Welcome To Fans Of GTi Racing Girls
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
Fabulous Black Cockatoo Gift Cards – Buy Now
All money received helps support the Kaarakin Black Cockatoo Rehabilitation and Rescue Center in Perth.
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.
Dancing With Fred Astaire
I could feel the muscles in my eyelids. When I blinked very slowly, I could feel them connecting to my face under the skin. And in my neck, when I lifted my chin, I could feel the fine muscles all through my neck. It was an amazing sensation.
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!
Dining Out
One night while we were living in Stoneville, I decided to take my Dad out to dinner at a very upmarket Chinese restaurant in our neighbourhood.
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.
Octopus’s Garden
“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.
One Cup Of Top Of Milk
When we were young, the milk lady used to bring the milk around on her horse and cart. Her name was Maria, I think. She was Italian and, to my mind at the time, all Italian ladies were called Maria.
On the cart were huge silver steel cans and Maria would ladle the milk directly from them into our billy can, complete with its own lid. She came every day and I never thought about how many cows she might have had, or where they were housed. We lived in Big Bell, a gold mining town inland in Western Australia. It was hot. The earth was red and dusty. The milk was always creamy and white – and we never considered how Maria might tend her cows in that climate.
My mother cooked on a wood stove, cream and green with a Kookaburra on the door of the oven, and on the side hob she would bring the milk to a very gentle heat to scald it. We did not have a refrigerator. After an hour or so, the cream would rise to the top of the milk and in its wide, shallow enamel pan it would be allowed to cool. Clots of thick, scalded cream would set and be carefully drawn off with a slotted spoon. The milk poured into a big enamel jug and put into the ice chest – safe now from turning sour.
Sometimes we would have scones with jam and cream. Or just bread and jam and cream. Often the cream was taken to make desserts and we were left to drink the milk, thinner but still rich.
We had powdered milk, too. We didn’t like it much. Condensed milk, with a hole punched in each side of the lid so that the milk would run out into the coffee cup – thick and sweet – was highly prized. A suck on the tin; maybe another. Mum wouldn’t notice, we thought. Condensed milk tins emptied very quickly.
Later we got a kerosene refrigerator – smelly, smoky thing that it was – but it did give us better service than an ice chest or a coolgardie safe, dripping with water. My mother could make icecream in it - though I am afraid to say we were somewhat ungracious recipients of her hard work: for it had to be beaten furiously, partly frozen and then beaten again before the final freeze. Children of less than ten are not too mindful of their parents’ hard work – nor grateful for it, either.
Pasteurisation of milk in factories meant that schools began to serve each child with a small 1/3 bottle of milk every day. Racks and racks of tiny bottles, standing in the hot goldfields sun, meant that by morning recess the milk was no longer cool. Not sour. But not homogenized, either. The cream in the bottles would rise to the top. Many children did not like it. I did. It was not uncommon for me to drink three or four of them, at morning recess. Suffice to say, we never once wondered from whence came these tiny bottles which appeared magically every morning. It is not only the school children of today who have disconnect with food and its origins, I suspect. When you are a small child, you never stop to think about how the food got there.
Later, when we came to the city to live, the milkman still would deliver to the front door. At first, in big, shiny steel cans as Maria had done and you had to be there to meet him. He had been known to stop by your rainwater tank and give your billy can a little splash of water to make up the measure, if you left the can out on its own. Then, later, he brought the milk in glass bottles. A pint at a time. With bright gold caps and patterned ones for Christmas or Easter. His horse and cart clinked their way along the street, the milkman running from house to house, the horse quietly munching his feedback and walking along the road. He knew where to stop, when to start and whether to go around the corner. We had the little bottles at school, too.
Weetbix was our breakfast cereal of choice. Vitabrits went soggy too fast for my liking. If you were quick, you would get the milk bottle before your mother shook it and have one cup of top of milk on your breakfast – leaving the skinny milk for your crying brother or the cousins who had come to stay.
Recipe books routinely called for “one cup of top of milk”. Magpies learned to peck their way through the foil lids and drink a quarter of a cup of top of milk from the bottle before their beaks were not long enough to reach the remainder, if you did not get up early enough to bring in the milk. A rush of black and white feathers on the front verandah and the threat of a sharp beak sent many a small child back inside to get a broom.
Now, it’s all pasturized; homogenized; sterilized and maybe tastes the same – regardless of the cow who lets down her milk for us. But I remember “the days in the old schoolyard” – though the little 1/3 pint bottles are long gone.The great golden Jerseys and the Guernseys, with long brown eyelashes to die for. The dairy that was just down the road from my Nana’s house, in Belmont – where the City of Belmont now has its beautiful gardens.
I think of the beautiful black and white Holstein-Friesian cows in the South West of WA on the way to Margaret River. In their lush green pastures, making their long lines to the milking sheds each morning and night, their milk is collected daily from award winning herds of dairy cows. When I visited Margaret River, celebrating the ”Cow Parade” last year, I like to think that they know I remember “one cup of top of milk” and I appreciate their gift.
