TYPIST-IN-CHARGE, Episode 12

Typist-in-Charge, Episode 12

Curriculum Development Unit, Department of Education, August 1969-1971, Senior Typist (Display)

above: Curriculum Development Unit..  My golfball typewriter hadn't arrived yet.

The office in Hobson Street, Thorndon, was a 25 minute fast walk to the city shops.  .I could maybe, at a pinch, cut five minutes off if I cut through the Thorndon School playground, and then through the grounds of Parliament Buildings.    Thorndon School used to be the 'in' school for embassy officials to send their kids.  Many of these children would roll up to school sitting all alone in the back seat of posh chauffeur-driven limos.

We had an office assistant at the Curriculum Development Unit:  Jennie, a lovely Maori lady, a solo mum, with the happiest personality ever.  We all adored her for her liveliness and willing-to-help  attitude.  One morning she came bouncing into the typing area.

 "I'm in!  I'm in!" 

I stopped typing, and bounced around the room with her. 

"The Maori teaching course?" I burst out.  "Is that it?  Is it?  Is it-?"  

"Yes! Yes! Yes!  I've been accepted.."

Jennie was going to be practically an inaugural student for the teaching of Maori in schools project.  She spoke Maori fluently, and wanted so much to pass on her knowledge.  I was happy for her that she had achieved her goal.  I decided to take on Jennie's determination and get to my goal too. There were about half a dozen more rungs on the ladder for me.

After about 18 months in Hobson Street, the CDU moved to a brand new multi-storey building, that was a couple of blocks west of Hobson Street, at the very tippy-tip top of Molesworth Street, yet still in Thorndon.  I wouldn't have to cut through the school anymore to get to town.  Hooray, five minutes less walking to the city.  Buses were few and far between.  There were only about three shops in the entire street.

above:  Rossmore House, Molesworth Street, Thondon, Wellington.  The building on the right wasnt there at the time.

There were several other divisions of the Department of Education in Rossmore House, including the regional office typing pool where I was plonked (Mrs Fraser had since retired from the CDU, without even letting me know she was leaving).  There were about ten of us typists.  The Shorthand Typist-in-Charge, was Mrs Brown.  She stared, greedily, at my IBM Selectric Golfball typewriter, the only one in the room.

"We'll all share that machine," she said.

"But I'm a senior typist, " I babbled.  "Doing display work for the CDU.  I'm graded - "  I really didn't want to lord it over the others in the pool but I had to let this woman understand that I typed only for one division, that the golfball typewriter had been bought by the CDU.

Mrs Brown was new to the government.  She had been chosen from 'outside' because - wait for it - she could do shorthand.  She was the only one of us who had the skill.  Not that Mrs Brown did any shorthand whilst she was at Rossmore House.  She had been chosen because 'Shorthand Typist-in-Charge' had always been the official title for every rung on the in-charge graded position ladder, even though shorthand was rarely used by appointees.  Shorthand was so a dying language.

Mrs Brown obviously didn't hear my wailing about how important I was.  She started making a rota of who would share my machine.

I rang up Mrs Rowley at Head Office who was still the Lord High Executioner of Wellington typists. 

I never heard another word from Mrs Brown about taking over my machine.

It was good to be in a pool again.  I had missed the companionship of a clutch of fellow (fellow?) typists.  I became friendly with Margie who was nervously going for her drivers' licence.  We all wished her well as she nervously took off to do the test.

She was back in 20 minutes.  "I've failed..."

"Oh, no...."  We fluttered around her sorrowfully.  "What did you do wrong?" somebody asked.

"I never got out of the carpark," cried Margie.  "The instructor asked me to back out, turning right.  And ....  and ....  I kept turning the car left.  Over and over.  And over.  We went round in circles. .."

In those days there were only a couple of shops in Molesworth Street, ie, a dairy, and and the expensive dress shop, "The Mews", where it was rumoured the Prime Minister's wife and the Govermor-General's wife shopped for cocktail dresses.  

There was practically no cover when it rained.  I couldn't even cut through the grounds of Parliament anymore to get to town because The Beehive addition to old Parliament Buildings was being erected and the grounds were closed off.  It took me the same amount of time to get to Hays-Wright-Stephenson's department store as it had when I worked in Hobson Street.

Over three consecutive days, there was tremendous rain, coupled with the notorious Wellington wind.  On each of those three days, I had a different umbrella blow inside out.

"That's it,"  I decided.  "I'm putting in for any job that comes up in The Public Service official Circular -"

***

 

  

TYPIST-IN-CHARGE, Episode 11

Hi there

It was 1969.  I was Senior Typist (Display) at the Curriculum Development Unit of the Department of Education in Hobson Street, Thorndon,Wellington, Yippee, at last, I had my foot on the first rung of the typing graded position ladder.    

