A perfect Sunday with...CB Everett
Coffee, fancies and erotic vagrancy
Every week, a top writer, artist, actor or creator reveals how they’d fill their perfect Sunday, sharing their favourite comfort reads, movies, food… anything that would make their weekend great.
Today, it's the turn of CB Everett, writer of The Other People.
CB's perfect Sunday… brunch
I like to do something that I can use that old quote of Kurt Vonnegut’s to describe:
If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.
We have the Lilac Bakery just round the corner and that’s open on Sunday mornings for coffee and fancies. They regularly appear in ‘best independent bakeries in the UK’ kind of lists, so I’m very grateful they’re so nearby and dog friendly. We like to go round there, relax, imbibe, eat listen to music and, if we remember, get the papers to read. Although mostly we read the papers on our phones and I get bored with that quite quickly so I always take a book. Which leads me to...
CB's perfect Sunday… read
Obviously this tends to be whichever book I have on the go at the time. Sometimes, I try to start a book on Friday evening and leave a huge swathe of Sunday for finishing it, but obviously, that depends on how long it is. I’m currently reading Roger Lewis’s peerless biography of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Erotic Vagrancy. Since the title is taken from a disapproving description of them given by the Vatican, it seems an appropriate book to be reading on a Sunday, God’s day. It’s brilliant, as good as all the hype says it is. And like all the best books, ends up being about more than it claims to be.
On the subject of religion (kinda...) I was a choirboy when I was about nine or ten and left because I had a fight with another boy in the vestry. Later, in my teenage years, the evangelicals tried to get their claws into me and destroy my spirit, so now when I think of churches on Sunday, I’m overwhelmed with depression. They’re like theatres without all the things that make them magical: actors, costumes, lighting, sets, audience, plays, joy. And they made Sunday evenings the most dismal time of the week. So no religion for me. Now, if I want to be part of something bigger than myself on a Sunday, I’ll watch the football or the Strictly results show.
CB's perfect Sunday… comic
This is something that’s become harder for me to enjoy in recent years as I seem to be falling out of love with the comics medium a little bit. I find the mainstream constantly reinventing itself every five years and starting again at issue one really annoying and not worth keeping up with. Having said that, I love Tom King’s stuff, especially when he shines a light on the obscure corners of DC, and I’ll happily spend hours reading and rereading something like Danger Street or Moving Targets, both of which I absolutely loved.
I also like to read right through a whole run of comics. Matt Wagner's Sandman Mystery Theatre is great for this. Same with Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles. And of course, anything by Alan Moore.
CB's perfect Sunday… movie
Sunday lends itself to lounging on the sofa watching old films. And for me, that usually means film noir. The kind of film Sunday was made for as a bit of bleakness on a Sunday feels right, somehow. At least in the absence of church.
I’m not a fan of streaming services, so I’ll go to my, even though I say so myself, extensive Blu-Ray and DVD collection and pick something out of that.
The most recent film noir I watched and absolutely loved was Symphony For A Massacre, a 1963 French noir. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Other recent highlights have been Nightfall, Phantom Lady, Naked Alibi, Dead Reckoning and Ride The Pink Horse. I commend them all to the viewer. OK, maybe not Ride The Pink Horse, but that’s because I’m not a Robert Montgomery fan but hey. YMMV.
CB's perfect Sunday... TV binge
This is kind of a difficult one for me as most of the bingeing is done by my wife. I’ll always happily watch Doctor Who, but I’m not too good at bingeing whole series of stuff. I get bored, and my mind wanders, and then I forget what I’ve seen and lose the thread of the story. See The Day of the Jackal, for instance. I’m halfway through that and I’ve forgotten everything.
The latest TV series I did want to watch as quickly as possible, though, was Ludwig. I loved it. Pure escapism. Pure joy. I managed to binge-watch that and retain everything I’d seen. High praise.
CB's perfect Sunday… podcast
The last one I really loved was The ParaPod which was brilliant and hilarious. Two comedians, Barry Dodds (believer) and Ian Boldsworth (sceptic) investigate aspects of the paranormal each episode. Simple. Hilarity ensues. Genuinely – much, much hilarity. It’s so funny I’ve been short of breath listening to it. It shone briefly and now seems to have disappeared. I haven’t found anything as good to replace it.
CB's perfect Sunday… album
I can’t listen to music when I work and since most of my time is spent working, I don’t get as much time to listen to music as I want to. But when I’m not working, I love an album that I can listen to all the way through and not skip tracks.
Like my movies, I don’t use streaming. so it’s CDs for me. Humanist’s album, On The Edge Of A Dark And Lonely World is brilliant. As is Harp’s Albion. And anything by the Lemon Twigs just makes life infinitely better.
CB's perfect Sunday… treat
Going back to that Vonnegut quote again, I like to keep things simple. Usually, a Sunday treat involves nothing more fancy than my wife and I taking the dog for a long walk if the weather’s good, usually round the quay in Exeter, where he has his special spot. It involves him jumping off a small bridge into the water and the enjoyment he gets from it makes me happy, too.
There’s also my favourite pub, the Topsham Brewery & Taproom, on the quay and just next to it is Rockfish, my favourite fish restaurant. Cujo, my dog, loves Rockfish as they do unlimited chips and he’s a big fan of unlimited chips. We’re pretty lucky in Devon that so many restaurants and bars are dog-friendly.
Alternatively, if we fancy getting out of town, we’ll drive onto Dartmoor since it’s right on our doorstep, and find somewhere to walk. I’ve got a few places, not very touristy or well known, that seem special to us. If I can combine that with finding a stone circle, so much the better. That may also lead to a (dog-friendly, of course) pub for food and then it’ll have to be a Sunday roast.
The Other People is out April 10th from Simon & Schuster.
Ten strangers.
An old dark house.
A killer picking them off one by one.
And a missing girl who's running out of time. . .
Ten strangers wake up inside an old, locked house. They have no recollection of how they got there.
In order to escape, they have to solve the disappearance of a young woman.
But a killer also stalks the halls of the house, and soon the body count starts to rise.
Who are these strangers? Why were they chosen? Why would someone want to kill them?
And who – or what – is the Beast in the Cellar?
Forget what you think you know.
Because while you can trust yourself, can you really trust THE OTHER PEOPLE?
C.B. Everett is the pen name for author Martyn Waites. He trained at the Birmingham School of Speech and Drama and worked as an actor for many years before becoming a writer. His novels include the critically acclaimed Joe Donovan series, The Old Religion, and The White Room. In 2013 he was chosen to write Angel of Death, the official sequel to Susan Hill's The Woman in Black, and in 2014 won the Grand Prix Roman Etranger for Born Under Punches. He has been nominated for every major British and French crime fiction award and has also enjoyed international commercial success with eight novels written under the name Tania Carver.