Sue Ammon was the secretary to John Quicke in Engineering from 1963 to 1967.

Jim Cruthers was terrifyingly intelligent and a stickler for “no rubbing out” on those foolscap six strike (duplicates) pages, which I typed on a manual typewriter (later clocked at 104wpm, no errors – TVW was good training). How many times did we get to the last word, only to make a typo and have to start all over again? I never got good enough at rubbing out the carbon copies to fool Mr Cruthers. Remember those circular erasers?

TVW Wild West Night: Sue is second from the left (Photo courtesy of Sue Scrutton)

One day, when his secretary Perry Moss was away, I was asked to leave my laid-back engineering department (John Quicke was my very forgiving boss) and do some letters for Mr Cruthers. I sat across the desk from him and took his dictation down in my pretty ordinary shorthand. Then he asked me to read it back! I did my best, despite nerves, but halted at a word and he leaned over, glanced at it for a second then told me what it was. He could read shorthand upside down!

Joy Heweston, Patti Nicholas, Marg Heweston & Sue Ammon doing a skit at the 1965 Ball (Photo courtesy of Patti Rock (nee Nicholas))

I wondered why he didn’t just type it up himself. I’m sure he would have done a better job of it than I did.