - book and pay through Paypal using the orange Donate button above, top right
THE LONG VERSION
Please book a TABLE (for however many are in your group - max 6) rather than individual tickets, as pubs are not allowed to seat people of different "groups" (even if that group is only one person) together. So we strongly suggest you contact your friends if you think they'll be coming, and book a table together. If you're on your own just book a table for 2, but these are limited.
Tickets will be limited to 25 (assuming all tables are full - may be slightly fewer if some tables are not full), and our ticket price remains a furlough-favouring £5.
If you want to drink alcohol you also have to order a "substantial meal", i.e. more than olives. Soft drinks are totally fine. (Sorry, them's the government guidelines ...)
How to book: Please use the Donate button on the top right of the LL website page (look up, look right, it's small and orangey-yellow...) to donate the price of however many tickets you want to us. So a table for 6 would be £30, but a table for 2 with only one guest is £5 because we're not going to punish you for not filling a table. Here's how you do it.
- Click the Donate button
- Enter the amount: £5 for 1 ticket, £10 for 2 etc. (you have to type in 5 - 0 - 0 for £5, it's slightly non-intuitive)
- Click Donate. This will take you to your Paypal login (if you don't have Paypal get someone else on your table to pay for tickets :)
- IMPORTANT: Where it says Add a note please enter your name plus how many you want on your table. E.g. Katy Darby, Table for 4. Track & trace/QR code stuff is done at the venue so we don't need everyone's names, just the booker's.
- Ideally, tick the Share your email address button so we can contact you if there's any problem
- Click Donate Now
- And you're done!
N.B. ALL donated funds (after Paypal fees) support contributing actors & authors: we take nothing.
Read by Gloria Sanders (fifth story in podcast, here, or here if that doesn't work)
Dear Parents and Carers,
Happy Friday, Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it, and welcome to your Weekly Words from everyone at Sugar ‘n’ Spice Day Nursery! The children have had lots of fun this week exploring the world and embracing learning, and we have some lovely pictures in this newsletter later on! But first, some dates for your diary:
We know the children LOVE our dressing-up days, and the grown-ups love the photos (if not making the costumes, :) so next week’s nursery Christmas party theme is POEMS! Please bring your child to nursery dressed as a character from their favourite POEM, for example Stick Man by Julia Donaldson, The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson, The Gruffalo’s Child by Julia Donaldson … I’m sure you can think of plenty, even if they’re not by Julia Donaldson. Maybe we should just call it our annual Julia Donaldson party! :)
Read by Carrie Cohen (fourth story in podcast, here, or here if that doesn't work)
The perfect apple cake, loved by grand-children, great grand-children and invading rats, needs six last-of-the-season English Russets. From where she lies, in the orchard’s long wet grass, looking up into the apple tree’s twisted limbs, she counts 74, 75, 76, their rough skins wet with dew. A snap, a breath, and a deep thump break the silence as another falls. 75. Falling on the heads of scientists. Given to princesses who fall asleep. Passed between Eve and falling Adam. And then they lie, rotting in neglected grass, waiting to turn the ankles of old ladies who fall, flat on their backs, as the moon rises.
She had been out there, in the garden after midnight, setting Bad Cakes for the rats. Six English Russets and, to make a good cake bad, a scoop of green powder from the red box at the back of the shed. The instructions said to put small piles of the stuff in the corners of outbuildings. But the rats weren’t interested in an old shed, full of rusted tools. They came from across the fields, sniffing out her fresh seeds just below the surface, digging up her baby plants. Poison put down outside just washed into liquid mess, weeping into the soil it was supposed to protect, dangerous for curious little fingers that might poke at it.
Read by Paul Clarke (first story in podcast, here)
The night they banned it, I became the richest man in the city. Instantly, sugar was worth its weight in gold. I travelled around and sold pieces in back alleys and black markets. I exchanged it for silk, for jewels, for dowries and lifesavings. Nothing is worth more than that which we cannot have.
Soon I was decked like a festive tree, adorned with ruby rings and gold chains, and still I carried a sugarloaf in every pocket. I never partook myself of course, never let the white stuff pass my lips. I’d seen what one taste could lead to, seen the need in their eyes and decay in their mouths. I didn’t want my perfect teeth to rot. Who could sell anything then?
