Welcome to Fans of GTi Racing Girls!

Stories My Nana Tells is proud to be a continuing sponsor of GTi Racing Girls team and to share the excitement of Targa racing with them.

What Do We Do?

 We entertain, engage and educate children, through storytelling!

That is us, in a nutshell of eight words! But we do a great deal more than entertain, engage and educate children, through storytelling. We are not racing car drivers – but we are close!

As the writer of all the Stories My Nana Tells, I know quite a bit about cars and racing. One of my career highlights was becoming the first woman in Australia to sell cars!  My name is Lesley Dewar and I spent about ten years in the car industry in Western Australia – in a variety of jobs. There is still a bit of petrol in the blood and running around the Kwinana Motorplex at 200kmh in the GTi Evo was great fun. One of my sons is an XU-1 expert these days, too and loves his cars!

Keeping the conversation going with your kids …

Whether you are away and calling home, or catching up at the end of a busy working day, kids are not the easiest of people with whom to communicate.

The usual questions:

• how’s school?
• what did you do today?
• how’s your Mum and/or Dad?
• what are you watching on TV?

don’t always generate scintillating conversation between a child and a parent at home.  It is even harder for an absent parent to get a good talk going that gets more than the usual “OK” or “alright” or even “dunno!” as responses.

On the other hand, when you have a new story especially written to engage the imagination of the child and you can share it together, it becomes much easier to talk and explore new ideas.

The topics of Stories My Nana Tells, the pictures and the questions open up all kinds of interesting discussions, which can be revisited over and over again.  Links to good websites can be shared and enjoyed – at home and away.

 

Stories My Nana Tells understands families, especially those who find themselves separated.

Online posts from women whose partners work away – maybe on a three week on – three week off cycle – shows the impact the FIFO lifestyle has on them and their children.  But it is not only those in the FIFO industries that have to cope with these family pressures.  There are many families where shift work, business pressures, being in the Defence Forces or being a single parent makes it difficult to connect with your kids in a personal way.

How Do We Help Families?

Stories My Nana Tells is a  family membership site that delivers proven, quality stories every two weeks, to engage 7 to 12yo children in a journey of discovery, fast learning and exploring new things

This is perfect for parents – you can login at the same time as your child and read the new story together over Skype!  You can chat on Facebook or swap emails, discussing and answering the questions with each story – there are so many ways to share the stories. It is also great for parents who are home-schooling. Our interview with Ben on our home page is a great example of how successfully you can use Skype and emails with Stories My Nana Tells.

Here’s a look at some of the story topics coming up in the next few weeks:

• He Looks Like Elvis
  • He looks just like Elvis. His broad shoulders and slender hips give him balance and style; his garb was all black with an occasional flash of brilliant red, lining his coattails.
• Starlight… Star Bright …. First Star I See Tonight
  • Sharing the stars with children is a great joy. To lie flat on your back, fingertips touching and to gaze intently into the heavens is an exhilarating experience to share with them.
• Hooked
  • De Mestral hoped that Velcro® would replace the Zipper, which got its name eighty years after its invention. In 1923, F. B. Goodrich ordered 150,000 for his new product – rubber galoshes – and based on the sound it made -
• An Expensive Lunch
  • He just throws back his giant head, opens his beak and swallows the little mouse whole. “I wonder if he has got a mouse wheel in his tummy,” I say to Robbie. “There’s going to be lots of running around in there.”
• Where Have All My Spiders Gone?
  • The pea gravel is wrapped in silk and anchors something. But, what? I stare upwards. Between two red gums, their leaves and flowers tossing like waves at sea, my spider has cast her net.

Subscribe now and you will receive: 

•  26 stories, one every fortnight, from Stories My Nana Tells for only $AU119 (discounted from the usual $AU132)

Get a twelve month subscription - a new story for your children every two weeks and a Parking Pal Magnet mailed to you when you subscribe – for the special GTi offer of only $AU119 – a huge saving on the usual combined price of $AU140  

Subscribe HERE NOW!

We Can Help You With Your Kid’s Literacy

Stories My Nana Tells is a family friendly subscription service that delivers a high quality story for kids every two weeks – right into your chosen email box – at home or your personal work address.

