Frozen vampires and the strange ladies of Whitby

Another fab time at Polari "Supernatural Night" last night (despite mourning the departure of the lovely DJ Dom) - suitably-themed spooky music from Paul Burston, happy hour cocktails, and a bevy of brilliant writers reading their most ghoulish works for our delectation...

Opening the show, Mathilde Madden read an extract from one of her "slash" erotic novels - a genre that has women writing graphic sex, including gay sex, for the benefit of other women. Her tale was of a reluctant werewolf who transforms from human to beast whenever he cums, but now manages to curtail this transmogrification with the aid of a silver collar that is enchanted by witches. In this extract, our (anti-)hero manages to service all twenty-seven nubile members of the Vix coven without becoming hairy and howling at the moon, just knackered, so something worked... The Silver Collar on Amazon



Poet Mark Walton read some of his works, including a chillingly incisive observation about a friend taking up with the wrong company, Vampires ("they will suck you dry"), written especially for this evening. I bought a copy of his first anthology of poetry Frostbitten on the strength of that alone (even though that particular poem isn't in the book). He was ably followed by Kristina Lloyd, another "slash" writer, whose icy tale of encounters with vampires in the frozen Arctic made our blood run cold - deep dark stuff indeed! Vampire's Heart is part of the compilation Lust Bites, available on Amazon.



Our headline guest Paul Magrs (pronounced "Mars") has a long history of published works, novels and short stories - including some spin-off books from the Dr Who TV series - and he read for us an extract from one of his hilarious books about the adventures of Brenda and Effie, two most unusual old ladies of Whitby. Not only do our two heroines get themselves involved in all kinds of sinister supernatural adventures ("Mr Danby and his Deadly Boutique", a demonic local radio phone-in show, the evil Mrs Claus at the Christmas Hotel, a convention of elderly ex-superheroes - gripping stuff!), but Brenda has a secret - she is a 200-year-old "Bride of Frankenstein" creation from various mis-matched body parts...

Read an extract of his novel Something Borrowed on Amazon

As Paul Burston succinctly put it, in a review he did in The Independent on Sunday a few years ago:

"Gothic horror and situation comedy don't always mix well. The danger is that everything is reduced to camp. Added to this, Magrs brings a large helping of pathos as Brenda's back-story is laid bare. To pull all this off at all takes some doing. To pull it off so well takes the combined talents of Alan Bennett, Angela Carter and The League of Gentlemen."

As you can imagine, we were transfixed!

Another great night's entertainment (if somewhat curtailed by the fact that another performer was scheduled to appear immediately following Polari, so we were unceremoniously encouraged to clear the room almost bang on 10pm...)

Still, if rumours are to be confirmed, there are bigger and better things afoot for Polari in the near future - and not just next week's "Love and Pride Night" (with Maureen Duffy, Michael Arditti, VG Lee and Dan Mathews of PETA ).

Polari is collaborating with The House of Homosexual Culture again at the London Literature Festival at the South Bank next month on two events which we have booked to attend - "Love and Marriage" and the Stonewall 40th anniversary event.

Polari