Friday, November 15, 2024

TYPIST-IN-CHARGE, Episode 18

 Hi there


Supervising Typist, First Floor, Education Head Office, Government Buildings, Wellington, 1977

When a newcomer joined the govt, Probation Report time came round after a year.  After 2 years, the typist was off probation and ready for her yearly Personal Report, as were all workers in the govt.

 Mrs Rowley, the top-graded supervising typist of all Head Office pools, asked various bosses who sent their work into our rooms what they thought of the service.  She and Miss McNeil, the (supremo) Supervising-Typist-in-Charge worked on the reports together.  A report was all about what a boss thought of a minion's-sorry-employee's initiative, judgement, accuracy, supervision, etc.  There was also a box for Mrs Rowley to give a rating out of 10.

I got a 9!!  I was so excited.  I'd never had a 9.  No typist ever in the history of Education typing had ever got a 10 (please wait with bated breath for Episode 19 where there will be a blow-up over this rating!!)

At the bottom of the form were the words "Your Job Aspirations?"  I had always put "Higher Graded Position".

So, enclosed in that full glow of being a 9, I worked even harder to cement my supervising typist position.  I became a work-horse of the highest degree.  I typed my fingers almost to the bone, I raced through a job with accuracy and speed...  Oh, and as a side note, here's a trick question that was asked at interviews,  "What is more important: accuracy or speed?"  Most interviewees proudly said "Accuracy" and it was then pointed out that accuracy and speed together were important.  Oops. 

I hated working on Saturdays to get the pool's work-pile down, especially when the hand-writing of the officers  couldn't be read and there was no-one around to ask.  I often volunteered to work solo (whatever happened to teamwork?) because I knew that I was both accurate and speedy. and could work non-stop without the disturbance of pool chatter and stopping for cups of tea, and ringing up boyfriends on the one phone that the pool had.  Most letters and jobs to be typed were clipped to a huge file containing everything to do with the subject in question and, yes, sometimes, it was fun to read back through the files.  When the bosses arrived at work on Mondays, one couldn't see the work desk for all the typing.

An officer who sort of cruised through his job had the 'girls' in the pool coming up with theories and ideas about him.  He was in Administration, just across the corridor and, unlike us with our window vista of the wooden Annex at the back of Govt Bldgs he was a couple of floors under the big outside clock with a great view of the Cenotaph, Lambton Quay and Parliament Buildings.  This older guy was sort of the Admin run-around.  He drove Head Office's one car.  If an officer wanted to go to the airport or around town, he would ring Admin, book in a time and this guy would take him to his destination.  I remember once seeing Mr Pinder, a director, racing down the hallways, yelling back to his secretary to ring the airport and tell them he was on his way....

One day, our junior Helen came tearing breathlessly into the pool, "Guess what?"

"Your boyfriend has a secret girlfriend?" Maureen asked dryly.

"Of course not!  It's that guy in Admin.  He opened the bottom drawer of his desk.  And there was a bottle of...whisky!"

No???  What gossip...

Mind you, it wasn't that much of a surprise because he often smelt of beer.

While all the usual shennanigans were going on in the typist areas, I was studying Pitmanscript.  I had realised over the years that I would never be able to advance higher if I didn't have a shorthand qualification.  For some silly reason the higher supervising typist positions were for shorthand-typists.  Silly, because supervising typists never went to take shorthand, leaving it to a pool minion instead.  It was better that they stayed in the pool to supervise.  And type.

Shorthand-typists were thin on the ground.  Schools were finding it hard to get teachers of the subject and women attending business colleges, like Gilby's, didn't want to learn regular shorthand.  It took too long and was too finnicky with it's accuracy.  In exams, pupils were marked wrong if they so much as slipped up on the slightest little penciled line.

So, in obvious panic because no-one was learning Pitman shorthand anymore, Pitman came up with Pitmanscript.  It was half-english.

