Ruminations during a walk when Omicron is rampant

 Hi there

Right... Have I got my mask?  No, darn-it.  I'll have to go back home and get it.....  Oh wait, it's in my pocket...

I'll put on my mask if I approach anyone.  And, whoops, there's a guy up ahead.  I'll just duck behind this lamppost and he'll be 6 feet away from me....  Oh, lucky me, he saw me and is suddenly veering to cross the road.   I must say I'm hurt that he thinks I could infect him!

Lah-de-dah-daa, it's so lovely power-walking in the sun, with the birds chirping, the locusts singing, and -    Oh no, there's a mother with two kiddies trailing behind her..  I mustn't let my eyes wander from the kiddies. They look obedient, but could run up to me any second.  Omicron-Omicron.

Phew, thank goodness, the mother is circling her brood out into the gutter  and I'm ducking into somebody's driveway.  From about 12 feet apart, we exchange  'sup nods of greeting.

But ... Oh dear, a bunch of teen lads is approaching - where's my mask, oh it's dangling from my wrist; put it on quickly-

I feel like I'm spying for the SIS as I squat behind a bush halfway up the Maupuia hill, and watching the teens.  But, hey,  all's well, they've meandered down a zig-zag path, well away from me.

I tell myself that I am not anxious being out in the city, with Omicron raging.  I-am-not-anxious-I-am-not-anxious-

Oh......................... to heck with it, I'm going home to my comfy couch, to Netflix, to my three-month supply of toilet rolls, to my landline phone on which i can talk for three hours to my best friend, and to a massively thick front door behind which i can lock out Omicron...

Protesters in Wellington

 Hi there

above: Government Buildings

above: Parliament Buildings, Wellington

For years and years I worked in what I've only just found out is now called 'Old Government Buildings', but in my working days - 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s - it was plain old ordinary 'Government Buildings'.  Not to be confused (though many people were) with 'Government House', the Wellington residence of New Zealand's Governor-General.

It's breaking my heart that the calm and dignified and beautiful view - the Cenotaph, Parliament Buildings and gardens - that I had from the front windows of typing pool rooms 305 and 206 has changed completely over the last couple of weeks.

The against-mandate protesters, the anti-vaxxers, and anybody else who has just wanted to enjoy themselves at a sixties recreation of a mini Woodstock has rolled up in front of my favourite building.  They've blocked the streets, and Govt Buildings' grounds with their vehicles, and graffitied the Cenotaph War Memorial, setting up makeshift filthy toilets on its hallowed steps.  

Parliament Buildings gardens and lawns have been trampled on, urinated on, vomited on, taken drugs on, got drunk on.  Passers-by and Members of Parliament have been sworn at, cafes forced to close, shop workers terrorised, windows thumped upon, and police officers spat at. 

Tow truck drivers are scared to tow, workers in the area have been told by bosses to stay home for safety's sake, buses can't use the terminus.  

The protesters' children are playing in unsanitary conditions, and covid - with no social distancing and no mask-wearing - is ready to pounce.

It amazes me how a minority can hold a Team of Five Million  to ransom..

Those romantic movies

 Hi there

I can't exactly pinpoint when my taste in movies changed.  I can remember once-upon-a-time saying to friends that my fave films were "The Godfather" and "The Eagle Has Landed".  I didn't even care that  (spoiler-alert!-spoiler-alert!) Michael Caine was killed in the end of "The Eagle Has Landed", it was fitting, right?

But over the years I started to worry about Michael's character dying.  I realised how much I luuurved that character.  How dare he die, my heart was breaking for him.  

OMG, was I turning sentimental?

The next step, much to my annoyance, was that heart of mine telling me not to go to movies where animals died in the finale (pick any film about dogs).  Or if  I found out in advance that a hero had kicked the bucket.  Or If there was even a teeny iota of violence to a movie...

And I was watching romcoms.  And - aww, no! -  luuurving them.

Pretty Woman, Notting Hill, Love Actually.  Most definitely any Netflix movie containing a waitress/news reporter who ended up marrying a prince of a foreign land.

The final nail in my coffin of love and sentimentality came when, years later,  author Jack Higgins wrote a sequel to his book  "The Eagle Has Landed".  My Michael Caine movie non-hero, the honourable German officer masquerading as a Polish WWII ally in England, had lived through all that hail of bullets.  I did a Snoopy happy-dance around the sitting room, I sang out hallelujah.