Yet, I got greedy all the same. That time was coming, Yuletide, when every merchant rubs his hands with glee or cries in desperation. You sell in the rush and make your fortune, or live like a pauper for the rest of the year. Not me, not this year, not now everyone wanted what I was selling.
Read by Margaret Ashley (second story in podcast, here)
I hear the pitter patter of feet during the night, as I knew I would: the crunch of fresh snow; the whoosh of snowballs cutting through the icy air, landing with soft thuds on trees, on the brick walls of the house, on the glass of my bedroom window.
Are they calling me? Greeting me again after two long, long years. It did not snow last winter, and I have waited seven lengthy seasons.
I have missed them. Time dragged its feet to the rhythm of the grandfather clock in the hall and the dent in the armchair seat is noticeably deeper. I used to roam the house, wandering through the corridors in never-ending spirals, moving from one window to the next. Watching. Now that I can see every knot in the wooden banister in my mind's eye, every broken tile in the kitchen floor, I prefer to sit. The view from the living room’s French windows is encompassing enough. I can see most of the garden, the dark shadows of the forest. Behind me, the corners fill with dust, pale follicles of skin banking up like drifts of snow.
The line for the only toilet in the building is at least six people deep when I join. Christ alive, this place is a hole. A poky recording-studio in North London that has clearly seen better days. Outdated equipment, cramped facilities and one single toilet. Whoever designed this place in the sixties had no idea that one December, twenty years later, the entire British music industry would descend to record yet another Christmas charity single.
As I wait, I look through the lyric-sheet for the song we’re recording today, to find the couplet intended for me and my sister. I finally locate it, sandwiched between lines for Andrew Ridgeley and the girls from Bucks Fizz. I sing it once quietly to myself.
What are our Christmas stories made of? Sugar & Spice (click for Facebook event) and all things nice, that's what! Also Bailey's, snow ghosts, cocaine, feral toddlers, charity singles and just a pinch of rat poison. Delicious! And here are all the videos on our YouTube channel. Merry Christmas!
Our cosy Christmas venue was The Wheatsheaf, Rathbone Place on Tuesday 3rd December. Now, drum roll please ...
WINNING STORIES for SUGAR & SPICE
The Snow Children by Peggy Lee, read by Margaret Ashley
TBC by Roly Grant, read by Carrie Cohen
Sugar & Spice's Weekly Words by J. A. Hopper, read by Gloria Sanders
The Sugar Merchant by Lisa Farrell
Think Fast, Sugar by Alan Graham, read by Katy Darby
Doors open at 7pm for a 7.30 start and tickets are £5 cash on the door. Entry includes a programme, participation in our infamous literary quiz where brand new books can be won, and of course all the mince pies you can eat. Drinks and food are available at the bar throughout. There's no pre-booking, but tables for four or more can be reserved by calling 07808 939535. The venue is the upstairs bar at The Wheatsheaf, 25 Rathbone Place, Fitzrovia, W1T 1JB.
Accessibility note: Access to the upstairs is via stairs: there's no lift, sadly. The Wheatsheaf is 5 minutes' walk from Tottenham Court Road tube, which is on the Central and Northern lines, and about seven minutes from our regular venue The Phoenix if you accidentally go there first ...
Outside, a cold, clear evening, men going about bundled in woollens, steam rising from a rubble of horse manure in the road, the air steeped in stovesmoke – a hard frost in the night mail, if I am any judge. Inside, a table by a fire, ink and a pen, two heaps of paper, a mirror trimmed with a little holly. A glass on the table beside the paper, and in it a measure of bourbon whisky.
Between them the fire and the whisky almost keep the cold at bay.
It’s queer to think that before last spring I had barely ever written a word (aside from the dry documentation I assembled, the legal letters I drafted, the contracts and covenants I compiled in my work at at the real-estate office). Oh, as a young man I had attempted poetry, awful stuff, as young men do, but I always knew I had no aptitude for it, and soon gave it up. And then in more recent years I never seemed to have the time.
Now – tonight, last night, the night before that, a string of nights and days reaching back into darkness – time seems to be all that I have.
The wind ripped away Square Jaw’s yell as he dived from the stealth bomber and into the belly of the Mexican night sky. Two thousand feet below, the lake was a silver puddle, a second moon. S.J. hugged his Takana sniper rifle tighter to his chest. He was diving into the moon, a Christmas eve angel of death. A Wenceslas warrior. ‘Yeeeeha!’