At the CDU, I typed all the yearly booklets, pamphlets, reports, exams that were needed for the secondary schools' syllabus.  

And I got a spanking new Selectric golfball typewriter, the only one in the department.  Scored!

above: not quite the model I worked on but this machine is showing a good view of the 'golfball'.

above: similar to the machine I had.

Please imagine a small metal ball with every alphabet letter and number that's on a general typing keyboard crammed around this ball.  The ball is clipped onto a fork in the basket of the typewriter.  And - bingo! - when a typist types, the ball rotates up into the air, fights its way through the inky ribbon, and miraculously finds the right letter/number to put on the page.

I could prise out this general golfball, and in its place slot in different  golfballs containing umlats, italics, symbols, or macrons.  There were other golfballs too, full of mathematical figures, foreign languages, fractions, and  scientific equations.  Frequently I used a golfball for just the one key strike.

The Maori language, full of macrons, was difficult to type on a golfball machine because every time I came to a letter that required a macron above it, I would have to change golfballs.  

And I wonder if anybody realises how many upside down question marks there are in a Spanish-language exam paper?  

My record for the highest amount of golfball changes in one line was seventeen.  I got blisters on my index finger.

The Curriculum Development Unit was in two separate buildings, a one minute walk away from each other.  At morning and afternoon tea time, the officers from the other building trekked over to my building, no 32.  Obviously it was to partake of Mrs Fraser's piping hot and freshly made scones, cakes, biscuits, and savouries.  I don't know how she fitted in time to type.  Um.   Well ...   She didn't much.

above: 1969.  In my memory this building was numbered 28 Hobson Street (corner of Hobson Crescent)

above: the building as it is now.  It seems to have a different street number from no. 28, the building I knew.  Actually, the only thing I truly recognise is the entrance arch.  At present, it's an apartment block. 

above: side view, 32 Hobson Street where I worked for the CDU.  (yes, yes I know I've shown you this building a couple of times before but, sigh, needs must...).  Photo taken from 'the other end' of Hobson Crescent.

above: modern day view. It's a house and nowadays is numbered 33 Hobson Street. ??

I would shoot between the two buildings quite a bit to ask a question about my typing (translation: when I couldn't read the writing).  I adored the old-fashioned architecture and layout that was inside no. 28 (?), with its beautiful wood-look, and all the nooks and crannys of the work spaces.  We had the entire building.

The directors at the Curriculum Development Unit weren't a bad crowd, except for the one who kept his hand on my mini-skirted thigh as I drove him to the railway station one evening.  

I never reported it ...  

I was too scared to rock the boat.

*** One of my four readers has told me that after  the CDU  building was the Curriculum Development Unit, it became a hostel.  And she stayed there!  Wow, great information...

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).

  

TYPIST IN CHARGE, episode 3

Hi there

Here's episode 3 of 'Typist in Charge', my typing years' bio that I'm supposed to write for you once a month but seem to be a bit neglectful over the timeline -

***

Mrs Parr sloshed into Typing Room 305, Education Department Head Office, Government Buildings, Wellington.  She looked like a drowned rat.  Her linen coat and once-smart figure-hugging dress clung around her like a bunch of wet washing.  Her peepy-toe shoes leaked droplets of water.  Her rainhat - one of those finger-length strips of plastic that miraculously unfolded into a bonnet that did up in a bow under the chin - was draped wetly across her forehead, dyed blonde curls snaked in the wet down to her nose.  She clutched a short tightly-rolled umbrella, the fold-up style that had only recently hit the market;  yes, the early 1960's was such a 'with-it' era.

"I hate-hate-hate fold-up umbrellas!"  Mrs Parr, near to retirement and this icon of well-known stability, actually stamped her feet.  Mrs Rowley, our Typist-in-Charge, tsk-tsked heavily as she noted the muddy footprints on the lino. Thank goodness footprints would wipe off, unlike the threepenny-piece sized gouges everywhere on the floor where the typists had walked in stiletto heels.

Elspeth and Evaline nodded solemnly, obviously glad they hadn't gone to town in the rain for their lunch.  Francie rushed to help Mrs Parr pull off her soaked-through coat.

Mariana, our whiz at anything mechanical, muttered that these new-style umbrellas were hopeless as nobody could open them.

"Except Lorraine..."  Mrs Rowley acknowledged me.  And trying my best to look humble I gave a demonstration on the proper and efficient way to open a folding umbrella without a half-closed canopy collapsing on one's head.  Or, as seemed to be the case with Mrs Parr,  how to work the catch to even open the darn contraption.  Trumphantly, I ended my demo without ripping my finger.  I was heartily applauded.