I did a Pitmanscript course over six Saturdays at a local college.  At the end I triumphed with a 60 wpm certificate from the school.  However, that 60 wpm equated to words the equivalent of 'the cat sat on the mat'.  In real-life, if taking more complicated dictation from a boss, it would be like I was writing about 20 wpm.  I wouldn't keep up.  Pitmanscript could never be as fast as regular Pitmans Shorthand.

So I studied further.  I brought my "Pitmanscript 500 most common words in the english language" to work and practised going over them again and again every morning and afternoon tea-time until I could all but Pitmanscript the words in my sleep. As I passed shop awnings on the bus ride home, I mentally  pitmanscrpted the names of shops.  When the teenage music programme "Ready to Roll" came on Saturday evening tv, I frantically Pitmanscrpted the words to songs.

 I practised an hour every night in front of my text books and my tape recorder (sorry I wiped you off the tape, Elvis).  I read out loud the long texts from my advanced exercise book, then played them back.  I finished the book, and started again, and then again.

I sat the Public Service Junior Shorthand-Typing Exam. Eighty Words Per Minute.   The piece the teacher read out from had the word "Monarchy" in the title.  I couldn't figure out how to Pitmanscript that word. I hesitated too long. After that, all was lost.  I scrawled everything else, missing out on so many sentences.  

I failed the exam.  I had sat it at a regular college, alongside fifth form girls.   My fault that I failed, nothing really to do with the reader (though instead of reading the whole thing at the same speed as she was supposed to do, she tended to read phrases rather fast.  Maybe because the kids in the class were used to the shortened phrases of regular Pitmans Shorthand, so she was helping them out.  No-no-no, I'm not bitter...)


above:  the department gave the above notebook to all sitters of School Certificate Shorthand.  We had loads in the department....

Noone at the office knew I'd sat the exam, thank goodness, what with me being a supervising typist and all.   I vowed to sit again the following year.  I figured that my writing size was too big.  I wasn't getting that many words on a line, thus losing time.  And with it being Pitmanscript, I was allowed to make up anything I wanted to in order to speed everything up, unlike Pitmans Shorthand where every stroke had to be perfect or there would be a fail.  So ...I came up with a few symbols to get me faster through a piece.  I have never written anything so small in my life as I did in my practise pieces.  The exam piece had taken about six shorthand-notebook pages.  With my new teeny writing and word abbreviations I was down to one and a half pages.  Roll on, exam no 2... And, maybe, a higher graded position

Every Thursday, the Public Service Official Circular (PSOC)  came around the rooms.  Everybody looked at it to see what graded jobs were going over the whole of the govt, including for typists. We all knew everybody's salary because the PSOC included it.

 I flipped through the pages.  Then flipped back again -

What -?

There was a position for a Supervising Typist at Customs Head Office, just down the road from where I was working.

It was a supervising typist job.  Not a supervising shorthand-typist job.  And it was one grade up from my present position.  The gods couldn't have been kinder.  Angels were singing.  Not one alarm bell rang in my head.

Little did I know.....






Saturday, November 9, 2024

LAX International Terminal

 Hi there


Stock photo. Los Angeles International Terminal


Just a word for the wise, or the maybe-not-so-wise when they're leaving the United States for a visit to New Zealand -

What to wear at your departing airport when it's an American summer, especially in August....?

Don't wear summer clothes.  

When I was sitting in the Air New Zealand departure area at the Los Angeles International Terminal, I glanced at the people around me.  It was so easy to spot the smug Southern Hemisphere know-it-alls, myself included.  We'd  exchanged our California summerwear for puffer jackets, fleecy trousers, clod-hopper trainers, our pockets a-bulge with mittens, woolly beanies, and cough drops.

Many Northern Hemisphere people appeared to have come straight from someone's backyard pool party:  floaty  chiffon-y dresses, light cardigans, Jandals ('flip-flops' or 'thongs' if you're from some other parts of the world),  shorts, HawaiI shirts....

No-no-no. No.

I can understand that many first-time long-distance travellers don't know how chilly it gets on a plane that might take 14 hours to reach its destination, but to not check up on the weather season at plane's end is totally wrong.

