It has been almost another month since I last wrote here, and I am still only on the letter N of the Alphabet Challenge—I find it challenging to fit everything I want to do into my time. Today, I will focus on Names, Nationality, Non-fiction, and Narrative, plus a poem and part of a chapter on Neighbours from my next memoir.

My name is Elizabeth Jane, after my great-grandmother, whom I never met. To most people, I am known as Jane. When I wrote my first book of poems, Wild Child, I used her full name, Elizabeth Jane Pryce. I wanted a name that did not belong to another family member. My nationality is British, although I have lived in the Pacific Northwest of America for over thirty years. 

Non-fiction is a broad style of fact-based writing, of which creative non-fiction and memoir are sub-genres. I am the Narrator of essays, poems, and books I write.  My book of poems, Wild Child, was about my experiences living in London. This one I wrote in the third person, while living in the East end of London. 

NEIGHBOURS

Three floors up in an old London house

She watches from her window.

She wears white

Her hair braided back with silver tiebacks,

Fragrant garden smells interrupt her work.

She is writing in the afternoon light.

The old man is alone in his garden.

He is dancing, alcohol his loving friend.

His wife is alone inside the house

She suffers too.

The young woman looks down and smiles,

“Peter where are your shoes?”

The old man holds his hand in the air,

“She has taken them away.”

“Come down and be with me, it is mad inside the house.”

The writer shakes her head sadly, “How many today?”

Three Jack Daniels and a bottle of Brandy,”

He smiles.

The old man’s feet barely touch the ground,

He wears a spotless white shirt and stained pants.

A confusion of weeds and flowers

Are bent around his feet.

He picks a rose. “For you, the angel in the window.”

From inside the house, a voice; loud and raucous shouts,

“Leave that bitch alone, get back inside”

He laughs sadly.

The writer shrugs her head

“What you want me to do?”

“Come down and be with me,

It’s crazy inside.”

She appears at the garden fence

Whispers,“Where are you?”

There is no answer.

Peter is asleep.

Sweet, drunken repose.

Following is an excerpt from my childhood memoir, Chosen, about my special Christmas experience:

The house was relatively quiet and peaceful, except for me singing or playing with my toys or Wong. I was teaching him new tricks with one of the glass balls off the tree; It was one I knew wasn’t precious to Mummy. When the ball rolled behind the tree, I saw it – a large wrapped box with my name on it.  

“Mummy, Mummy, there is a large present for me under the tree. Can I open it?”

“Why, of course, dear, if it has your name on it. Who is it from?”       

I quickly pulled the box out from under the tree, turning it over and around but saw no name other than my own written in large script. “I don’t know; it only has my name printed on it.” What if… I thought, my whole body shivering with excitement, “Do you think Father Christmas left it?  He must have come twice if he did!”       

“You would be very special if he did,” Mummy said, her eyes sparkling, her whole face smiling.

“By Jove, you are one very lucky little girl, Janie.”  Daddy said with a chuckle.

I was very excited about discovering the gift; it was a boxed set of Beatrix Potter stories. Every morning for the next week, I jumped out of bed and rushed to the living room to check under the tree just in case another present should appear.  

The Boxing-Day special never happened again. But the magic of that day has stayed with me for the rest of my life.

Thirdly, an excerpt from my next memoir, Bewildered, which is in the process of final editing.

NEIGHBOURS

When I first went to live in Crawley, a little girl named Bernice, or Bunny, as her mother called her, and her brother Wade, lived with their parents in the house next to ours. My youngest step brother, Jimmy, and Bunny were both about six years old, and Wade still a toddler. One day Bunny and my brother were upstairs playing when it became suspiciously quiet. Jimmy was cutting and shampooing Bunny’s hair. His efforts were not without problems; he had cut deep grooves in her hair with a pair of dressmaker’s scissors and shampooed it with toothpaste! 

Wade was the one usually in trouble. I heard stories of a neighbour calling his mother and saying, “For God’s sake, go get that child of yours off the roof before he kills himself or I have a heart attack.” I also heard him begging his little friend to egg him on to smash a hole in the greenhouse windows. “Go on, Bobby, tell me to do it. Come on, Bobby, tell me to do it, please!”   

Another little girl, a toddler, about two years old, lived in the house on the corner of the side alley leading out to the main street. About once a week, this little girl would give her mother the slip. I can still see and hear her today, naked except for red Wellington boots, and her shriek when she turned and saw her mother running after her.