Lesley Dewar writes stories for 7-12 yo children that help improve their literacy. Kids love her stories. With simple questions to test comprehension, parents enjoy and love them, too,  as entertainment while they are educational, too. Travel, family, pets, science and quirky ideas make Stories My Nana Tells a great read.

Each story is around 2,500 words, thoroughly researched and finished off with up to 24 questions to encourage young readers to interact with the story.  We have wonderful photographs and illustrations to make them even more interesting – and we guarantee they will spark the curiosity of your children and grandchildren in nature, the environment and the world around them. If there is a reliable online source, Lesley includes direct links to other information on the internet.

Get started today : 

This special Stories My Nana Tells offer of $AU119 is just for GTi Racing Girls Fans and Families and is a wonderful gift for a child or grandchild.

Dinosaur Parking Pal Magnet – one of five designs we are giving away

PLUS you will receive one of these fabulous Parking Pal Magnets. Designed to be placed on the side of your car,  it will help keep the little kids in place while you load up the shopping or buckle up the baby.

Children love to “Hi Five” their magnet and stay close and safe.

Together, Stories My Nana Tells and Parking Pal Magnets make a great combined subscription that will last all year and more!

Keep your children safe in the parking lot!  Keep your children entertained, educated and inspired with Stories My Nana Tells.

Yes! I want to get the GTi Racing Girls special $AU119.00 offer and the Parking Pal Magnet too. 

Don’t miss this chance to introduce your children or grandchildren to a new learning experience with this very special offer.  

Is it really special?  YES!  Because you will be a subscriber for as long as you want at this incredible low price of $AU119.00 for 26 stories each year.  

Get started today : 

This special Stories My Nana Tells offer is a wonderful gift for a child or grandchild.

Dinosaur Parking Pal Magnet - one of five designs we are giving away

PLUS you will receive one of these fabulous Parking Pal Magnets. Designed to be placed on the side of your car,  it will help keep the kids in place while you load up the shopping or buckle up the baby.

Children love to “Hi Five” their magnet and stay close and safe.

Together, Stories My Nana Tells and Parking Pal Magnets make a great combined gift that will last all year and more!

Keep your children safe in the parking lot!  Keep your children entertained, educated and inspired with Stories My Nana Tells.

Subscribe today! Yes! I want to get the GTi Racing Girls special $AU119.00 offer and the Parking Pal Magnet too. 

Subscribe HERE NOW!

If you want to subscribe later, that’s fine, too.  Just click here to try out our offer of THREE FREE stories

Every Second Week.

When you register as a Member of Stories My Nana Tells and you have confirmed your request, you will receive an email welcoming you and it will include a link to your first story.

For PREMIUM subscribers, the first story is He Looks Like Elvis.  This story will introduce you and your family to a family of Red Tailed Forest Black Cockatoos and their friends.

Written by Lesley Dewar from her personal observations of the birds and her in-depth research, you will greatly enjoy the story and learn much about these iconic Western Australian birds.

The first story for members subscribing for FREE stories is The Fig Tree – which will astonish you with its detailed explanations of how and why the tiny fig wasp is essential to the delicious fruit we love so much.

 Each PREMIUM subscription receives 26 new stories in a year – one every two weeks.

• From time to time, we may make special promotional offers for a short period of time or in conjunction with another business.

 

• Payment is made through our PayPal account using the subscription button on the sign up page for our Premium Stories.

 

• When you subscribe, you will receive an email, asking you to confirm your request. Without this confirmation, your subscription is not activated and we cannot let you know when a new story is available.

 

You can subscribe for a PREMIUM paid Membership for 26 stories which is $132.00 per year or for THREE free stories delivered over five weeks. Payment is made through our PayPal account using the link provided on the registration page.

From time to time, we may make special promotional offers for a short period of time or in conjunction with another business.

• When you subscribe, you will receive an email, asking you to confirm your request. Without this confirmation, your subscription is not activated and we cannot let you know when a new story is available.

• To access your stories as a Member you will register your own password, using the link that comes with your first Welcome email.

• You will receive an email notification when a new story is available from the Member’s section, every two weeks for your PREMIUM membership and three times for your FREE membership.

• Each email will have a link to the new story and you use that link to open the story and either read it on line, save it to your own computer or do both.