June, July, August are New Zealand winter months.  It's topsy-turvey to the Northern Hemisphere. In many areas, we have snow and winning Olympic snow-board athletes.  Even in places that don't get snow, we're still winter-cold, especially in Wellington with its gale-force winds and seemingly forever-rain.  And, more advice, be careful travelling the West Coast of the South Island in winter.

I guess it's all because we are close to the South Pole...


Sunday, November 3, 2024

 Hi there


I was going through New Zealand airport security a year or so back.  I'm always excited - and nervous -  to be starting off on a holiday; it probably showed.  Still, I beamed at the guy operating the x-ray booth, the one that we have to stand in so as they can see if we're carrying anything illegal under or over our clothes.  The hard-worked security people deserve my beaming at them because they have to put up with a lot from passengers.

He beamed right on back, and waved me over to his monitor.  Oh, no, I thought, what am I wearing that's betraying me?  My rings?  Ear-rings?  The sequins on my sweater?  

"Hey, come and see how happy you look".  The guy pointed to the screen. 

Um... I peered c!osely at the screen.

It was just the outline of a figure.  No detail at all.

"Gotcha!"  He grinned.

This guy made my day.  I tripped merrily away, in such a good mood to start my holiday






Sunday, October 27, 2024

Modern Movie Musicals

 Hi there


above: "The Colour Purple".  Picture taken from Neon  streaming platform.  No mention of It being a musical.


It truly annoys me when movie-makers love to disguise that their movies are musicals.  I guess they must think that if actors were seen singing and dancing throughout the trailers, then audiences would run screaming away from their upcoming movie.  

Take "Wicked", for instance:  the stage musical has been a success all around the world.  For years.  It's beloved (actually, not beloved that much by me, but I appreciate other people's opinions). The song "Defying Gravity" is a show-stopper. Theatre audiences are enthralled when the young witch astride her broomstick soars above their heads.  Wow...

"Wicked" is being turned into a movie.  The first trailer is out...

But we don't see any singing.  The only song we hear is dubbed over an action sequence.

It's one more movie that doesn't reveal it's musical heart in the trailer.

There are other modern movie-makers who have used this same tactic, they will try all sorts of ways not to show singing and dancing in a trailer:

Wonka

The Colour Purple

Mean Girls

Anything to pretend these movies are not musicals.  It's as if those faceless Hollywood guys are ashamed of their product.  Or they think that the audiences will be.

So, what do they get instead?:  a grumpy audience who think they're going to see see a normal movie, ie, one  without songs. 

Musical fans, too, are irate because they realise they've missed a musical that had been right under their noses at their local cinema complex.

When a musical show on the stage is advertised,  it will usually have the words " - a musical" written alongside the title, eg

The Colour Purple - the musical

Mean Girls - the musical

Wicked - the musical

Legally Blonde - the musical

Hairspray - the musical

etc...etc...etc...

But what about "Lala Land"?  It was  a tremendous success and trumpeted as a musical.  Okay, so "Lala Land was a straight-to-movie musical that had never been anywhere near a stage.  But didnt this success show that there was an opening for the movie musical to be out and proud?

No, those movie-makers still want to disguise musicals in their trailers.  No wonder "The Colour Purple" musical and "Mean Girls" musical only lasted in cinemas a week or two.  The wrong audience had been notified via the trailers. Imagine the horror to fans who thought they had booked for an unvarnished remake of a much-loved movie only to get to the theatre and find it had been turned into a - gasp! - musical.  Here, in Aotearoa-New Zealand and most other countries, audiences don't know that "Mean Girls" and "The Colour Purple" have been West End and Broadway stage musicals for some time... 

...  Why on earth does Hollywood buy a successful stage musical and not want to tell the world it's true nature?  Search me....



*In NZ, the word is spelt "colour".  In USA, it's "color"





Saturday, October 19, 2024

Buying Shoes

 Hi there



I bought some Skechers shoes last month.  I fell instantly in love with the above Walk shoes. 

