ANZAC Day, 25 April 2025

 

ANZAC DAY - NEW ZEALAND AND AUSTRALIA, remembering the brave armed forces who died at Gallipoli and further conflicts.

Hataitai Beach Sea Wall Progress

 Hi there

I wish you all a Happy Easter.  Here's the little ornament-thingee that I have put on my front inside window sill -

above:  I bought it last week for $8 at Countdown Kilbirnie.  Countdown has not yet been  given the Woolworths' signage.

And here's some sort of good news.  The southern part of the Hataitai Beach sea wall is all but finished.  It was started before Christmas.

Above:  the southern sea wall at Hataitai Beach.  If you strain your eyes real hard, you can see the black house on the hill that Ruby Wax said she would like to live in.

There's still the northern end sea wall to build.  The temporary sea blocks are blocking practically all of the beach when it's high tide. And at the moment it's terrible trying to get to the deck to sun-bathe, meet our friends, step down into the water, change in the changing shed.... 

 It's like a real maze for us to make our way through the traffic cones, stop-gos, temporary fences, gravel path, blocked off areas, all whether we're in our cars or walking.  

I feel that the road cones blocking parking should be taken away every Friday and holiday periods, or moved onto the pavement by the workers before they leave of a Friday afternoon

... and regardless of all my Easter bunny frivolity, I do remember the true meaning of Easter ....

TYPIST-IN-CHARGE, Episode 19,

Hi there

1     Typist-in-Charge, Education Department Head Office, First Floor Government Buildings, Wellington.  1974-1978

 

above: Government Buildings, Lambton Quay, Wellington

I had put in for a higher-graded typist-in-charge position, this time at Customs Head Office, and it may as well have been the moon for all I knew about what one did at Customs.  But it would be a break-through for typists, as opposed to the superior reign that shorthand-typists had in the in-charge typing area at this time.  Shorthand-typists-in-charge rarely did shorthand.  They supervised.  So it always felt unfair that only shorthanders could apply for higher jobs.  But imagine my surprise when I spotted an in-charge position in the Public Service Official Circular that didn't have the word 'shorthand' in front of it.  It was exactly one level up from my present grade. 

Right back when I was a teenager of about sixteen, terrible at typing, but with a kind caring mentor boss - Mrs Rowley - I was stationed in room 305 typing pool at Government Buildings   I'd been listening to Mrs Rowley and Miss McNeil who was the Supervising Typist of all education typists, talking about overseas trips.  I gestured to Miss McNeil and said enviously, "I want to be just like you."  I had meant travelling the world -

Mrs Rowley giggled, "She wants to be the Supervising Typist.  Hahaha..."

And everyone at that typing room morning tea giggled.

It was the only time I felt sad about what my idol had said, and that everyone in room 305 thought I wanted to aspire to the dizzying heights of Miss McNeil's job.  To them all, I was so obviously scatty-Lorraine who loved rock'n'roll and movies, couldn't do maths, talked a lot, and was pretty crap at typing. According to the sniggers, there would be no way I could ever take on Miss McNeil's position.

Um...

Well...

First, I had got the Senior Typist job at the Curriculum Development Unit.  Then I got the Typist-in-Charge job at Health Regional Office.  This was followed by my present position as one of three typists-in-charge at Education Head Office...

But now...?  Now, I'd got the Customs Typist-in-Charge job!  Another grade closer to that supervising typist position at Education that I had set my sights on; I was so  determined to work my way through the ranks to get up to it, to prove I wasn't that highly hopeless typist everyone had once thought I was.

It was sad to leave Education.  I walked the long wide Government Buildings  corridors the day I left, memories bouncing around in my head:

There were two enclosed staircases, one at each end of the building, north and south.  I must have run up and down those stairs thousands of times, delivering work to officers on the various floors.  Maybe the staircases were enclosed because of a danger to stair-climbers falling over the bannisters?  

Sometimes I would take the easy way between levels and rattle around in the old 'cage' lift at the south end of the building.  I had once seen a gangster movie where the guys in a cage lift had been machine-gunned between the bars as the lift descended.  I never once rode this lift without thinking of that movie.

 Above: stock photo.  During a later building upgrade the staircases had been freed of their enclosures. You can now see the surroundings.