At eight hundred feet above the villa where Hector Cabello and his cartel leaders were gathered, he pulled the release ring. But before the canopy fully opened, his feet smashed into something solid. His knees jammed into his chest and he was slammed onto on his back.
For a moment he just lay looking up at the stars while he caught his breath. His legs were bent so far over his head that his knees were touching his ears. The moon swayed as the platform, or whatever it was he had landed on, gently rocked. Absurdly, he thought he could hear the snort of animals and the tinkle of bells.
Inside, Christman’s department store was shimmering and the same, smelling of wax-polish and tinsel. I wasn’t sure why I’d brought Sinclair here – a drunken impulse, maybe – but I’d always loved it: the chill marble of the first floor, how my pumps clinked on it like teacups. How the glass cabinets glimmered and mirrored into forever. The necklaces, draped on velvet hillsides like the Hollywoodland sign; the hundreds of gloves folded in prayer. I used to think they got Christmas from this place. At least my Christmas morning stockings from Aunt Mill always came in the same battered Christman’s box. But the stockings, always worsted and thick, not silk, were never from here; I’d never known the dress that was, that had come in that box when it was new.
I’d only been to Christman’s for the first time with Inez, when we were thirteen. I remembered it as clear as today. She’d bought a broderie blouse with money her parents had given her. The blouse was beautiful, and cool as a dollop of sour cream on the baked potatoes we ate in the third floor café afterward, tucked among her boxes. The whole time, I hadn’t known where to put my hands.
‘Fuck you, Jack. Merry Christmas.’ That’s what I should have said.
Instead I mutter ‘See you later, then – at home’ with a calculated passive-aggressive cutting edge. It’ll be wasted on the pissed-up arsehole.
We’re in Bermondsey, last Friday before Christmas. Done the Beer Mile. Again. With mates – mostly Jack’s. You know the place – a mile-long strip of craft breweries under the railway arches? If you’re too basic to know it then you’ll never work for my PR agency.
Jack swears virtually all his social media deals are sealed here over a pint of craft IPA on a Friday afternoon. All free-range and fair enough. But the evenings inevitably end with contracts celebrated at someone’s new-build flat in Rotherhithe or Limehouse – the boys in a daze of drugs and videogames and their bored girlfriends bonding over competitive stories of sex and shoes.
From a seam of molten gold, on the wounded bed of the Adriatic Sea, a curl of magma, drawn from the earth on a serpentine current, was warped into a bottom-heavy S-shape. It hardened as it cooled on a rising stream of bubbles; breaking the surface a few minutes after it formed, where it assumed the bobbing silhouette of a swan in profile. By late afternoon it had entered the Venetian lagoon, nudging itself unnoticed along the battered walls of the interior canals that reflected murky cross-sections of buildings, garnished with Christmas lights.
A pair of large hands, the colour of mahogany, the flesh welted with buried shrapnel, reached down, raising it from the channel, water pouring from the honeycombed rock.
The man's name was Melko. The object that he held was called a lava swan. He had lived in the city long enough to know that the people considered them lucky and displayed them in the windows of their homes and businesses. He left it leaning upright against the green door of Della Cava, a seaport vintner that traded medicinal wine, made from salt grape. Wiping his scarred palms on his trousers, he ambled across the plaza towards a pair of towering double doors made from dulled, embossed metal, with a smaller wicket gate for pedestrians inset at the bottom.
It’s new because the book, Cassandra Darke by Posy Simmonds, was only published on 1st November this year (sorry, only a few sample pages can be found online). It’s old because it’s inspired by (if not a faithful reworking of) the classic seasonal story, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.
Cassandra Darke is also a graphic novel. Actually, novel might be pushing it a little as, at under 100 pages, it can be read in the time it would take a long short story. But it is told mostly with pictures – and wonderful ones they are too.
Cassandra herself is a curmudgeon on a par with Ebenezer Scrooge – a wealthy septuagenarian West London art gallery owner. She’s as mean towards others as Dickens's protagonist, but her solitary Sloane Square existence is considerably more indulgent – she has a cook (whom she reprimands for being “heavy handed with the dill”) and polishes off bottles of Chateau Haut Brion during weekday dinners.
Rachel Karyo writes: This short story is written in snow, one or two words at a time, photographed, and then published on Instagram. Shelley Jackson has been writing “Snow” (now in its twelfth sentence) since 2014. The story is still in progress.
