Edmund St Clair St James: About Myself.

If you will kindly bear with me, I shall write about myself in the third person, since I should feel much freer and more comfortable that way.

Edmund St Clair St James was born in 1953 in a small coastal town, that shall remain at this stage nameless. He was an only child. His father was elderly, a retired bank manager, who died soon after Edmund was born, leaving a leaving a large collection of rare stamps and Edmund and his mother in modest but comfortable circumstances.

When he was five years old, a curious young Edmund upset a pot of cabbage soup boiling on the stove over himself, and was thereafter hideously scarred. It was thus in some ways a lonely childhood, but not an unhappy one, with the company of his dear mother, and a range of absorbing interests, such as the collection of insects and of pre-decimal coins. (If anyone reading this should happen to possess a spare example of a 1953 Coronation sixpence, Edmund would indeed be glad to hear from you.)

We shall pass quickly over Edmund's adolescence; suffice to say that he received a sound enough education to attain an advanced library qualification, the Certificate of the New Zealand Library Association, at the age of 21 (the glad news coming on the very day of his attaining his majority, thus giving cause for a happy double celebration toasted in mother’s elderberry wine). Edmund is believed to be the youngest person ever to be awarded that distinction. He soon afterwards accepted a position at the Invercargill branch library of the New Zealand Society of Accountants, where he rapidly rose through the ranks to the position of Deputy-cataloguer, in which role he spent some thirty fruitful and productive years.

Three years ago Edmund took early retirement to look after his dear mother at home, who had suffered a stroke which left her paralysed in all extremities. Edmund has never married, but has looked after a series of what he likes to call his little animal friends, and, once he has mastered the skills of digital photography, will regale you, dear reader, with photographs of his cat, 'Nancy', named thus after his favourite poet, Edna St Vincent Millay (“Not with Libations,/But with Shouts and Laughter”; etc.).

Edmund’s interests are various and include not only numismatics but also reading, tatting, and, of course, gardening (he prides himself on his petunias). There is between times nothing Edmund likes better than a quiet evening in winter beside the fireside with the gentle puffing of his pipe and the rustle of his newspaper for company; and in summer perhaps a gentle paddle at the seaside (with dear mother in her wheelchair watching from the shore). In recent years, Edmund has taken up the art of creative writing, and has made several essays into verse, modelling his novice attempts upon the work of his favourite poets, William Wordsworth (of ‘Daffodils’ fame), Arthur Clough (the early years), and Ella Wheeler Wilcox; but none, of course, can compare to the immortal work of dear Edna St Vincent Millay.

He, again with some trepidation, takes the liberty of submitting to the reader's charitable judgement one of his recent verses below ("a poor thing but mine own").