A tribute to Granny and Grandpa Station

All posts labelled "Granny and Grandpa"

Memories

• Granny's Sunday "Roast Chicken" lunch with junket for dessert
• Appletizer in Noordhoek
• Grandpa fetching us from Midway and walking us to the flat
• Holidays at The Birkenhead Hotel (very special!)
• Their Rondebosch flat and Grandpa's garage
• The "cutlet" and anemone shells that Grandpa collected
• Going to Muizenberg on the train with Grandpa, then walking along the beach at a mighty pace
• Going to the Birkenhead Hotel in Hermanus
• Walking along the coast at Hermanus
• Granny's hair net
• Cycling to their flat through the Rondebosch fields
• Granspa's hankis
• Washing our hands before lunch,
• Granny's jewellery box and ivory comb set,
• Grandpa listening to share prices on the radio.
• Their antique furniture
• Granpa's cluttered garage and his tools
• Grandpa's old mercedes
• Grandpas love of "Jock and the Bushveld"
• The gold clock they gave me as a gift
• lunch at the Mount Nelson
• Grandpa's insatiable appetite (so that is where I got it!)
• Granny's singing with a trembling lilt
• Their statue of the horse and boy (I still have it)
• Visiting us every Sunday with chocolate logs
• Grandpa's binoculars
• Grandpa's hat and kaki shorts
• Pushing grandpa in his wheel chair when he got poorly and how he started opening up in his last few years

Gran and Grandpa earlier on

With me as a baby

Camping at Uilenskraal - memories don´t get better

Family lunches to the Mount Nelson

Family outings to the beach

Family photos

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Our Canadian Family

Family Portraits

Early photos

Visits to South Africa

Me with my lovely aunt

Clearly cousins!! We both love to laugh and have big smiles.

Our awesome holiday in Canada

Edward de Bono and lateral thinking

I loved Edward de Bono and his teaching on lateral thinking.  I read many of his books and creativity has been a life long interest of mine.

Some favourite quotes

• A discussion should be a genuine attempt to explore a subject rather than a battle between competing egos.”
• A good listener is very nearly as attractive as a good talker. You cannot have a beautiful mind if you do not know how to listen.”
• An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.”
• being right all the time acquires a huge importance in education, and there is this terror of being wrong. The ego is so tied to being right that later on in life you are reluctant to accept that you are ever wrong, because you are defending not the idea but your self-esteem. (...) this terror of being wrong means that people have enormous difficulties in changing ideas.”
• Creativity involves provocation, exploration and risk taking. Creativity involves "thought experiments." You cannot tell in advance how the experiment is going to turn out. But you want to be able to carry out the experiment.”
• If you never change your mind, why have one?”
• It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.”
• Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of the car is separate from the way the car is driven.”
• No way of looking at things is too sacred to be reconsidered. No way of doing things is beyond improvement.”
• The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas. It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong than to be always right by having no ideas at all. ”
• There is no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would be forever repeating the same patterns.”
• Thinking is the ultimate human resource.”
• We may have a perfectly adequate way of doing something, but that does not mean there cannot be a better way. So we set out to find an alternative way. This is the basis of any improvement that is not fault correction or problem solving.”
• We need creativity in order to break free from the temporary structures that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience.
• Creative thinking quotes on Wisdom Trove

Tony Robbins

Along with Wayne Dyer, Tony Robbins introduced me to personal development. His book "Awaken the Giant Within" had a great impact as did listening to his CD series "Personal Power." 

Some favourite quotes

• Realise the power of a single choice acted upon immediately and with total conviction.
• What changes your life is not learning more. What changes your life is making decisions and using your personal power and taking action.
• It is in your moment of decision that your destiny is shaped.
• Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision.
• A decision made from fear is always the wrong decision.
• A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.
• Realise the power of a single choice acted upon immediately and with total conviction.
• The secret of unleashing your true power is setting goals that are exciting enough that they inspire your creativity and ignite your passion.
• It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute, that gives meaning to our lives.
• Sense the huge benefits in changing your behaviour. Imagine the price (pain) you’ll pay for not changing.
• Focus on what you want, not on what you fear or don’t want. Focus on what you fear and that’s exactly where you’ll end up.
• Focus! True direction is being woken up at 3 am and knowing exactly what your one goal is.
• All human progress is preceded by new questions.
• Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.
• The only thing keeping you from what you want is your story about why you can’t have it.
• Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.
• It’s not the events of our lives that shape us, but our beliefs as to what those events mean.
• The ability to progress and achieve extraordinary results even in the midst of chaos is to take just one step at a time in the right direction.
• When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears.
• Never leave the site of setting a goal without first taking some form of positive action toward its attainment.
• Every problem is a gift – without problems we would not grow.
• I’ve come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.
• There is no such thing as failure. There are only results.
• If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.
• If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you’ll achieve the same results.
• Perfection is the absolute lowest standard you can ever have for yourself because it’s impossible to attain.
• How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I’m committed to?
• Only those who have learned the power of sincere and selfless contribution experience life’s deepest joy: true fulfilment.
• It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.
• Quotes on Wisdom Trove

Jo matriculates

 

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Amanda and Johnathon

View all posts for Amanda and Johnathon

Special memories

• Walks in Cambridge and surrounds with Geena for the weekend
• Meals at their house in Cambridge (including barbecues in the garden with James Wynne)
• Playing tennis
• Our first ever visit to Cambridge to visit them (setting the seeds for our movong there in 2004)
• Serok in Cape Town (and Cambridge!)
• Hiking Club weekends in Cape Town
• Johnathons jokes and mimics
• Great heart to hearts, interspersed with tremendous joviality
• Their great hospitality when I started work at Volvo
• Meals at their house in Cape Town
• Our outing to Suffolk
• Celebrating my 35th birthday at the Thai restaurant in Cambridge