William H. Gass writes that when we read works by authors such as Kafka, Beckett, Barth, and Borges, it’s “as if we’d stepped into a two-pound puddle of mirror glass and come out as wet as Alice.” This is how it feels to read a Shelley Jackson short story.
Her prose is graceful, playful, inventive, and poetic. An example: “There are snows made of clock faces and circular slide rules, of maps to undiscovered countries, of the shattered breath clouds of those who have cried out for help unheard on a clear winter day.” I love the beautiful strangeness of “shattered breath clouds,” the paradox of the map, those unexpected, evocative, analogue objects, and the music of the sentence, its consonance and repetition.
Reginald, the narrator of this short meditation on unwanted seasonal gifts, wastes absolutely no time at all in stating that he does not want a "George, Prince of Wales" Prayer-book as a Christmas present. In this opening sentence Saki uncannily identifies a trend that has endured for over a century since the story was first published. The author was a casualty of the battle of Ancre in 1916, where he fell prey to a sniper's bullet, and sadly did not live to see the better world that followed the war, where no-one would ever think of gifting a loved one a copy of a "George, Prince of Wales" Prayer-book without being expressly asked to do so.
Equally enduring is Reginald's account of the dread that accompanies the arrival of a tie from a well-meaning, country-dwelling, female relative - “some spotted horror that you could only wear in secret or in Tottenham Court Road”. As with the "George, Prince of Wales" Prayer-book, the undesirable nature of such a gift is as relevant in 2018 as it was when these words were first committed to paper.
Thanks to our faithful fans' nominations we were shortlisted (along with four other eminent & excellent events) in the Best Regular Spoken Word Night category at the Saboteur Awards 2020! We didn't win (though congrats to poetry night Punk in Drublic, who did) but we certainly basked in the glory ...
INTERVIEW ON THE STATE OF THE ARTS
In celebration of our one hundredth event, the fine folks over at thestateofthearts.co.uk interviewed us about the secret of Liars' League's longevity, here.
BEST REGULAR SPOKEN WORD NIGHT AT SABOTEUR AWARDS
We got nominated, we canvassed, we voted, we hoped, we prayed. Then we went down to Oxford - along with our publishing partners Arachne Press - for the Saboteur Awards and came away with a gong each! We won Best Regular Spoken Word Night 2014 and Weird Lies won Best Anthology.
LL IN GUARDIAN TOP TEN
Liars' League is one of The Guardian's 10 Great Storytelling Nights, according to the paper's go-out-and-have-fun Do Something supplement, that is. And they should know. The article is here and mentions several other live lit events well worth checking out.
ARTICLE ABOUT US IN WORDSWITHJAM
Journalist Catriona Troth came along to our Twist & Turn night, reviewed it and interviewed Katy, Liam, Cliff and author/actor Carrie. See what she said in her article for WordsWithJam here.
BUY OUR AUTHORS' BOOKS!
Longtime contributors Niall Boyce, Jonathan Pinnock & Richard Smyth all have books out which you'd be well advised to buy, then read, then buy for others. All genres are catered for, from novels (Niall's Veronica Britton) and short stories (Jonathan's Dot Dash) to nonfiction (Richard's Bumfodder)
KATY LIAR'S DEBUT NOVEL
Liar Katy Darby's debut novel, a Victorian drama called The Unpierced Heart (previously titled The Whores' Asylum) is now out in Penguin paperback. It's had nice reviews in The Independent on Sunday, Sunday Times & Metro (4*).
OUR INTERVIEW WITH ANNEXE MAG!
They came, they saw, they asked us a bunch of interesting questions. Interview by Nick of Annexe Magazine with Katy of LL: here
Flambard Press Publishers of Courttia Newland's short story collection "A Book of Blues", from which we read Gone Away Boy in April 2011.
Granta A great magazine full of new writing by established and up-and-coming authors.
Literary Death Match Watch blood spill and saliva fly, as writers fight for the LDM crown by reading their work and performing ridiculous tasks.
Sabotage Reviews An excellent review site which highlights the best of indie literature - poetry, prose and spoken word. They gave us an award, doncherknow?
ShortStops A fantastically useful site run by author Tania Hershman which lists opportunities for short story writers, from magazines to prizes to live events.