To order and pay for your cards right now – just click anywhere on the picture and use our PayPal account.

Please share this with your friends on Twitter, Facebook and other networking sites. We want to raise lots of money to help support Kaarakin! Thank you.

To order and pay for your unique Black Cockatoo Cards, which are featured here,  please use our PayPal option.

Your cards and bookmarks will be mailed to you within two working days of your confirmed payment.

You will also receive a receipt from PayPal by email as confirmation of your payment

 On behalf of the Kaarakin Black Cockatoo Rehabilitation Centre, we thank you sincerely for your support.

After nine weeks of dancing lessons, learning  Jive, Rock & Roll, Cha Cha  and some line dancing – I thought I knew every muscle in my body.  I wondered – how come all that exercise hadn’t dealt with every single muscle I owned?

Every Wednesday and Friday night – regardless of the 42° heat – we had stepped, swung and sweated our way through over two hours of lessons in the Baskerville Hall. In the following week we would start Jive again, but this night, this particular night was graduation night from the School of Basic Rock & Roll and I had a new dress just for the occasion.

1950′s clothes are gorgeous and this dress was a killer: black with lime green polka dots; lime green waist ribbon finished in a bow; a full circle skirt to swish and swirl and a real satin and net petticoat built it.  It was just lovely and invited you to parade about, turning this way and that and making lots of little hip turning moves.

The previous week, when it became apparent that my dancing phase was likely to last, I invested in a pair of dancing shoes from Glitz & Glamour. With open toes, T-bar straps and a good heel they made me feel like Ginger Rogers because proper dancing shoes mean you can think about what your feet are doing instead of whether your feet will stay in your shoes while Ronnie spins you this way and that, very fast.

Of course, there was a perfectly good reason for all of this.  Just before Easter 2007, I was to be in Sabah at the PIS Conference and the theme for the Gala Dinner Night is 1950′s Red & Gold Rock & Roll.  Our PIS CEO, Robbie Bennetts looks a bit like Elvis, sings a lot like Elvis and we would have the PIS Band that always plays lots of 50′s and 60′s R&R music.  When I registered for this conference a year previously in Hawaii, I had no idea what the theme might be.

I have appeared at PIS conferences dressed as Dame Edna Everage, a Pirate of the Pacific, 1920′s It Girl and as a Chinese Lady (of indiscriminate description) when we had a whole load of people over from Singapore.  This time – it was a 1950′s Rock & Roll.

I had a stunning red dress and some 50′s clip on earrings for the Gala Dinner and the dancing afterwards. The killer dress was for the PIS Idol Night – when Karaoke rules after an elegant poolside dinner.

When I was about 13, my Mum caught me practicing to jive in my bedroom with my girlfriend.  Oh, boy! You would think I had brought the Devil home for dinner!  Later, there was no time for dancing while married and mothering three small children and when I was single again in my late twenties, breaking two legs in a car accident brought the fun of dancing in Perth’s better nightclubs to a sudden halt. Apart from me being off work for a year, Robbie always said breaking my legs was the best thing that happened, because I stopped nagging him to dance. He really didn’t care to dance that much.

Now, I am 63 (well, I was in 2007) and I had to be able to R&R and Jive at the Conference. It is great fun, too. I missed the critical lesson when Les was teaching how to do the kicks in Jive.  The following Friday night, I first got a kick in the shins when I didn’t move fast enough to meet up with one of the men further down the line (we did progressive dancing so you got to dance with everyone) When it came to kicks, I was still having no success.

When we did meet up, in exasperation Gary says to me “You are just not getting it. You have to spread your legs for me, love.”  I burst out laughing, he blushed and I said, “It’s been a long time since anyone said that to me and got away with it.” He was an excellent dancer and soon had my kicks sorted out.

And the eyelids? Well, that had more to do with three weeks of intensive work on the treadmill, bouncy blue ball, Ab-swing and lifting weights – trying to undo a summer of neglect.  They were very relaxed a week or two later, when I was lying under a palm tree in the warm tropics, drinking pina coladas and idly dreaming of dancing with Fred Astaire.

The irony of it all was that almost NONE of the men could properly Rock and Roll – but it was fun to dream!

