Reading out loud in public

Some thoughts on last night's performance and recordings of the readings

Last night was the performance at The Purple Room that I was worrying over in February.

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I’m glad to say a wonderful evening was had by all, and Kim Ralls, the folk musician whose sets were book-ending mine, was great. I recommend checking out his website (https://kimralls.co.uk/), I had One More Song in my head until I went to sleep last night! It was lovely to be at the Purple Room again, it’s always a warm and welcoming atmosphere, and nice to have friends turn up to support me — including two who’d never seen me read before so had no real idea what they were letting themselves in for.

JY Saville and Kim Ralls at the Purple Room, photos by Andrew Woods

I always wanted to be one of those published authors who came to a reading with a stack of paperbacks, full of scraps of paper and post-it notes. They would select one after a moment’s thought, bend the spine back and read, and I was always impressed. Truthfully I could have been doing that for a while, with flash fiction anthologies and the sort of magazines that are A5 and bound like a book. The font is usually too small though, easy to misread or lose your place as you glance up at the audience; I have read at gatherings in dim light that makes 14-point bold double-spaced the only legible option.

This time I was looking forward to reading an extract from my CWIP shortlisted story You Can’t Get There From Here from the paperback anthology. The font is not bad and I remembered the Purple Room as well lit, but my tester audience (my other half, Andrew) vetoed it in favour of a longer extract from my podcast Lee-Ann’s Spare Fridays, and he’s usually got good judgement in these matters. In the event, I printed all my readings out and glued them to sheets of card.

Putting together a reading list for an event is as time-consuming and agonising a task as putting together compilation tapes for Andrew when we were first going out. Selecting for length, tone, topic. Rearranging for flow or contrast. On top of that for my readings I had to think about how hard to read they are, do I need a short easy one to calm me back down after a long and complex one. I had some stories on my shortlist that had to go because I can’t reliably pronounce a crucial word.

I read them all to Andrew, including doing the sort of intro I imagined I’d do on the night, while he timed me and picked me up on speed and emphasis. Then I read them all again. And again into the microphone I use for the podcast — there are some recordings below if you couldn’t make it to the performance, though as they’re rehearsal prep they’re not as polished¹ as you might be used to from the podcast.

And after all that preparation, all you can hope is that on the night you don’t waffle too much in the intro, don’t lose your voice or drop your print-outs or stumble too much, and don’t get stage fright. I think I was ok on that front. Here’s what I read…

The Riff That Made His Name

Inspired by catching a clip of a video Ray Manzarek had made about Riders on the Storm, about 40 years after the song was first released. I remember him as looking like a smart-casual grandfather in the video, and I wondered if he could even remember what it felt like to be that young man in the band.

Perched on a bar-stool in a badly-lit studio he recites the old anecdotes with rehearsed pauses and staged laughter

The Riff That Made His Name by JY Saville

This story was part of The Food of Love performance that we² did for the Ilkley Literature Festival Fringe in 2018 and again on Chapel FM in 2019 which you can listen to a recording or watch a video of. Definitely an old favourite and here’s a recording of me rehearsing it last week, having not read it in public for 5 years:

Sugar Free

A new short piece, inspired by my mother who has both dementia and diabetes, and has always been an awkward so-and-so. It is meant to be wry but I guess by its nature it’s tinged with sadness.

"I'm diabetic," she says with injured dignity, as though merely wafting inappropriate food in front of her could send her into a coma.

Sugar Free by JY Saville

Silver-Topped Cane

I can’t for the life of me remember what sparked this off. I know it used to be longer and has been through several unsatisfactory incarnations. It’s about poor old Barry and his dreams of a more interesting life. Barry is called Barry because it's the sort of character name Victoria Wood used, and she’s one of my comedy inspirations. His alter ego J Orpington Spadina was inspired by my flatmates at university twenty-odd years ago: one was from Toronto, near the Spadina subway station. The other thought this was such a pleasing name that in the unlikely event of them writing a novel it would be under the name Spadina - I forget the forename they chose so I made up one with a nice rhythm, that turned out to be a town in Greater London.

If anyone asked – and they were sure to, for what was a silver-topped cane if not a conversational gambit – he would claim to be a poet.

Silver-Topped Cane by JY Saville

It was published at Funny Pearls a few years ago, but I only realised when I decided to read it aloud just how many times I used the tongue-twisting words ‘solicitor’ and ‘Felicity’. Remind me to use a nice one-syllable name like Pat for the next aunt I create — though this one kindly changed her name to Marjory for the evening, which kept the rhythm of the sentences — and to always refer to anyone in the legal profession as a lawyer.

