English Member Of Women’s Electrical Association

Press, Volume C, Issue 29553, 30 June 1961, Page 2

English Member Of Women’s Electrical Association

When a woman lives alone she very often has to keep house to a modified do-it-yourself plan. There is no-one else there to change a fuse, clear a blocked sink pipe or screw a coffee-grinder machine to the kitchen wall. Mrs G wlad ys Willmer discovered that very few women know just how to tackle all these little tasks w hen she arrived from England to settle in Christchurch recently. She could change a fuse but could not change a plug on a lamp or an electric iron.

An article in "The Press” Jed Mrs Willmer to jan the Christchurch Women’s Electrical Association where she hopes to learn something about these minor repairs to household gadgets.

"I need to know about this I don't know how to do these little things." she said yesterday. “I lived in an allelectric house in England but I was never a member of the association there. I just went to one or two of their meetings with a friend” Instead. Mrs Willmer joined the Gas Association in E-mston. near Manchester, which was run on similar lines except that women were taught how to use their gas household equipment. "We had lectures on cooking which were useful because they could be adapted to electric ovens.” she said "And we also had manv lectures on general subjects which were designed to hold the members together in the •seo-iation.

"We had many outings through the a'scriation. One was to the Wedgwood Potteries and another to freezing works where we were taken to see frozen carcases riored. Al] the meat from New Zealand was stored there. Then there was a trip down the Manchester ship canal—the larges*, in England

It runs from Liverpool to Manchester." Mrs Willmer made her first trip to New Zealand in 1958 and spent a few months in Wellington with her sister. While there she searched for the homes of Katherine Mansfield and memorial to the author. She had admired her work and had studied her life story in England but found to her surprise that the homes of Katherine Mansfield were not preserved to her memory They were offices, a derelict building and a privately-owned house. JOURNEY TO N.Z. Selling her home in .England and making the journey to New Zealand was something of an adventure for Mrs Willmer Wanting to see all she coujd on tihe trip, she chose a ship which called at San Francisco and Los Angeles. Los Angeles was not new to her but the ship offered many trips to tourists and she spent some hours touring the famous “Marine Land of the Pacific” at Longbeach. “Thousands of people cou'd be seated in a huge arena to watch an outdoor display of performing porpoises and a whale that the organisers claimed was the largest performing whale in captivity."

she said. "The fiah were colossal, yet they jumped through hoops and over ropes, twisting and turning in unbelievably graceful movements." PERFORMING SEALS In a nearby tank performing seals were on show and in another, a man descended a ladder in a diving suit to scatter food about the floor for an octopus and sharks. Other parts of this vast aquarium housed smaller fish of every variety and all were kept in surroundings resembling their natural environment. Many visitors were intrigued by the sea lion show where, instead of tbe bail games on land that are often seen in English circuses, the sea lions played water-polo. Being the onlv sightseer from England. Mrs Willmer was invited to take part in the regular feeding arranged) for the porpoises. This was done from a small platform jutting out over the water ■nd a small fish was held by a stick with a clip on the end. When the porpoise jumoed its entire lene’h out of the water, Mrs Willmer was given a small car naming her “porpoise jumpmaster.” A photograph taken of her as the porpoise seized the fish was sent back to England by the organisers and was later published in the Manchester “Evening News." “They always try to include visitors from overseas in the feeding programme and usually send the pictures to the local papers. It gives the aquarium good publicity.") she said.