THE thought of retirement doesn’t come easy for Val Browning and when she closes her Cuba Mall shop for the last time this week it’s not to just put her feet up.
Browning describes her decision to shut Brownings Secretarial Services Ltd after 50 years as her second step towards retirement. The first step was moving with her husband Dave from a house to an apartment five years ago. Now she’s going to close the shop and work from home for a few selected clients.
“Often people retire and before you know it they’re dead,” Browning says. “I’m planning to keep busy.”
Browning set up her business in Manners Street in 1961 as The Public Typing and Duplicating Office. It was the days of manual typewriters and carbon paper copies and she and her small team would type everything from assignments for students to Hansard for parliament. Then came the first copier – “we had to use a solution and then wait for it to dry.”
The first electric typewriter also took some getting used to.“After having a fairly heavy hand for the old manual, on the electric typewriter I would end up with a row of ‘x’s instead of just one – and it would get to the end of the line and return automatically with a thump, giving me such a fright.”
The first Xerox copier used to frequently catch fire – “but I would clear out the burnt pieces of paper … and away it would go again” – and then Ricoh produced the first table top offset printer, allowing for cheap mass printing, Browning was the first in Wellington to have one.
It was her enterprising streak that saw Browning adapt to survive the arrival of what could have been the biggest threat to her business, the personal computer.
“The introduction of the computer altered everything. I saw the market changing so I changed direction and started administering organisations.
“Browning moved her office to Cuba Mall, initially above the old Le Normandie Restaurant and began administering organisations including the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and the Wellington Women Lawyers Association.
For 25 years she took the minutes for the Federation of Labour conferences at a time when there was a strict policy against the use of recording devices.
“I’d have to take everything down that was said verbatim and then in the evenings type everything up ready for the morning,” she says. “I’d only get about two hours of sleep a night.”
Val’s husband Dave has also played a key role in the business since the 1970’s.
“I trained my husband up on it at nights and weekends – then he gave up his own painting and papering business to join me in my business.”
Dave has taken a job as a building manager. “That will give us the afternoons free to do whatever we want,” Val Browning says.
The Brownings are selling off their equipment and chattels at garage sales during May. The store’s last day is tomorrow, Thursday 24 April.