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Waterless Garden
The idea of having a waterless garden has appealed to me for a long time. I have tried lots of different ways to grow my garden with little or almost no water and, more importantly for me, no watering. It’s getting away from being tethered to the end of the hose that I want.
Let’s forget for the moment about past experiments and look at what we are trying now. This weekend, the last weekend of March 2012, we started round two of the new waterless garden scheme.
Around Christmas time, I discovered a potentially new way of watering the garden. The product comes in a plastic sausage shape and comprises a jelly substance that is said to be 97% distilled water and 3% cellulose. The jelly is cut and placed raw surface down onto the soil, where a microbe action will begin and their activity causes the water to gradually be released from the jelly into the soil. When first setting up, the garden is watered for five days to make sure the soil is completely saturated. Then, if everything goes according to plan, you don’t have to water again for three months.
Since one watering sausage was recommended for a single tree, we figured we could use half a sausage for a single plant pot and decided to follow the instructions and enclose the jelly in a piece of polyurethane pipe topped off with a cap. Having seen the sausages just before New Year’s Day, when buying flowers for my Mum’s 91st Birthday, I brooded over the plan for a few weeks, before getting started.
Dad was in a wheelchair at the time and staff at Bunnings were lovely. We got him set up with a long piece of 90mm pipe, they cut the pipe for us into 17” lengths; we had nine of them and little bit left over. The length was selected by me, indicating like a fisherman about what size we wanted. Like a fisherman, there was some degree of over-sizing, it turned out.
When we got home and measured the pieces against the pots into which we wanted to plant, they were twice as long as the pots were deep. My spatial abilities are not profound.
About a week later, around Australia Day, I prevailed upon my son, Warren, to cut them all in half again, so they were between 7 and 8 inches long. Even then, in some cases, they still reached the bottom of the pot. Undeterred, we returned to Bunnings and “invested” in caps for each piece of pipe. That was an expensive exercise – about $100 for just the caps!
The pots were filled with potting mix, capped pipes with their half sausages installed complete with their plastic skins, cut side face down onto the soil and the seedlings were potted up.
My Dad’s veggie garden, a built up one inside a low tin fence, was refurbished with new potting mix, given four capped sausage tubes and planted with lettuce, capsicum, silver beet and beetroot.
The obligatory photos were taken to be posted on Facebook, the calendar marked for watering for the next five days and then we were into the experiment proper. No garden watering for three months. It was an exciting day! January 27, 2012.
Is Social Media Helping Or Hindering Your Productivity?
The major complaint about “Social Media” is that it either wastes your time or it is not effective for business. Like all activities within your business, the use of Social Media needs to be structured and focussed. You would not spend thousands of dollars on advertising without carefully deciding on your target market; the actions you want them to take and the words you use to attract their attention. Using Social Media for business is exactly the same, but with much less cost.
We have a wide range of Social Media resources for business at our fingertips – and these are my favourites (although not necessarily in this order):
- email group lists,
- Website blog,
- Facebook business pages ,
- a couple of Twitter accounts ,
- about twenty LinkedIn Groups,
- some new Google+ circles which are still a WIP.
- Two or three excellent online community groups on Facebook and Ning, which add a variety of information, views and options for expanding my business network and circles of influence, especially my passion for the environment and conservation of Black Cockatoos and endangered species.
You see, Social Media is not so much what we say – but where and how we say it. Social Media is more the way we distribute the message, rather than the message itself. To be effective in Social Media we learn how to speak to our audiences in different ways, at different times.
Twitter conversations are short, pithy and have lots of links. Facebook posts are more in depth and invite short or long comments – depending on the topic, as does LinkedIn.
To effectively use Social Media needs time:
- to learn how to use the right “language’ for different platforms
- to create your own content ;
- to write, spell check, grammar check and proof read;
- check all your website links are working;
- to post in the primary site;
- to share with the appropriate networks and
- to respond to your audience when they connect to you
You also need to allocate
- time to find out how different platforms work most effectively
- time to explore your platforms and
- time to respond to and share the content of others, because Social Media is just that: social.
There is nothing more destructive to your online Social Media profile than not responding to comments and RT’s – until you get to be so famous and popular that everyone understands you just don’t have time to talk to everyone. Think of Stephen Fry. Or Justin Beiber.
With resources like Ping, Shareaholic and others, we can spread our Social Media posts far and wide, seeking interaction with our target audience, which will grow rapidly with a good newsletter and contact form on our website and Facebook page.
Using lists on Facebook and Twitter in the same way as we do with email mailing lists means we can be focused on with whom and when we want to communicate on a specific topic. Our focus with Social Media is to be disciplined, targeted and productive.
