Liars' League

Sugar 'n' Spice Weekly Words, by J.A. Hopper

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! :)

Bad Cakes by Roly Grant

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.

The Sugar Merchant by Lisa Farrell

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.

The Snow Children by Peggy Lee

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.

Think Fast, Sugar by Alan Graham

Read by Katy Darby (third story in podcast, here)

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.

“Remember when we fill our bellies

Their starving faces on our tellies”

Jesus wept, you’d think they'd suffered enough?

Christmas event: SUGAR & SPICE at The Wheatsheaf, Fitzrovia, on Tuesday 3rd December

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 ...

Mr Cromerty of Boston by Richard Smyth

Mr Cromerty of Boston MP3   Full podcast here: (3rd story)   Bonus Xmas podcast story here!

Read by David Mildon 

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.     

Santa: Judgement Day by Dennis Zaslona

Santa - Judgement Day     Full podcast here: (5th story)       Bonus Christmas podcast story here!

Read by Rich Keeble

‘Merry Christmas, motherf**kers. Here I co-ome!’

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.

Christman's Present by Lauren Van Schaik

Christman's Present MP3

Read by Lois Tucker

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.

Gluten Tolerant by Mike Clarke

Gluten Tolerant MP3

Read by Amy Neilson Smith

‘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.

Not this time.

The Man Who Brought Gold by Mark Sadler

The Man Who Brought Gold MP3

Read by Sophie Cartman

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.

My favourite Christmas story: Mike Clarke on Posy Simmonds's "Cassandra Darke"

My Christmas story is both very new and very old.

It’s new because the book, Cassandra Darke by Posy Simmonds, was only published on 1^st 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.

My Favourite Seasonal Story: Rachel Karyo on Shelley Jackson's "Snow"

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.

My Favourite Christmas Story: Mark Sadler on Saki's (H. H. Munro's) "Reginald on Christmas Presents"

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.

Christmas event: NAUGHTY & NICE at The Albany on Tue Dec 11th

We made our list, we checked it twice ... and here are the winning stories which were read at our tinsel-tastic Christmas show NAUGHTY & NICE (click for Facebook event) on Tuesday December 11th, downstairs at The Albany, Great Portland Street. We had seasonal shoplifting, sexy sourdough, kidnapped presents, one VERY naughty little girl and what happens when Santa meets the Special Forces ...

UPDATE: All the videos from the night are now up on our Naughty & Nice YouTube playlist and the texts and podcast will be online very soon. 

WINNING STORIES for NAUGHTY & NICE

Christman's Present by Lauren van Schaik NEW AUTHOR - read by Lois Tucker

 

Santa: Judgement Day by Dennis Zaslona NEW AUTHOR - read by Rich Keeble

    

Mr Cromerty of Boston by Richard Smyth - read by David Mildon

 

The Man who brought Gold by Mark Sadler - read by Sophie Cartman

 

Gluten Tolerant by Mike Clarke - read by Amy Neilson Smith
 

As usual, doors open at 7pm for a 7.30 start and tickets are £5 on the door (cash only, sorry, but there is a cashpoint across the street). Drinks and food will be available at the bar, though there are also free sweets and the infamous interval quiz features fabulously festive books to be won! There's no pre-booking, but tables for four or more can be reserved by calling 07808 939535.

The venue is the downstairs bar at:

The Albany
240 Great Portland Street
London W1W 5QU

St John's, 23rd December - Forgiveness by Anna Savory

St John's - Forgiveness MP3

Read by Paul Clarke

Welcome. Welcome, everyone, to St John's. And, goodness, look at you all! It’s heartening, really it is, to see so many faces here tonight. If there’s one thing I’ve realised in the past few weeks it’s that there’s nothing like Christmas to wake that latent religious urge, which in many of you has lain dormant at all other points in the year. Why, only in September I was stood in the Bishop’s living room expressing doubts about our dwindling congregation, and what did he tell me? He told me to have a little faith.

‘Don’t worry, David,’ he said, like the Lord addressing Thomas ‘Don’t fear. Just you wait until midnight fucking mass, it’s like the bloody Hammersmith Apollo.’ Famously obscene our Bishop, one of his many charming quirks. But indeed, how right he was! Attendance tonight is gratifying and I can only assume it signals a sea-change in the spiritual direction of this parish, which I trust will continue long, long into the new year.

It Never Snows at Christmas by Peter Higgins

It Never Snows at Christmas MP3

Read by Gloria Sanders

‘Every year, she comes, and every year it’s the same.  “Have you been on holiday, Laura?”  “Yes. Greece, actually.”  “Greece?  Really?”.’

‘Esme.’

‘“Oh, and I’ve brought you a bottle of Greek wine.”  “Oh, Laura, you shouldn’t have.”’

‘Phoebe!’

‘It tastes like wee.’

‘How would you know?’

‘Girls, please stop bickering, please.  Greek wine does not taste like wee.’

Flitter by Emma Hutton

Flitter MP3

Read by Annalie Wilson

Maggie didn’t think the snowman would punch back. The others hadn’t. Their heads had just rolled off and landed with a thud that made her hate the night a little less. But he landed a hook on the jaw that sent her body to the ground.  

‘Weren’t expecting that, were you?’

‘Jesus!’ 

‘Nope. Not Jesus.’

She stared up at two lumps of coal and clicked her jaw back into place.

Strange Heart by Jean Rover

Strange Heart MP3

Read by Max Berendt

For the most part, Dave kept his mother in his closet except on her birthday when he would set her on the fireplace mantel so she could get some sun.

Now Miriam, his sister, was going to spoil all that.

For Dave, a mild-mannered, bespectacled high school history teacher, life was going along at an even pace. Then, he met Sharon. Last month, he turned forty and planned to marry her in December.

That’s when Miriam had jumped in. “It’s time,” she announced in her matter-of-fact way via a telephone call from her condo in the Deep South. “No bride in her right mind wants her mother-in-law’s ashes hanging around, especially at Christmas.”

The Corollary Museum by Joel Blackledge

The Corollary Museum MP3

Read by Louisa Gummer (MVP Acting, 2017)

Welcome. Gather round. Gather round, please. Good. Ahem.

If one person were to spend one minute looking at each item in the British Museum’s permanent collection, it would require a visit of 15 uninterrupted years. To do the same in the labyrinthine halls of The Corollary Museum would take almost a century.

But don’t worry - today I will show you just some of the Museum’s catalogue. Please stay together and don’t touch the items. If you have a question then please speak loudly, I’m older than I look.

The Museum was founded by Porfirio Maldonado Jambrina, to house the private collection of objects he acquired on his extraordinary travels. How can one man have collected so much?