I'm a Terrible hand-writer. Did Pitmanscript help?

 Hi there

Way back in secondary school I got the dubious title of being The Worst Hand-Writer in my class.  I was the only pupil to fail the Chamber of Commerce Hand-Writing Exam.  I have always been a sloppy hand-writer.  Or 'joined-up writing' as teachers in primer classes tend to call it.

When I grew up - I was in my late thirties - I took up the then 'new' style of shorthand called "Pitmanscript",  My hand-writing became worse; I had been warned this would happen before I started teaching myself the subject at home.  My already terrible penmanship did deteriorate at a rate of knots.

The other day, I decided to hand-write a letter to a friend.  It was an important letter, on real lined writing paper.  I wanted to show her exactly how important I felt about all the work she had put into being my friend.  I wasn't going to buy a card, or telephone, or email, or text....

But then came the realisation.  I couldn't do joined-up writing anymore!  Pitmanscript had ruined me.

Pitmanscript has gone the way of the earlier Pitman's shorthand and Gregg's shorthand processes.   I think Pitmanscript was Pitman's last stand at trying to keep the process going.  I did pass the Trades Certification Board Shorthand Exam. 

But my hand-writing, now, is terrible.

          above:  the english version, plus the Pitmanscript version.  Book 3. The english take actually goes over the page, and is quite long.

The great thing about Pitmanscript, and unlike original Pitman's shorthand, is that there are no strict rules about what you must put down.  If you can make up something so a sentence is faster, easier for you, just do it.  This worked for me. By the time I sat my TCB exam, a lot of the original learning had disappeared.  I wasn't judged for doing it differently.

above photo: from the 2000 Most Common Words book. I learnt all the words off-by-heart, studying them every day.

above photo.  the very first exercise in Pitmanscript Book 1

As usual, sorry about the photography.

Singers wearng sunglasses on stage

 Hi there.

When I was young in the early 1960s, I went to pop shows.  Kiwi entrepreneurs like Harry M. Miller were beginning to realise there was a market in New Zealand for overseas pop idols.  They started bringing in these singers by the plane-load.

I was miffed that out of dozens upon dozens of singers that I saw, there were two who wore sunglasses on stage.

The first was Roy Orbison. I found out later he truly had bad eyesight so I can forgive him now.  But it wasn't so much the dark glasses that were annoying, but also that he never moved.  Never so much as the proverbial muscle.  Orbison, in front of thousands of fans, was like a statue the entire time he was on stage which, in those days, was probably 20 minutes to half-an-hour. And every fan had paid about 30 shillings for a seat.

Fans want to see a singer's face.  They want to see movements, head turns, legs jiggling, greetings to the crowd, foot tapping.  They can see statues in their gran's front garden. Or at Zombie-Con.

Another star who wore sunglasses on stage was the singer Billy J Kramer ("Little Children").  I was in love with the music of the time and very impressionable.  When I couldn't properly see Kramer's face because of  his sunglasses and also poor lighting, I sprang from my seat and ran into the aisle of the Wellington Town Hall auditorium, along with hundreds of others.  We didn't want to rip him apart, we just wanted to see his face more clearly. Apparently, no overseas singer had caused such a commotion before.  Seat-leaving was a giant no-no at the Wellington Town Hall.

The show was shut down.

Later, I read that the reason Kramer had been wearing sunglasses and the lighting was more darker than usual for a pop show was because Kramer had got in an altercation the day before. The sunglasses and dim lighting were to cover up that he had a black eye.

I felt I never got my thirty shillings-worth at either Orbison's or Kramer's show.

 

Bermuda Triangle

 Hi there

I am positive that my house is the South Pacific branch of The Bermuda Triangle.  Things go missing. A lot.

Pens, especially.  And combs.  I am forever buying new ones. 

The weird thing is that, unlike the original Triangle, my pens, combs, what-have-you, usually turn up again.  As if by magic, they appear at the back of a cupboard, in a bag I haven't used for years, under the computer keyboard, amongst my bedclothes....

When visitors come to my place, I always warn them -

 "please check thoroughly that you haven't left anything behind."

 " No, no, " they always say.  "I have everything."

 " Are you sure? "

 "Yep." 

 And my visitors go on their merry way.  Later, I discover their sun- glasses.  Or a jacket.  Or a ream of business papers.  My Miramar branch of the Bermuda Triangle  is snaffling up objects like nobody's business...