I walked into typing room 305 where I started out as a junior typist. Everyone now had electric typewriters, and some, the IBM golfball.  

 I remembered the day of the Wahine storm, 10 April 1968, when the winds reached a scary 230 km per hour as the ship Wahine sank in Wellington Harbour. We typists in room 305 had looked out the typing room windows to see a petrified business woman clinging for dear life to the wind-blown tree at the foot of the inside road leading up to Parliament Buildings.  

above:  Inter-island ferry, Wahine, sinking. Stock photo

I stood in Room 305, above the exact place we "girls" from the 1960s had stashed a time capsule.  The floor had been sloping so workmen had come in to install a new floor.  Before the new floor was added we tossed a plastic bag full of memorabilia in the gap under where the new boards would be fitted.  There was the day's newspaper, that year's coin, and a few words from each of us, listing our most interesting points.  I said "Lorraine loves Elvis", another typist said she was "Tall Pat", another "Francis is an indoor bowls fanatic"...

Room 305 still had the same mirror on the wall that I had used 15 years before.  I thought back to the time when one of our typists had found a foreign language on the back of the 30 or so hand-written pages she was working from. None of us could figure out the words...  until .... 

"Hey look - " Pam was holding a page up to the mirror.  

The words had been in mirror writing.  The writer had been using the backs of the papers for his long departmental draft. How the handwriting got to be in mirror vision we had no idea.  Perhaps the Gestetner duplicating machine was somehow responsible?

Holding page after page up to our mirror we saw that it was work-in-progress of a novel.  So, the guy in Buildings Division was a closet novelist?  A romantic-thriller one?  Who'd-a-thunk?  And... who'd also have thunk that he was having an affair with one of the typists.  Well, me.  I knew.  But I had been sworn to secrecy by the pair.

The same went for the typist who was having an affair with one of the married directors.  It was all supposed to be so super-secret-squirrel, though most of the typists knew about it.

And that reminded me of the time I was walking along the ground floor corridor and politely talking to a director as we made our way out of the building. Single-lady Marta, another typist, waved to us as she passed.

The director acknowledged Marta as she scurried away.  He turned to me.  "I can't understand why you aren't married?" he said.  "I mean.... you're pretty.  Marta is ugly."

Whaaaaaaaaat!!!!!????  

I never said anything.  Much to the regret of future-me.  Typists had definitely been tamed....

2     Typist-in-Charge, Customs Department Head Office, PSIS Building, Whitmore St, Wellington 1978

 

above photo, 2025:  PSIS (Public Service Investment Society) Building where I worked from 1978.  It now has a new name.

My first day at Customs -  I was now in charge of 12 typists.  Wow.  As well as my two Trades Certification Board Typing certificates (A and B), I had arrived with my fully-recognised Trades Certification Board SHORTHAND-TYPING certificate grade I.  It had only been for taking down 80 words per minute but this didn't deflate me one iota.  I had taught myself over the past year, using old TCB shorthand exam papers and I had passed this bloody exam on my second attempt.  'Nuff said.  Now I could apply for every Shorthand-Typist-in-Charge job that came up.  Heck, I could even put in for an overseas embassy post.  I was in raptures.

Side-paragraph:  Within a few months of passing my shorthand exam, the tight hold of shorthanders in the government was loosened drastically.  Typists didnt want to learn shorthand anymore and the dictators of shorthand were (politely) informed  that they wouldn't be wasting two people's time if they dictated into a dictaphone.   Dozens (hundreds? millions?) of times officers had taken phone calls, made phone calls, greeted visitors, burrowed in a drawer, wrote memos, lost trains of thought, left for the loo ... whilst the poor shorthander sat patiently, writing pad on the corner of the desk, pencil poised, worrying about the urgent job she was in the middle of doing back in the pool.  And practically every time the boss did receive or make a phone call, that man  would grandly proclaim into the receiver, "I'm just dictating a ministerial to my shorthand-typist, you know...?". Or scrub the word 'shorthand-typist' and substitute 'girl'; the two were interchangeable .

