I don't care for feet. Mucky business if you ask me: all germs and clinging dirt. Smelly shoes, now surely that's a turn-off? But not for some folk. You wouldn't believe the websites devoted to it all. Ladies, shown from the ankle down. Page and pages of just that. Well, you can hardly know if they're women's feet, can you? Could be some boy with size sixes just waxed his toes or something. People'd think that was a laugh you know: put a boy in red heels and have perverts wank over the photos. You can't trust anyone online, you know. Could be anyone wearing those shoes. Could be your Mum.
Emma Cadbury woke up to discover that her entire body had turned into a medium class blend of milk chocolate. If that wasn't troubling enough - she had always preferred her chocolate to be expensively Fair Trade rather than cheaply mass produced - it was a hot midsummer night and the stuff had already begun to melt and stick to the sheets.
He always felt a little nervous answering the phone in the Paris apartment. He read French well, but spoke it badly. His wife's French was beautiful, but she was out buying groceries. He answered anyway.
The list was tucked into the pocket of his jeans. That small pocket, the triangular one located just above the regular pocket on the right. The one just large enough to carry a little change. A condom. A note.
I have just seen the Vagina monologues. I went with my women's book group. We are doing 'Pride and Prejudice' – you must remember the lovely BBC television adaptation - the one with Colin Firth's Mr Darcy - the wet-linen-shirt-coming-out-of-the-lake one.
She was a real supermodel, long of limb, with perfect skin, Apollonian poise, a leonine gaze that made lingerie, diamond rings, lipstick, and private wealth management brochures fly off the shelves, and like all of her breed the imperfections were hard to find, so when you found them—and, boy, did you look—they slapped you in the face with all their ungoddesslike vulgarity: stinky feet, swamp gas flatulence, voluminous ear wax, a porcine snore—poetic justice, you might call it, for God getting everything else perfect. But a tapeworm inside my Clea—that I didn't expect!
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
