Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Baked Alaska

 Hi  

Way back in the nineteen sixties, the dessert Bombe Baked Alaska was THE dessert for the times.  It was always brought to a table where there were no less than four people.  A big dessert for a group.

When I was in New Plymouth a few weeks back, I went to Area 41 restaurant and on the menu was Bombe Baked Alaska.  And it was in individual portions!  I was so excited.

Baked Alaska is a tower of ice cream, with a biscuit base, covered completely in meringue and finished off in the oven ... and the ice cream doesn't melt! 

The Baked Alaska came to my table, had alcohol poured onto it, and then it was lit.  I felt so spoilt..



Sunday, November 15, 2020

TYPIST IN CHARGE

 Hi there

I've decided that, maybe once a month, I'm going to do portions of my biography for you, in regards to my working as a typist (typist, what's that, I hear you say?  Hehehe).   Each portion will be looooong, compared to previous entries.  Here we go - 




TYPIST IN CHARGE

In December 1960 I trotted shyly behind Mum to an interview for the position of Trainee Typist at the Department of Education Head Office, Government Buildings, Wellington. I was sixteen.  Mum did all the talking, and she got the position - oh wait, no!! It was me who got it. The pay was 15 pounds ( $30) per fortnight.

On the day I started work, the elderly Supervising Typist-In-Charge, Miss Dorothy Hopkins - the woman who'd interviewed me - had in the meantime recycled herself and was starting back as a basic typist. The typing pool (Room 305) housed ten of us. 

My first day was not a success.  At Wellington East Girls' College, my manual Imperial typewriter had a short carriage.  At the Department of Education, the carriage (the contraption that holds the roller for the paper) was a long one.  I was bad at sums and to try and do mathematical equations to exactly centre the heading of a letter in the middle of a page, on a long carriage machine, was beyond me.  My waste basket overflowed by 10 am.  By lunch-time I had secreted half the overflow away to be disposed of in the bin of the ladies' room at Kircaldie & Stains Department Store.  The other half was burned in the sanitary disposal unit at work.

How did it go?" Mum asked that evening..."

" Um.. Fred, the liftman is nice," I said. .  "Oh, and Miss Hopkins told me about how there used to be a porter come around every morning to light the fireplace.  And during the war, the typists would sit around the heat holding up used pages of carbon paper so as the carbon would re-melt because it was difficult to buy any more ..."

  Mrs Rowley, Typist-In-Charge of the pool, checked my work.  Most of it was returned as a redo.  I am grateful the woman put up with me.  She nurtured me, stood by me, even when I threw a mini tantrum because I'd spelt the word 'alcohol' wrong on fifteen individually typed copycat letters.  I had followed an officer's spelling.

There were about nine steps on the typing scale of higher positions to aspire to, ranging from Senior Typist, through various levels of typist-in-charge and supervising typist, up to the highest-of-highest: Supervising Typist in Charge. Two things were needed to progress up the ladder: a good work record plus shorthand. I tried learning shorthand at Gilby's Business College evening classes, but couldn't grasp it. 

I temped in various sections. School Publications (School Pubs) was in an old house on Willis street.  One of the editors regardless of chastisements about public servants not taking part in protest marches, was not only a marcher, but usually helped carry the banner in the very front marching row. Another editor, wanting a late morning lie-in, put on his vacuum cleaner to simulate the noise of printing presses. He rang into the department and shouted he'd be in later because he was at the Government Printer. Poet and editor James K Baxter slept in the old house's bathtub when he got in a row with his wife. The young clerk liked to dress up as a cowboy, in chaps, stetson, and gunbelt. He would go down town to collect the mail in that outfit.


Saturday, November 14, 2020

I can't tell jokes

 Honestly, I can't.  Tell a joke.  Someone will tell me a joke, and I think "Oh, that joke is great.  I must remember it".

I promptly forget most of every joke I hear.  I dither around the beginning of a joke, have to backtrack somewhere around the middle, repeat myself a couple of times, make up a portion, then completely forget the ending.

Oh, wait, no, I do remember one joke.  It's ostensibly the shortest joke ever, and was told by Miss Piggy in The Muppet Show -

" Pretentious?  Moi?"


Saturday, November 7, 2020

Horse and the city

 Hi there

A couple of weeks ago, just as I was leaving  the town of Whanganui, I stopped my car at the  roundabout before the motorway.  A few cars in front of me was a young woman ( I think) sitting in the front passenger seat, holding reins leading out from the window and attached to ... a horse!  Her  car took off, very slowly, with the horse trotting beside the vehicle.  I think the horse would have been  frightened.  The car went to the right, I went to the left.  I hope the car would have been stopped  by a cop. Talk about animal abuse, and dangerous driving ...



Sunday, November 1, 2020

The things people learn from movies

Hi there

Quite a while back I was having lunch with a group of varied-aged people.  We were in a nice restaurant.  The young woman sitting beside me confided that she had never understood how to navigate through a proper cutlery setting until she saw it demonstrated in the movie "Pretty Woman";  she now felt confident when eating out, she said.

Years ago, another young woman told me that she only  bought wooden coat-hangers because in the movie "Mommie Dearest", the main character, a film star, had berated her daughter because of the purchase of plastic coat-hangers. 

Don't tell me Hollywood can't be an educator ......