 Miracle of miracles, Skechers have invented a way for my feet to slip easily into the new inventive high-back shoes without my having to bend down to fiddle around down on the floor.  Wow, no more head rushes.  Thank you, Skechers, I love you.  

Oh wait! - I'm wondering what advantage I've gained -

I'm still having to bend down to tie up the shoelaces.....




 

Saturday, October 12, 2024

Ohope Beach Yet again.

 Hi there


About two weeks ago I was browsing through the website of the Manchester Unity Ohope holiday home units.  Both units were booked up for months.  But, hey, wait -  There was one week clear.  Odd, it was for the second week of the school holidays.  That should have been booked out months ago.  Oh, well, someone must have pulled out.  So last week I had a surprise holiday in Ohope...

I hired a car to drive the eight hours up to Ohope. When my own car is parked at my own house, she is closeted away in a nice warm garage.  Nowadays if she takes me anywhere on holiday she absolutely refuses to wake up on cold mornings, and there is no under-cover parking at Ohope.  So....

The hired car people gave me a Toyota.  Goodness, I had a terrible time driving that car.  So different from my little blue baby.  The automatic gear shift may as well have been a manual shift because of all the trouble and swearing I went through on my week's holiday.  The car's bonnet was shaped so badly that I couldn't see over the sides of it.  The first time I tried to reverse, I pressed the pedal hard and almost shot through the back fence of my holiday home.  Quick thinking and a quick reflex on the foot pedal stopped me about a quarter-of-a-metre from that fence

The weather was perfect.  Sun-bathing Spring weather, as high as 20c, and no wind.  Every day I walked along the beach which was in front of the MU holiday home.  Many people walked their dogs.  Most of the dogs were cute little things -

One fox terrier-type raced toward me, barking like a rabid monster.  As my four readers will remember, it's only been over the last few years that I've started to lose some of my fear over dogs.

I froze as this particular dog screeched to a halt about a metre away from my Crocs, still barking his lungs out, baring his teeth, and quivering with emotion.

I was terrified.   What to do?-what to do?

The tv programme about Barbara Woodhouse, the dog trainer, flashed into my mind -

"S-s-sit,"* I hesitantly whispered.

The dog barked louder, moved closer.

"SIT-T!" I bellowed.  Barbara had told we viewers that the heavy 'T' at the end of the word 'sit' was essential, as was determination in the voice.

And, my goodness.  Guess what?

The suddenly-silent dog.... SAT!!!!

...........


The photo above is of Moutohora Island Sanctuary (commonly known as Whale Island). I took the photo from Ohope Beach.     Moutohora used to be the also-ran island to see, after White Island.  But then the volcano on Whakaari/White Island erupted, responsible for injuries and tourist deaths (see Netflix documentary).  It was heart-breaking.  The island is now closed.  The tour companies go to Moutohora instead, a beautiful trip apparently, seeing bird life, breath-taking greenery, walk tracks, and a hot water beach.  I've never been there, even though I keep telling myself I will visit 'next time'.  I did go previously to White Island where I had to wear a gas mask as I peered across into the mouth of the steaming volcano.  White Island can also be seen from Ohope Beach.


*Barbara Woodhouse's way of dog training was lampooned in the movie "Octopussy" when James Bond ordered a tiger to "sit-t!", and it did.



Saturday, October 5, 2024

Shopping those sales

 Hi there

I went into a clothing store the other day.  I had been attracted by the huge sign that took up all of the front  window:  "20% Off Everything!!!"

 Wow, I was in!  Literally.  

More "20% Off Everything" signs inside.  Everywhere.  On the walls.  On the clothing racks.  On the counter. There was even a huge "20% Off Everything!!!" peel-off sign on the floor. 

As I stood under one sign, looking across at another, and  surrounded by many more, an assistant made a beeline for me.  "Did you know that we have a "20%-off-everything sale? " she whispered confidentially to me.  

Like it was a big secret.

"No," I said.  " Really?  I hadn't a clue... "