I Could Murder a Custard Cream

Not a new story but it’s the first time I’ve performed this dark comedy. I say performed rather than read for this one because it was written as a monologue to be performed by an actor, when that was all the rage in lockdown.

Somebody put it about that I'd been left a lot of money by a rich aunt in Sussex and I'd decided to take up pottery. They never asked me directly but I let them think that was the truth. I've never made a pot in my life.

I Could Murder a Custard Cream by JY Saville

I was lucky enough to have it chosen for one of a short series of films by Slackline Productions, and Susannah May brought my character wonderfully, awfully to life. You can watch her weaving her magic on YouTube when you’ve listened to my rehearsal, which just isn’t in the same league

Hair Spread Like Sea Fronds

A flash piece, more of a prose poem than a story, that began life in one of those legendary³ Kathy Fish workshops.

Her skirt breathes with the current, ballooning then clinging again as though she’s encased in a swimming jellyfish.

Hair Spread Like Sea Fronds by JY Saville

I have a feeling it was from an exercise where we were supposed to borrow from each other, so the title may have been a line from someone else’s. It was published at Ellipsis Zine a couple of summers ago.

I Say Your Name

More flash fiction. Neither the narrator nor the person whose name is being said ever have their gender specified, though the third member of the traingle does.

I feel my cheeks flush as I say your name, the name I haven't said out loud for six years, and you frown. Your friend frowns too

I Say Your Name by JY Saville

People have assumed different gender combinations for ‘I’ and ‘you’; I don’t remember setting out to be this ambiguous with it but I like that it turned out that way.

Granny Doesn’t Always Know Best

There was a resurgence of interest a few years ago in the well-known 6-word story, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

I’ve written a few stories that imagine why there might be a spare pair of baby shoes on the go. There was one where a girl buys them for her brother’s pregnant girlfriend, only to discover something about the family that means their offspring is unlikely to need shoes (you can read that one at the 2017 FlashFlood if you like). This one’s a touch more mundane, about a mother and daughter who don’t see eye to eye.

I put the tiny shoes on the table. I would have loved to buy Lucy a pair like that thirty years ago but I could only dream outside shop windows.

Granny Doesn’t Always Know Best by JY Saville

We Keep Dancing

A one-paragraph flash about ageing with a person. Andrew and I have been going to ballroom dancing lessons for a fair few years now, but I have never worn a trouser suit, and believe me it’s never likely to be him that messes up the footwork.

I watch the look of concentration on his face that's replaced the ecstasy he used to show, but then he never had to remember the steps for the Sisters of Mercy the way he does for Fred Astaire.

We Keep Dancing by JY Saville

Lee-Ann’s Spare Fridays

Last of all came ten minutes of extracts from episode 8 (series 2 episode 2 if you prefer) of my monologue sitcom Lee-Ann’s Spare Fridays. Episode 8 is the episode that’s been listened to the least for some reason, and yet contains some of my favourite lines so I decided to try and garner some love for it. In this episode, Lee-Ann’s looking for an English Civil War encampment and her annoying sister Gina is doing an orienteering challenge that must never be referred to as a treasure hunt. Due to map-reading difficulties, indistinguishable Kinder egg capsules, and a mythical rogue squirrel, neither of them do all that well.

Gina's claim that we were lost was both unhelpful and patently inaccurate. We were about half a mile from my flat, we could clearly see the church and its neighbouring allotments, and if we shouted loud enough Richard could probably hear us from Gina's garden.

Lee-Ann’s Spare Fridays episode 8 (series 2 episode 2) by JY Saville

You can listen to that episode at: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jysaville/episodes/Episode-8-Remaining-civil-e2elkte and you can read a bit of background to the episode in the post I wrote when it came out:

Lee-Ann's Spare Fridays episode 8

I hope you enjoyed that. I certainly enjoyed my evening at the Purple Room: thanks so much to Keely and Peter for inviting me.

1. Pretty sure you can hear my stomach rumbling at some point. Shouldn’t have done it at just past noon

2. Me, Emily Devane and Roz York, with wonderful specially-arranged musical accompaniment from Keely Hodgson and Karen Vaughan

3. Legendary if you’re a flash fiction writer. She’s on Substack