We had been there before with friends and I was quite happy to spend $120 – 150 for us to have a lovely dinner with wine, beer, desert, coffee, whatever we wanted. I booked a table for two, for 8:00pm.  When we arrived, the restaurant was very busy doing takeaways and a number of tables were set but not occupied.  We were on time.

We were shown to a table for two, just inside the entrance to the dining area.  My father was seated first, with his back to the room of diners.  I was seated opposite him, with a first class view of the staff entrance into the kitchen/ serving area, the rubbish bins into which all plates are scraped before they hit the dishwasher and the repository for all empty bottles.

Suffice to say, I politely and quietly told the young waiter that the table was not suitable; we would not sit there and to find us something else.  He was an astute young man, found us an acceptable table outside and, since it was a pleasant warm event, we had a very enjoyable meal.  I tipped him accordingly.

On the way out, when paying the bill, I said to the owner/operator/proprietor behind the till “Table 14. You should get rid of it”.

She (Chinese lady) said, we “We don’t have Table 13 – Chinese don’t like that number!”  “No,” I said, “Table 14. Get rid of it.  I will not sit and look at your rubbish bins while I am eating! Go and sit there and see what you are looking at!”

What if I had been a lady taking the love of my life to dinner, and for a whole variety of reasons, I was making the booking? Restaurants have no right assume that female patrons have lesser tastes or sensitivities and the view from my seat was, frankly, disgusting.

The food was excellent; the prices reasonable and the service (from the staff) excellent.  It would be interesting to see if the management was smart enough to respond to a serious and genuine customer suggestion.

At the Sheraton in Waikiki, I was seated front and centre in the fabulous  Hanohano Room  30 floors above the beach, which is only accessed on the outside of the tower in a glass lift. I was dressed in a full length evening gown, and  was later asked if I was indeed the elegant lady seen exiting the lift to enter the restaurant. The service was impeccable.

In Queenstown, NZ, I enjoyed the fine dining experience of a degustation menu at the Wai Waterfront

On my recent trip around the US and Canada for six weeks, the hospitality and service offered in restaurants from three to five stars was remarkable. The food and wine service on the Rocky Mountaineer was luxury indeed.

Sadly, as a woman dining alone, I have had “5 star” restaurants in Australia treat me in a shameful manner.  The overseas services greatly contrast with the North Sydney Harbourview, which wanted to seat me down the back, around the corner and out of sight, in a restaurant that was almost entirely empty.  No harbour views for me, even as a hotel guest!

Suffice to say, I did not allow that occur.  Maybe I had better stop now, before this turns into a feminist rant about the lack of consideration for diners as customers in Australia and for females dining alone.

Before I go, I am reminded of a story from many years ago, when Robbie and I were first beginning to go out together.  We arranged to meet at a well known restaurant in South Perth later in the evening and I went early, for dinner. I dined alone.  Only a short time before Robbie arrived, one of the patrons approached me and invited me to join him and the owner of the restaurant for a few drinks. I looked him up and down and replied “It must be obvious to you that if I am dining alone – it is because I have chosen to do so!”

His response and his conversation with Robbie, who arrived soon after, is a story for another day – since, unbeknown to me at the time, he and Robbie were already well acquainted and they greeted each other warmly.

When you request an “ad hoc” opponent with whom to play WWF, it will probably be a stranger and may well be someone quite experienced in the strategies of the game. As you play with different opponents, you begin to see individuals have their own ways of approaching the game of word building.

One strategy is to make lots of very small, very tight moves; words of only two or three letters at a time which make it very difficult for you to open up the board and to allow you play a move with a great flourish. The words will move in a pattern across and down, or across and up the board in a confronting manner, giving you a sense of being in retreat even before the game has really gotten under way. Opportunities to integrate double and triple letter and word scores seem limited indeed, yet such a player will often score well over 400 points in a single game.

They have learned and they love the unique allowable combinations of two and three letters that WWF will accept as legitimate words.  QI is allowable, as is its plural QIS, but IQ is not. PI is fine. OX, AH, UN will be accepted, but not GI.  Playing against them, you rapidly begin to see how they can take a very small word and build it into something that scores very highly indeed , creeping their way across the board using double and triple scoring spaces.  Giving away very little; making no room for anyone else; often leaving you to make you next move, while facing a vertical line of letters which is almost impenetrable.