Bring on those happy endings in books and movies.  Bring on the romcoms, and the lovers, and the meet-cutes.  Bring on the fluff and magic.  I unashamedly love it all...

Valentine's Day.

 Hi there

I was walking around the base of Mount Maunganui when I knew I just had to take this photo.  So appropriate for Valentine's Day -

Here's to a happy Valentine's Day for all lovers ...

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Typist-in-Charge, Episode 9, Education HO Typing Pool, Government Buildings Wellington

I rushed in to Government Buildings via the south door, my spiked heels click-clacking frantically on the muddy-brown lino.   Shooting past the embossed glass doors of the building's Post Office, I glanced down to my watch-

It was half a minute to eight.  "I'll make it, I'll make it.  I'll-make-"

I didn't make it.  As I puffed and panted up to Education's ground floor reception desk, Mrs Rose was already ruling a long line across the page of an exercise book.

The woman stood for no nonsense when it came to late arrivals to work.  At eight o'clock on the dot, out would come her red pen and she would rule off the sign-in page.  I noticed that Francie had signed in just above the line, good for her. (Some time later, Mrs Rowley won possession of the sign-in book, and it sat in the Room 206 pool, a tiny success for the typists as a whole but not for us individually as it often took several minutes past eight to make it into the pool from the ground floor).

By the time I'd signed in and got upstairs to room 206, I owed the department five minutes, to be made up either at lunch-time or after work.

I was greeted by Mrs Rowley waving some pages at me.  "Thank goodness, you're here.  Quick-  take these Questions and Answers.  Parliament wants them -

"Immediately!" we both chorused.  

Prior to my job in the pool at Education, I had always thought that an elected minister thought up a question in the house as an idea suddenly came to him.  A minister on The Other Side would give an ad lib answer.

Nope.  It was all plotted and typed out.

A parliamentarian would ask the Minister of Education a question.  The Minister of Education would get a minion to rush the Question over to the  knowledgeable seat of power (Education Head office, across the road in Govt Bldgs) , and the Question and Answer would end up in the pool where we would always be told something like,  "This is ultra-urgent.  We got the Question a week or so ago, but it's taken that long to come up with a three paragraph answer.  It's going to be read out in one hour...."

I typed the Answer in double spacing.  It was done on foolscap paper that would be cut in half so that the Minister of Education could easily read it aloud in the House, and not have trouble losing his place.

As I typed, there was a frantic wail from Francie who was sitting beside me.  "I Can't read Mr Pinder's writing,"  She waved his manuscript at me.

"Let's have a quick look."

 It was hard to read the guy's scrawling.  As a director, he'd recently come back from a paid business trip to America and we 'girls' in the pool were ordered to take it in turns to type his travel journal.  The journal mentioned more about the sights of the country than education.   I'd typed the section where he'd waxed lyrical for three typed foolscap pages over the wonders of a sleeping compartment on an inter-state train.  He'd washed his shirt in the hand-basin and marvelled over the shirt being completely dry by morning.

No-one else in the pool could read the troublesome sentence either.  So Francie left her electric machine (yes, we all had them by now), trudged upstairs, knocked on Mr Pinder's door, stood by the guy for about ten minutes as he tried to figure out what he'd written two months ago, eventually giving up and substituting different words.

It was 1969.  I'd been nearly nine years in the Education Head Office pool.  I had confidence in my typing and each week as the Public Service Official Circular came around, I leafed through it looking for an upgrade to a Senior Typist position.  

Sadly, there were never any such positions.  

The senior typing jobs were usually labelled as for "Shorthand-Typists".  I didn't do shorthand and I inwardly snarled when friends who could do shorthand had so many jobs to pick from.  They could even be promoted to External Affairs and get transferred overseas to some country's High Commission office.

But wait -!  I flipped the PSOC back a page.  There was a senior typist job being advertised at one of Education's offices.  Typist-Typist!-T-Y-P-I-S-T!!!! 

Because the senior typing position in Thorndon was so far off the beaten track and every shorthand-typist had snootily turned her nose up at it, it had finally been given the  plain old run-of-the mill 'senior typist' designation.

I was in like a shot.  And because I was the only applicant, and because Mrs Rowley (my STIC) knew me and my work, I got the job.  But not until after it had been advertised twice and still with no other applicants. - Oops, did Mrs Rowley still have doubts about my ability?  Probably... 

above: Thorndon, Wellington. Curriculum Development Unit.   

32 Hobson Street, (corner Hobson Street and Hobson Crescent.  This is a side view picture taken from Hobson Crescent).