Job#4: Life Goes Belly Up

Posted on January 31, 2006

Now that I was ( in my view) an adult with a job, I decided I would succumb to peer pressure (and boyfriend pressure) and get that ‘other business’ over with as well. You’d have to be pretty unlucky to get caught out first time but it happens, and it happened to me—I was pregnant.

It was 1971 and I was 16 years old. The school of thought was that girls were sent ‘away’ to protect their reputation (and, of course, their families reputation), the baby would be adopted out, the girl would come home and all would be forgotten.

I was sent back to the big city where I’d had my month of freedom, but this time I was in captivity. I was put in a ‘Home for Unmarried Mothers’. It sounds sort of quaint but it was run by the Anglican Church and the couple who managed it were like a couple of grim prison wardens.

About 20 girls lived there and some of them were pretty wild. My jobs were cooking and cleaning, which was all done by the girls. That was okay there wasn’t much else to do. I had a typewriter but no privacy to write. I hated being locked up more than I can say. We were not allowed out and we were not allowed to make or receive phone calls from anyone other than our parents. But we were allowed to walk up the street to the post box to mail a letter.
So that’s what I did.

In the next instalment: Breakout!

Job#3 Out in the World

Posted on January 30, 2006

Seduced by my taste of freedom, school couldn’t hold my interest and – without my parent’s knowledge—I went out and found myself a job. In the space of a few days my school days were over at 16, something I will always regret.

I started work as a Tracer with a firm of town planners where my main duties were to paint, in special inks, the zoning maps of various towns and to photocopy and hand-collate 100+ page submissions – preferably in the correct order. The painting was sort of creative and relaxing, the collation quite the opposite! Sometimes it would take the whole engineering department to help me sort out the paperwork blowing around the office.

But one important – possibly even life saving—skill I learned there, as a result of becoming a human projectile, was: Never Stand on a Revolving Chair.

I had been in the job for about three months when I started feeling very ill and we all knew my days were numbered.

In the Next Instalment: Life Goes Belly-Up

Job#2: Sweet Sixteen

Posted on January 29, 2006

Sixteen years old and I was itching to get to the big city, to be free and independent. During the school summer holidays I managed to convince my parents to let me try my luck at getting a job in the city (two hours away) and living in the YWCA.

I shared a room at the YWCA with three other girls, all much older and more experienced who talked endlessly about boys etc. In order to participate I created fictional love affair with married man and was so gratified at their awe and the sheer depth of gullibility I was spurred to greater heights of dishonesty and told some real whoppers. Heaven forbid they should find out I had barely set foot out of Puketaha.

I found a job in a jewellery store, which I loved. I had to crawl in the display windows and clean the glass shelves. Every afternoon, with a bag full of jewellery repairs, I would catch at bus to another very old, mostly empty, building where I would wander around in a dream for several hours until the repairs were done.

My independence (and tall tales) came to an abrupt end when my mother’s friend, Margaret, insisted that I must move out of the YWCA and stay with her. I wasn’t happy as she had a brutish son who would twist my arm painfully behind my back, or inflict some pain, every time his mother left the room. I was the only one not surprised when, some time later, he set fire to a hospital and was revealed to be mentally ill.

My life was a series of teenage misunderstanding and mishaps but the one that Margaret was still shaking her head over 20 years later was this one: I was coming home from work on the bus and – being a country girl – sat up front chatting to the bus driver. As I got off he asked me for my phone number, which I duly gave to him on the basis that he was an adult and I couldn’t think what else to do. When he rang Margaret’s house that night and asked me out on a date I flew into a complete panic and concocted an unbelievable story that I was due to be married! I had obviously lost my touch because he didn’t buy it at all and rang several more times – v.messy.

After that I started to think that, either, I wasn’t ready for the big city or it wasn’t ready for me. I packed my bag and caught the bus home, back to childhood.

Job#1: Sixty Minutes

Posted on January 28, 2006

I’ve never seriously wanted to be anything other than a writer, and although it is very time consuming, it probably doesn’t really qualify as a job because the recompense doesn’t really qualify as an income. Consequently I’ve had many jobs over the years to support my writing habit and I thought it might be quite diverting to document these for our mutual gratification – with Job #1 starting today.

My first job lasted exactly one hour. When I was 14 years old I visited every hairdresser in our country town during term time (in my school uniform) asking for a couple of weeks casual work prior to Christmas. I finally ended up at the seedy end of town, up a dirty staircase, in a salon clearly down on its luck – and was hired. We arranged a date at the end of the term and I turned up on the appointed day.

I arrived at my first job in my new outfit, which included an especially fetching green patent leather handbag. The owner, a middle-aged, unkempt fellow, was clearly taken aback and his first comment was: ‘You looked much younger in your uniform.’

I was still puzzling over this when he set me to work cleaning up the floor and tables, which were covered in debris. An equally grubby woman pulled the greasy curtain at the back of the shop aside and watched me through narrowed eyes. The man disappeared into the back room and I could hear them having a heated but hushed discussion.

I kept on diligently cleaning - but with a sinking feeling in my stomach – until I found something on a table that turned my stomach – a used condom. I’m not sure I’d ever seen a condom and certainly not a used one but there was no mistaking this little memento of happier times. My first emotion was shame – shame at finding it!

I picked it up with a tissue and popped it in the bin moments before the man strode from the back room to inform me that he had no further need of my services. The next sound was my patent leather shoes clattering down the stairs.

Job Highlight: Endless holiday entertainment for my friends making hoax appointments at the salon and speculating as to WHAT the hell was going on

Sudden Surge

Posted on January 27, 2006

After a period of absolute zip happening on the book, things are suddenly moving. A radio interview has popped up out of the blue and on a regional station - which is fantastic - plus the interviewer has read the book – also very helpful!

I’ve got two reviews coming out in magazines I sent the book to several months ago, and a review has come out in the NZ Herald. It’s been a bit of a struggle to get the book published in NZ and I can only do so much, so hopefully this will move it along. People imagine that once your book is published it’s a seamless process to sales success while the author languishes on those laurels – nothing could be further from the truth!

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