They have mastered the art of filling in all the tiny spaces; letting no opportunities to score escape, while you stare in bewilderment at your handful of consonants and vowels that keep arranging themselves into familiar words of five and six letters – with nowhere to place them on the board.

In WWF, the high scoring letters are usually the most difficult to place – especially since they come randomly to hand: Z, J, and Q, each with a score of 10 points. The letters X = 8; V, K, = 5; M, Y, W, C, B, P, F, = 4 and the others rate 3 points or less. Coupled with being able to use double and triple word scores; turning singles into plurals by adding an “S”; using infill with a single letter like an X to turn an “O” into OX on a triple letter square, means knowing the strategic value of two and three letter words soon builds a very high score.

HA+J, J+AB, J+AM, J+AR, J+AW, J+AY, J+ET, J+IN, J+O, J+OE, J+OW, J+OY, J+UN, J+US, J+UT, TA+J, SUK, ED, DA, HI, JO, OW, ER, FA, YE, OX, TI, XI all find their way into their scores. They are very familiar with the 55 two-letter combinations WWF will accept and on which they can build.

If their style of play leaves you cold, you can retort with an allowable BRR, protest against their last word with a TSK or a HMM, which is when you are thinking longer and deeper than when you just HM. If you really don’t like their play, give them a PFFT, chill them right out with a BRRR or catch their attention with a PSST! Of course, they may tell you to SSH while they diminish your chances of winning to the NTH degree. If deeply troubled by them, you can TSKTSK – but only if you have a blank because there is only one letter K to use in Words With Friends. Since blanks have no scoring value, you might prefer to save your valuable T, S and blank – unless you are really ticked off.

How comfortable would you be, in engaging this opponent as a business partner? Would you admire and want to emulate them, for their ability to control the game; take all the big scores; limit the opportunity for your opponents (competition) to interact and expand their game, while making them  uncomfortable about being  moved in your chosen direction?

Conversely, would you be comfortable networking with the same person, where the name of the game is to support each other; share business referrals and open up opportunities for each other?

Comments on this article are welcome!  Keep in touch with updated Business Tips articles – by joining our What’s New mailing list at Get All The New News At Stories My Nana Tells

“I’d like to be under the sea in an octopus’s garden in the shade.
We would shout and swim about the coral that lies beneath the waves.”

Ringo Starr wrote this song for The Beatles in 1969. He says “I wrote Octopus’s Garden in Sardinia. Peter Sellers had lent us his yacht and we went out for the day… I stayed out on deck with [the captain] and we talked about octopuses. He told me that they hang out in their caves and they go around the seabed finding shiny stones and tin cans and bottles to put in front of their cave like a garden.”

This inspired him to write the song which was featured in the Beatle’s movie “Yellow Submarine”.

Octopuses really are amazing creatures. They are very intelligent and live in cave-like dens in the rocks. They often close up the front of the cave with rocks and shells, leaving only a small entry hole through which they virtually ooze, coming and going from their homes. When they catch their prey, especially crabs, they return to their dens to dine.  Their garden is the collection of bones, spines, and shells left over from previous meals along with any shiny things they have collected, like tin cans.

If you were an octopus, you would have three hearts; a sharp, horny beak; eight arms – any one of which you could re-grow if you lost it; be related to slugs and garden snails; able to change the color of your skin or squirt ink to hide from your enemies. Octopuses do not have tentacles, but eight arms with a fine membrane (mantle) that unites them at the top.

An octopus may be clutching dozens of crabs and clams as it cruises the shore, using the mantle like a shopping bag, to take it full of food back to the den.  To eat, they pass food from sucker to sucker to the hard beak in their mouth. Their suckers are able to both smell and taste – they are not just for holding on to things. So,  when an octopus is running its arms over things and gently touching with its suckers, it is really having a little sniff and taste to see if it is worth eating.

Some octopus are dangerous, though – especially the little blue-ringed octopus that does live in rocks and crevices around Western Australian and other coast lines.  It spends most of its time hiding away, because lots of fish and seals like to eat them. It may pile up rocks in front of its hiding place – making a little octopus garden.  If it gets excited or upset, it begins to display bright blue rings on its arm.  This is always a warning sign that the octopus is upset.

