Visit to the Doctor for Driving Licence Renewal

 Hi there

It was time for me to visit the doctor's.  To renew my driver's licence.  The nurse and the doctor would be checking on my cognitive skills and my eyesight.  I was stressed out over it.

The nurse greeted me cheerily.  Hop on the scales," she said.

"My goodness," I said.  "There's a law that fat people can't drive cars?" 

She looked at me, horrified. She figured I was serious.

"I'm joking," I said. Younger people never can believe that older people have a sense of humour.  But I would have to watch my words.

"How many animals can you name in 30 seconds," she said.  "... Go!

I started listing household animals.

I transitioned to farm animals.

Then African animals.

Then birds  (oooh, were birds included as 'animals'?)

Then rodents  (think, lorraine, think!)  :Weasels, stoats, minks....stoles-"

Stoles???  Stoles?  For some reason I was getting muddled up with mink stoles. For goodness sake, I wasn't in a Doris Day or Audrey Hepburn movie...

I was stuck... So busy thinking about mink stoles, I couldn't move on.  My brain went blank for the last couple of seconds before the 30 seconds was up.

Still ... Because I had spoken at a fast speed, I still got 27 out of 30.  22 was average.  Not  many people got the high 30.

Whoopee, I passed the other cognitive tests too: memorising a full name and address,  drawing a clock face reading 1.05 pm, almost getting the day's date right - I mean, come on, I'm retired.  Retired people rarely know the exact date; they're too happily enjoying the day to worry about a dateline

I failed the doctor's eyesight test, couldn't follow his finger when he circled his head. So, I now have to go to an optometrist for an appropriate drivers' eye test.  I may lose my licence.

At no time was I asked anything about road rules...

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Those future dreams we had at secondary school

 Hi there

When I started in the third form at Wellington East Girls' College, way back in the late 1950s, the teacher asked the students what job they wanted when they left school.  She began to work her way around the room.  "Daphne-?"

Daphne perked up.  "I'm going to be a hairdresser," she announced confidently.

"Margaret?"

"I want to be a hairdresser."

"Julia?"

"Hairdresser."

"What about you, Valerie?"

"I'm going to be a model."  Valerie was topping out at 4ft 11 inches.  The class doubted her modelling dream would happen.  But daphne's declaration had jogged a few other third form minds.

"I want to be a model, too," said another girl.

And another.

The rest all wanted to be hairdressers.

Noone mentioned typing as a profession, even though we were all in a Commercial class.

Me?  I stood out.  "I'm going to be a librarian," I said.  Goodness, I loved reading.  

In the end, I only knew one young lady from my class who took up hairdressing.  She lasted four months as an apprentice but was caught sleeping in the breakroom and fired instantly.

No-one ended up a model.

I became a typist.  (read this blog for periodic episodes about my "Typist in Charge" career).  I figured most of us, if not all, ended up as typists.

However, as a sideline, I did manage to get dozens of plays, poems, and stories accepted by The School Journal, and plays, stories and a romcom series broadcast over Radio New Zealand.  I wrote articles and stories for magazines, newspapers, and anthologies.

All thanks to Mrs Heely, my fourth form english teacher who had asked every individual class member to write a play about The Pied Piper of Hamelin.  She loved my rendition.  She sparked a love in me for writing.

Later on, in my thirties, I worked in Government Buildings.  I met Mrs Heely in the lift and told her about my work for The School Journal. She was tickled pink over my success.  She was working up the road at The Correspondence School, and we kept in touch...

above:  this design was on the pocket of our dark blue school blazers. In my day, we also had the school motto inscribed there, in Latin:  "lumen accipe et imperti"  It translates as "take the light and pass it on".  A good motto but not, I feel, as good as my one from Manukau Intermediate in Auckland's Royal Oak which was "Learn By Doing".  

The WEGC above design was on the Old Girls' Association metal badge, which for some obscure reason I still have. 

 

 

Those Quiz Shows

HI there

above: "The Chase UK" .  Goodness, who doesn't love this programme? 

Just after I retired I was determined to try out all new things -  my friend and I auditioned for tv quiz shows, and we were chosen for several.

Very few people realise that in some quiz shows there is (or was?) an audition to first get through. Quiz questions are asked by the production people, forms filled in, people are graded.  The tv people know how clever, or not-all-that-clever, are the  participants. .  Me, I probably fitted into the not-all-that-clever category.  

So, because  the tv people know the quiz intelligence level of all candidates, they know how to get a mixture of different intelligence types to sit on the one panel. "Ah," we think from watching on our sofas at home, "that one guy is really clever, he out-ranks the others by miles.  What a pity, he's being held back by them."

I used to wonder why the losing participants always vehemently thank a host for a totally fantastic day.  I mean ...  they lost the game.  All they did was sit or stand there and answer a few questions.  Most of them wrong.  How could the day be so fantastic?  It should be terrifying and embarrassing, surely?

But the fantastic-ness comes from behind the scenes.  Many tv shows keep the participants around for most of the day. Often the applicant gets a nice hotel stay included (twice I was flown return to Auckland).  

A good meal or two is included, a tour of the studio, meeting  tv personalities. Perhaps there's a silly game so that you can memorise your fellow quizzers' names and backgrounds.  The lovely production people can make the time enjoyable.

On 3 different shows, I won $800, a music system, and another music system.  On another, I flunked out miserably.  On yet another, I was a panel contestant for an end-of-season show where the whole of the New Zealand viewing public was batting for the super-intelligent guy who had made it through several weeks already.  He won...

Continuation of "That Was The Worst Week That Was"

 Hi there

Remember my telling you about the storm that hit Wellington and my backyard shed was destroyed.  Luckily I had all my past memories and stuff in plastic bags so everything was salvageable.  But the weirdest thing was how much of that stuff I was now classing as rubbish.  Seven bags-full.

Ten days after the storm, I had finally found a rubbish firm to take the broken remnants of aluminium away.  Thank goodness.  My heart sang as every last bit of my shed disappeared down the street.

And thanks to the Citizens' Advice Bureau who helped me in the hunt to find that rubbish collector.

However ... the hex on me continues.  

After getting rid of the pieces of the old shed on Friday, I went to the beach on Saturday and Sunday.  On arriving home on the Sunday afternoon, I heard what sounded like a waterfall coming from my bathroom.

Somehow, miraculously, the cold water tap over the bath ('tub', if you're American) was gushing out water like it was a branch of the Huka Falls. I couldn't turn off the tap.

I called practically every plumber in both The Yellow Pages and from Google.  They were all out enjoying the only extremely fine day Wellington had been given this summer (okay, okay, I am exaggerating.  But only a little.).  Even one plumber answered me from his luxury hotel in Fiji to tell me he was definitely not available.

In the end, it was my own plumber who answered my call.  He arrived at 5pm that Sunday.  He fiddled around with the outside water outlets, installed a new washer, and  charged me $20.  I was ever-so grateful to see him.

Let's hope that hex on me doesn't continue...