Do you have music on while you work? I usually play instrumental stuff cos I find lyrics distracting. Either way, as editor or author, I’m focused on language and the Wernicke’s area in my brain can’t handle both spoken (sung) and written words at the same time.

That’s why I had to stop and listen when my playlist shuffled to The Beatles singing “A Taste of Honey.” The lyrics may be trite (!) but the sensational stage play that song was written for is anything but trite. Written by 18-year-old Shelagh Delaney, A Taste of Honey created a storm when it debuted in London’s West End (1958) as a “kitchen sink drama”. The film starring Rita Tushingham (1961) subsequently won multiple awards.

Thinking about the play, which I read at an impressionable age (the film was banned in New Zealand), I realized that even if its plot is different, its theme is quite like a theme of Becoming Janice. Pardon my arrogance but to quote the BBC’s Bitesize guide, both play and book “look closely at human relationships and the way individuals are capable of hurting and harming one another when they do not consider […] the consequences of their actions.”

Do look up the play – believe me it’s a good read if perhaps a little dated now. Meanwhile, it’s a good excuse for me to give you a taste of Janice. Here are two little scenes introducing the main settings. Happy reading!

LONDON — July 1979

Saturday morning and the high street was crowded. Squeezing past a mother and pram blocking the pavement, Janice was startled by her reflection in the door of a cake shop. How horrible. Cursed with her father’s long bones, narrow hips, and strong, square shoulders that made her look like a man from behind, she felt like a cart horse and didn’t need reminding.

 

Opening her coat to the wind, Janice felt a pang of regret that she’d left New Zealand’s winter behind. July should be cold, not warm like this. She strode past Tufnell Park tube station, jaywalked across the busy intersection, and continued uphill, heading for Hampstead Heath.

 

This neighborhood was long past its sell-by date. Most houses needed a new coat of paint. Tiny gardens in the gap between front door and footpath struggled in a battle with weeds. She turned on impulse down a side street.

 

Shoppers laden with bags of groceries were straggling home. Janice overheard their north London accents and marveled at how foreign English could sound. These people belonged to this neighborhood. And so will I, she thought. I might be new, but I won’t be a tourist. She wasn’t like the Kiwi acquaintances who’d made the trip before her, traveling all this way and returning with shallow impressions of Buckingham Palace and Earl’s Court. Kangaroo Valley, they called it, as too many Aussies and Kiwis gravitated there.

 

But not Janice. No way would she become one of the cud-chewing roos living there. She wasn’t like the rest of them up from Down Under, boomeranging here for the overseas experience and going back home straight after. She’d come to London on a one-way ticket. She was twenty-two, all grown up. She could stand on her own feet.

 

Janice stumbled over an uneven tile in the pavement. Regaining her balance, she smiled at the irony. Looking ahead, she saw that her random march had brought her nowhere near the Heath. Instead, she was back on the high street. She smiled. She couldn’t get lost if she tried.▼

AMSTERDAM — March 1980

Sunlight dappled the trees flanking the Keizersgracht, one of the semicircle canals in the center of Amsterdam. Janice zipped up her coat, for though the sun was out, any warmth it held was blown away by the cold breeze.

 

She kept pace with two black swans drifting down the canal, stopping occasionally to pet the friendly cats she found sheltering on the stone steps of houses. The steep-gabled buildings were five or six stories high, jammed together like a giant set of badly shuffled cards. They seemed to tilt forward, as if they might fall over. Parked cars filled every space between the lime trees lining the canal, their bumpers jutting out and further narrowing the cobbled road. A footpath running alongside the houses, defined by a row of rounded iron palings, was merely a token gesture for pedestrians. It was too narrow and uneven for Janice to negotiate comfortably. She sauntered down the middle of the road, stepping aside for passing cars or cyclists.

 

It was peaceful on the canal. No other tourists around to spoil things. Janice knew she looked like a tourist. She strolled slowly, looking up often to gaze at the crazy angles of houses propping each other up. She lingered too long on the bridges to watch the flow of murky water and inhale the stale scent, so different from the crystal-clean blue of the Clutha River in New Zealand.

 

She stopped to read the graffiti too carefully to be a blasé Amsterdammer. Graffiti was smeared wherever there was space to use a spray can. Someone had gone mad spraying Liever Lesbisch all over the place. Janice could guess what lesbisch meant but wasn’t sure about liever. She knew that lief meant sweet. Her mother used to call her lief on the rare occasion she’d been a good girl. But liever? She’d have to look that up. At any rate, she liked Liever Lesbisch, sprayed on the canal wall in bold lavender paint. Something lesbian. Whatever liever meant, the graffiti made her feel rather welcome in Amsterdam.▼

Learn More

• 10 Things I Learned: A Taste of Honey by Elizabeth Pauker
• What possessed The Beatles to record the title song of the Broadway production of A Taste of Honey? Paul McCartney explains: “[It] was one of my big numbers in Hamburg – a bit of a ballad. It was different, but it used to get requested a lot. We sang close harmonies on the little echo mikes, and we made a fairly good job of it. It used to sound pretty good, actually.” — Anthology
• If perchance this amuse-gueule has whet your appetite for Becoming Janice, the ebook and paperback are available online. Alternatively, you can order a signed or inscribed paperback from the author.

Featured Images

Truth to tell, the dyke-on-a-bike cover (above) was my own bad idea. Luckily my publicist, Chris from The Idea Shop, tactfully pointed out that using it would make the book look like a travel guide to Amsterdam.

My Word! It might amuse you to know that the mellifluous cover image was inspired by a play on the Dutch word pot, slang for ‘lesbian’. I leave it up to you to decide if Janice tastes like honey… in any language.😊