Yes, we 'girls' helped each other in many ways. I helped them in jobs like opening umbrellas, and the other typists helped me when I couldn't understand an officer's bad writing, spelling, or adding up.  As well, they enlightened me in The Ways of The World.  One evening about half a dozen of us younger typists went out for a meal.  The typists who were enlightened in The Ways of The World started talking about the four letter word.

Amy, a new typist, and she was a Salvation Army girl to boot, looked across at me in puzzlement.  I shrugged.  "What's a four letter word?" I asked.  I was 16 and prior to this conversation had truly thought I was conversant with The Ways of The World.

"Mmmm..."  Mariana's forehead creased as she was thinking.  Finally:  "It rhymes with 'duck'."

Nope.  Neither Amy nor I had a clue.  (...and back to the present for a moment:  in the supermarket the other day, I heard an under five-year-old spouting the word that, indeed, rhymes with 'duck'.  No-one batted an eyelid.)

One thing that the typists couldn't help me with was my typing.  I wasn't very good at it.  I just didn't have the patience to check my work.  If there was a long job, maybe twenty or more foolscap pages, I  could ask another typist to silently scan my finished typing whilst I read out loud to her from the writer's manuscript.  And yet, still, Mrs Rowley insisted that I hand all my finished typing to her for re-checking.  Much of it came back for retypes.  How did the woman put up with me?  Beats me.

***

Below: an exact google image of a 1960's rainhat

below.  A google image of an Imperial 66 typewriter from my era.

Typist in Charge, episode 2

 Hi there

Here's my so-called monthly update of my typist autobiography.  Episode 1 was about five weeks ago.

above:  Sheila's wedding reception.  I am to the left of the bride, wearing a frothy confection of a hat and I'm demurely clutching a handbag.  Over my shoulder is Mrs Rowley (typist in Charge).  Far left is Miss McNeill Supervising Typist in Charge.  To the right of the bride is Miss Hopkins, now a staff typist but recently retired from Sup Typ-in-Ch job.  Behind Miss Hopkins is Valerie (bridesmaid) who was a Miss Wellington.

***

The 'girls' in the room 305 typing pool at Government Buildings, from 1961, were a varied lot -

Vivacious blonde Elspeth was a weekend nightclub singer; after a row with her boyfriend, she'd thrown all the jewellery he'd given her into the Hutt River.  Mariana loved anything mechanical.  Valerie, a Miss Wellington, was granted time off work to tour the country with Joe Brown's Miss New Zealand Show.  Evaline was a junior tennis champion who told me I was too old, at sixteen, to learn to play.  Del, a future minister of the faith, went all fluttery whenever she looked out the window and spotted her fiancee's car trundling down Lambton Quay.

Singleton Sheila had come straight off the ship from England, and into the typing room.  Tamsin was a snob.  Francie,  a mature spinster, hadn't paid any attention to Taboo perfume's warning about being careful around men when wearing it; she had to fight off a long-time guy friend the first time she spritzed on the perfume.  We all decided none of us would run out and buy a bottle.

Mrs Parr, Elizabeth, and Tall Pat sat at the back of the room, smoking like chimneys.  The rest of us in the pool patted away the smoke as it got in our eyes, never thinking twice about the health repercussions of second-hand smoking..

Every payday, there was a timid knock on the typing room door.  Mrs Parr, who was nearing retirement age, would greet her funeral insurance salesman, and hand over her small fortnightly contribution.  The two guys who delivered our pay had casually sauntered into the building carrying a small leather suitcase containing thousands of pounds worth of crisp new bank notes, and a myriad of change.  We typists lined up to get the little brown envelopes that had our names on them.

Several of us wore 'bop' skirts, with layers and layers of stiff petticoats underneath.  As Val, Elspeth or I sauntered down the two narrow aisles of typing desks we often knocked work off the desk-tops because our skirts were so voluminous.  I was the proud owner of a stiff petticoat with a hem that could be blown up.

Mrs Rowley, my Typist-in-Charge, came up to me.  "I want you and Mariana to relieve in the Thorndon office today," she said.

"I'll take my scooter," said Mariana.

"I'll walk," I said.  It would take about twenty minutes.

But it was decided (not by me) that I would ride on the back of Mariana's motor scooter.  Yes, I was worried.  What if there was an accident?  What if my bop skirt blew up to reveal all my stiff petticoats?"

"Psshw, there's nothing to it," said Mrs Rowley, who had never been on a scooter.

It was awful.  I kept forgetting to lean in certain directions when we turned corners, and there were lots of corners.  For years, Mariana retold the story about how I almost caused umpteen accidents.  The story gradually got embellished so much that after a time I didn't recognise myself as the maniacal devil over her shoulder that nearly caused the biggest pile-up the suburb of Thorndon may ever have seen.

***