I was led into the typing room at Customs by my Director Admin.  A dozen faces looked up at me.  I would be stationed in the room with them.  And wonder-of-wonders, at interview I had been told that I wouldn't be typing.  I would only be checking the typists' work when they finished it.  

Hooray, I was in seventh heaven...

... until my boss left the room.  Mavis turned to me.  "We don't want you," she said.  "We want Edith-"  She indicated a woman sitting to my side.

Huh?  

Edith, it turned out, had been understudying in the typist-in-charge job until I arrived.  She had been at Customs for five years.  She was three grades beneath me. She was a Senior Typist as opposed to my last two in-charge positions.   People in those days in the government never skipped grades.  By working upwards, an appointee had a good background behind her (or him).

"We understand you do have a background in the government," said Mavis, whilst Edith was silent, "but we know Edith, and she knows this department, and no hard feelings but we want you to go someplace else...."

*****

.

1 Hotel prices 2 Hataitai Beach 3 Ruby Wax

 Hi there

It really annoys me that if a hotel stay is worth, say, $150 a night on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, then why is there a price rise to, maybe, $250 or $300 a night for Friday and Saturday?   It's the same room, the same amenities, the same service.  The hotel doesn't miraculously change location. 

I've stayed in an en suite cabin at a holiday park down the South Island that was over $320 a night when I was there on a Friday and Saturday.  I mean, a holiday park, come on....  On a week night, it was very much cheaper.

In Las Vegas, about ten years ago, many Strip hotels brought in a resort tax, about $45 a night, over and above the hotel rate.  I have been behind many people in queues at LV hotel reception desks and heard vacationers explode when told that even though their booking website said $75 a night, an added surprise of a resort tax was non-negotiable.  Even if, like me, they never used the gym, the pool, or the computer room.

I remember when the Las Vegas resort taxes started to creep in to the top Strip hotels.  There was a big protest march along The Strip, led by Flamingo resident singers Donny and Marie.  They were totally against the resort taxes.

Now...?  The Flamingo Hotel boasts (or not boasts) a resort tax. 

***

I walk up the Maupuia Hill most days.  From this view, you can see across the inner harbour.  Hataitai Beach is on the far left.

Yesterday and today at Hataitai Beach has been lovely with warm weather, calm waters, and no wind.  And it's midway through April, with daylight saving time changed a week ago, away from summer.  The whole swimming gang have arrived to the changing shed deck en masse over last few days.  It's been crowded, noisy, splashy, happy, and I love it all.  Pity it's like working our way through a maze to get to the beach because of the sea-wall being built.  Sigh, all those road cones and stop-go signs. And it's going to get worse - parking is horrific.

Oh, we had a surprise visitor to Hataitai Beach last week.  Ruby Wax, the actress stationed in England.  She's a comedian, an actress, a raconteur.  Darn-it, I hadn't been there at the time she arrived, but the others said she was a delightful person and were totally charmed by her. One of the regulars spoke to her for quite a while.  She had a swim.   Look up Ruby Wax on Facebook, she speaks well about our beach. And there's a video. 

How our reading and movie-going tastes change over the years

 Hi there

I used to love books about true murders.  My fave was a thick alphabetical book about famous killers through the ages.

I fell in love with both the book and movie of "The Godfather".  Killings galore in this mafia spree, yippee!  Give me more violence and action and shooting and murders.   I lapped it all up.   "The Godfather" was my favourite for years.

But ... a few years back I suddenly discovered I was - what? - reading romantic comedies?  Huh?  

 "The Seat Filler" probably has the funniest Meet-Cute of any book I've ever read.  The heroine is a seat filler at a movie awards night.  Seat fillers are not allowed to be seen by tv cameras.   Uh-oh....

My current movie top pick is "Crazy Rich Asians".  It's a romance, set mainly in Singapore.  A long way away from "The Godfather".   I especially love the put-down ma-jong scene in "Crazy Rich Asians".  And the music ....  And the ending...  And the beginning...  And the family storyline...  Oh, everything about it...

I guess most people mellow as they grow older.  Me?  I have no idea when or how I drifted into being such an old softie.  I mean, romance books, really?  And movies about love?   Rom-coms and Meet-Cutes?   Shoot me now.............

Ooops... I have a very faint feeling I've written on this subject before??  Oh, well....