 Once, when my three kids were quite young, we were at the beach at Cottesloe and we had been swimming, snorkelling, and collecting stones and shells from the reef that is quite close to shore. When we decided to pack up and go home, I asked the boys (Warren and Colin) to put all the shells and stones back in the water.  After all, they were probably someone’s home.  Little did we know!  While we were gathering everything together, a little octopus with bright blue rings came crawling out of one of the bigger shells and walked right across Warren’s arm.  We knew NOTHING about blue ringed octopus and thought it was pretty cute!

Warren just picked it off his arm and took it down to the water and let it go.  We watched it quickly swim away.  It’s a bit funny now, but it would not have been funny at all if it had bitten him because they are both deadly and give a very painful bite. Like all octopuses, it swims by forcing water through a funnel – making it jet propelled. If the blue-ringed octopus loses an arm, it can grow it back within six weeks – just as a crab can grow back a claw or a leg it has lost.

Octopus are curious and intelligent, as befits their role as hunters; probably the most “intelligent” of invertebrates and have been shown to have the ability to learn from experience. It has been estimated that they are even smarter than dogs. To snatch quick snacks, octopuses have been known to climb aboard fishing boats and open holds full of crabs. The arm span of the largest octopus ever recorded was 32 feet and weighed 300 pounds. Squid have both eight arms and two tentacles, which are additional extra-long appendages used for capturing prey.

After mating, the female retires to her den and lays tens of thousands of eggs, which she weaves one at a time into strings attached to the ceiling of her den. She is unable to leave her den to forage for food for about six months, spending the whole time keeping the eggs clean by blowing water current over them. When hatching starts, she will continue to blow water currents across the eggs to help the babies break free.  Sadly, the weakened mother octopus dies; the father will have died within a few months of mating, leaving the thousands of newborn orphans to fend for themselves.

If you would like to see a video of a giant octopus, go to this link on the internet http://bit.ly/SMNTOctopus . By comparison, the Indonesian Mimic Octopus, (Thaumoctopus mimicus) that was only discovered in 1998, is able to copy the physical likeness and movement of more than fifteen different species. It can discern which dangerous sea creature to impersonate to imitate the greatest threat to its current possible predator. http://bit.ly/SMNTMimic

For three years, I have volunteered at local shows for the marine conservation group (Save Our Marine Life) and part of our attraction was to have face painting for children. It was magical. Little girls and boys aged four and five and six (and older) stood patiently in line for up to an hour, waiting to have a whale, an octopus, a penguin painted on their faces. Not a cross word. Not a tear. Not a tantrum. The older ones wrote letters to the Prime Minister urging him to support marine sanctuaries while they waited. Brothers and sisters and cousins kept each other entertained while they waited their turn. Parents waited quietly too and wrote their letters as well.

I can only surmise that it is the combination of the gentle touch of the paintbrush on their faces; being able to choose their own pictures and the intensity of the undivided attention of the painter with their canvas that creates such a level of patience and preparedness to wait their turn. It was an experience I would not have missed for all the world. Save Our Marine Life has been working very hard in Western Australia too and we are overjoyed that the State Government has announced a 7,000 ha marine park north of Broome – with two large “no take” zones to help protect nursing and breeding whales.

There is an awesome new documentary being made about whales in the area, by the same filmmakers who made the wonderful film about black cockatoos – On A Wing And A Prayer.  There is a link to the DVD on our website at http://storiesmynanatells.com/ where you can order your own copy.

I am not the world’s best face painter but now I have a template which I can use and in my idle moments, I dream of painting glorious Octopus’s gardens. This is the kind of Octopus Garden I would like. Cartoon Video of Beatles’ song – Octopus Garden 

Even better – I would like to live in the Underwater World that Debra Harry creates with her incredible art quilts. Debra Harry Art Quilts 

Writers Note:  If you have enjoyed this story, you can view the Cartoon Video and see more about of Debra Harry Art Quilts by visiting online at http://storiesmynanatells.com and finding this story in Nana’s Blog.  We would love to see you there. You can join our newsletter list, too.