Jenni Giles left the publisher's executive meeting on a big high. What she'd wanted had happened and she'd been given the key to unlock her future.
She sucked in air. Right, she thought. She was setting a very tight schedule to achieve an near-impossible dream of launching her own magazine but by God she and her team would achieve it.
"Yippee!"
She pulled off her new tight red shoes and in relief walked down the stairs in stocking feet to her suite of offices.
Raising her hands above her head she cried, "This has been one of the greatest days in my entire life."
"You editorial people do carry on," sniffed one of the evening cleaning ladies, on her way to the cafeteria to play a game of penny poker with her early arriving workmates.
"My head and heart are free!" cried Jennie, totally aware that a torrid mentally and physical time lay ahead.
"Bloody journalists – always on pills or booze," muttered the cleaning lady, clad in a faded yellow and blue smock and matching head band.
Jenni's staff who witnessed this looked on amused, only three of them knowing what she was on about.
* * *
Back in her younger days in New Zealand where she was born and raised, Jenni began in journalism after gaining a university BA degree with additional studies in creative writing. She joined the morning newspaper, the
Waikato Challenger
graded as a first year junior reporter, jumping the initial up to three years cadet stage because of her academic studies.
Although rather over-awed at first, she quickly picked up the rhythm of the office and soon no longer was constantly asking questions. That was in the days of growth in new-age computerisation when reporters were swapping their typewriter, usually old battered machines, for a computer with word processing software.
Initially the small articles she wrote were almost unrecognisable to her when they appeared in print substantially rewritten.
Late one afternoon she appeared in the subs' room and began burrowing into the unsophisticated archives of subbed articles of previous publications. At the end of each day all articles worked on that day were simply bound with a band of plain newsprint, which was glued and dated and stored on shelves for three months before being dumped, no longer available as evidence in dealing with public complaints or threats of legal action.
She extracted her articles of one particular issue, watched by the curious chief subeditor Anthony Burrows (also known as A.B.) who refrained from commenting until she had carefully replaced each article, glued a new band around the bundle and replicated the date from the broken band.
"You operate like a squirrel," commented A.B., a former housemaster and English teacher of a private school. "Are you looking to conceal the evidence of some statement you have written that will land us in court?"
"No Mr Burrows," replied Jenni, unsure whether he was being serious or stupid. "It's just that my articles as published have been changed considerably from the original version. I need to know what changes that were made to try to deduce the reasons, so have searched for my subbed originals."
"To my knowledge nobody has done this before."
"But I am nobody Mr Burrows, I'm me."
"Humph."
"Well, let me see what you've got there. Sit down beside me and I shall explain."
They worked away at the 'top' of the subs' table comprising two former kitchen tables of identical height, placed end on end. It was a dingy room, with all of the lighting centred over the tables. Files of four daily newspapers circulating in the province rested on sloping shelves in one corner of the room. The windows were conveniently facing south, away from direct sunlight and the view was of an oak tree and the neighbouring school's boys' and girls' toilet blocks.
Although most of the editorial staff had gone at 4:00 when Jenni managed the unthinkable and got crusty A.B. to give her one-on-one tuition, word got round about that extraordinary event].
It was said that grateful newcomer had the guts to tell him – not ask – after that informative session that she'd be back the same time the next day to tap into his fountain of knowledge.
One of the observers reported that instead of bawling her out, old A.B. simply grunted 'Humph'.
At 4:00 next afternoon two late-leaving subeditors witnessed this strange encounter.
Jenni entered, scratched around in the beer carton holding the previous edition's subbed articles stored as archives, and then took them to the chief subeditor, saying, "Here we are, Mr Burrows."
The subeditors continued to watch expecting A.B. to growled "Fuck off Jenni as I have no time for this carry-on."
But no, he picked up his blue-lead pencil and worked away with her.
Before long Jenni's articles on flower shows, Women's Division meeting reports and the Old Folks' Association concert presentations were passing over the subs' desk and leaving for production processing virtually unchanged. She even began composing her own headings.
Although photo-composition had replaced hot-metal composition, because of union threats if jobs were lost to machines leading to the down-sizing of staff, the production department compositors were still employed in those early days of 'electronic transition' to re-set all editorial and in-house advertising.
Jenni progressed to doing the shipping column, collecting the lunches for the subeditors and drawing up the weather map in 'Indian ink'. This graphic was compiled from a mix of text and numbers that arrived via the teleprinter (a device in those days that telegraphed messages) looking not unlike hieroglyphics from an Egyptian tomb.
Then it really changed for her.
One Saturday night Jenni was assigned to cover the speedway featuring midget cars that came from all over the North Island, and occasionally from the United States for the national championships.
Jenni hadn't have a clue about speedway racing or why the cars were called midgets, but when she walked into the pits wearing a tight white sweater and a black leather mini dress and long white leather boots asking for help, she found the men were really keen to help her.
The roaring of engines being fined tuned for racing, the smell of exotic fuels and exhaust fumes, the shouting and joking of grown men playing with their toy-like cars fascinated Jenni.
Until them she only had seen men at play on the rugby or soccer grounds or on the tennis court. Almost unknowingly she became a 'petrol head' for that evening. Although alcohol was banned, she'd been handed a whisky and then a glass of beer before the start of the second race.
During the first interval she was taken for two circuits of the track by one of the ace drivers, sitting on his lap locked against him by his safety harness in the single-seated racer. They returned, the twenty-two-year-old Jenni white-faced, her vomit splattered over herself and driver.
The driver – a married man with three children – and his mechanic, who was his father, rushed Jenni into the drivers' changing room where despite her protests they stripped her, thrust her under the icy shower, pulled her out, dried her thoroughly and dressed her in clean overalls and her leather jacket.
Remarkably, they'd done that and had her back to the press box in three minutes, just in time for the start of the first round of the feature event.