One way to be focused on being efficient while using Social Media, because it can be extremely distracting and time wasting if we are not careful, is to work through one Social Media platform at a time.
- If it is LinkedIn –do that until it is all done. Meaning respond to messages, answer one to two questions if appropriate and accept invitations to connect. It may mean creating an event or responding to an invitation yourself.
- When blogging, write and share from the BLOG post itself to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc and trust it will be read.
- Learn the different ways to post to your Facebook business page as either yourself or as the business and vary your content accordingly.
- If you are working through your email box, and a LinkedIn message pops up as an email to which you want to comment or reply, deal with it as email – not as LinkedIn. Approving and replying to comments on your blogs falls into the email category, because every comment is will be emailed to you and you can approve and reply from your iPhone as easily as you can from the website.
- When commenting on a blog post or website, use your own Gravatar ID which is not only more efficient but links all your responses to more than one of your own Internet contact points – thus broadening your potential audience to your own internet presence.
This approach will make your Social Media activities far more productive; you will find yourself far less distracted and enjoying your Social Media experience much more. If you would like to comment or ask questions about this article, we would love to hear from you.
The Orange and The Green – Happy St Patrick’s Day!
Stories about the Irish and their unique approach to life are legendary. The Irish brogue, with its soft drawl, has seduced many a maiden where other men have failed and every good ethnic joke includes an Irishman in whichever trio is mentioned. Like this one: an Englishman, Irishman and an American walked into a bar. The Barman said “sorry, I don’t serve jokes, only drinks”. (ha ha).
When we were growing up, it was a foregone conclusion if a boy asked you if you had heard the joke about “Paddy and Mick”, it was not going to be a joke you could repeat to your mother.
The songs of the Irish are as sweet and soulful as you could ever imagine. While Danny boy is not truly Irish, it is generally considered to be so. Who cannot respond to these plaintive words?
Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer’s gone, and all the flowers are dying
’tis you, ’tis you must go and I must bide.
Or not kissed a complete stranger at midnight, after a rousing rendition of
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?
and Ned Kelly was as Irish as they came.
It seems that much Irish history is unhappy and there are many stories of the “troubles” between the Irish and English; Protestants and Catholics. The IRA bombings in London terrified me when my two boys were in the UK and I hated hearing that they had gone across to Ireland – although they assured me they were probably safer at that time in Ireland than they were in London.
Indeed, the current “troubles” go right back to the 17th century when, in July 1690, the armies of King William 111 (William of Orange) defeated James 11, a Catholic King who subsequently fled to France. On July 12 each year, Protestants still celebrate this victory – after more than 320 years – because at that time much of the Ireland was colonized by Scottish and English settlers, whereas today the North is predominately Protestant (represented by the color Orange) and the South is predominately Catholic (represented by the color green).
The current tri-colour flag of Ireland has a long history. Orange for Protestants, green for Catholics, and a white stripe for the hope of peace between the two. It was designed by a group of French women and presented as a gift to Thomas Meagher in 1848;, first raised above the Dublin GPO after the Easter Uprising of 1916 and officially given constitutional status in 1937.
St Patrick is a Catholic Saint credited with converting the island to Christianity and, by the way, also with driving all the snakes out of Ireland. St Patrick’s Day is March 17 (ribbon: Green) and on March 21, many around the world celebrate Harmony Day (ribbon: Orange) with a view to putting a wide range of prejudices aside.
A few years ago, an Irishman awoke in a park in Midland. It was part of the old Tuohy Gardens, where we girls would go, in my first year of High School, to do “phys ed” – handstands and other stuff, in the privacy of the park.
There were lots of trees and bushes around the grassed areas where you could actually be left to your own devices for quite a while; Midland had been rocking to the sound of the Irish Rovers for days The Orange and The Green – The Irish Rovers, and the Irishman had been left to ‘sleep it off’ off after a raucous and highly celebrated St. Patrick’s Day.
After he came (almost) to his senses, he started to stagger down Gt. Eastern Hwy towards the Greenmount end of the Highway. He chanced upon a well-dressed man in a suit, upon whose lapel was proudly worn the orange ribbon of Harmony Day. In the spirit of the day, the “suit” stopped, and asked the Irishman if he was all right and did he need any help?
The Irishman’s bleary eyes alighted upon the orange ribbon and began to attack his would be “good Samaritan”. When later hauled before the Magistrate, his defense was that the man was “wearing the Orange on St. Patrick’s Day”.
I truly cannot remember whether the Magistrate, in his wisdom, accepted it as a valid defense but I suspect he may well have done.
If you have never heard this fabulous version of Danny Boy, do not miss it.
Elvis Presley singing Danny Boy
In the hope that we see an end to such foolish and long-lived sectarianism, I wish you a Happy St Patrick’s Day – Catholic and Protestant alike – and hope that it is not an idle thought that we live long enough to see you all live in peace.
