Monday 4 May 2015

Book Review - Revolution by Russell Brand

You may remember back in January I made a whole host of ambitions New Years Resolutions, or rather New Years Goals.  One of them was to read one book per month and I am pleased to say that this is one goal that I have actually been able to keep up with.  So I thought I would share with you the books I have read so far this year with a little review of each one.

Revolution by Russell Brand.

Some time ago I was watching some Road Wars type programme and it showed a clip of a car knocking down a cyclist then driving off.  Hit and Run.  It also showed a clip about another driver who had committed some sort of fraud.  At the end of the programme it explained that the hit and run driver had been fined X amount (not very much) of money and given something like three days of community service, for basically nearly killing someone and giving no reason to believe he wouldn't do a similar thing again.  And the fraudster, who hadn't actually physically hurt anyone and was no more liable to after his conviction was given a massive prison sentence.  I was raging afterwards because it was a perfect demonstration of how our society values money over life.
In his book Russell Brand says about Jesus: 'The only time he ever let himself go and knocked over tables was when the financial industry was prioritised over normal people.'  I know there is more to this Bible verse but to me this epitomises the problems we have in our society; the priority of the economy over love.  If only people thought love was the most important thing, the thing everyone wanted more of how different would the world be then?  In his book Russell Brand explores how we the people could make love the thing through activism, standing up to The Man and speaking up for what is right, he talks about a society where 'positive human attributes like altruism and cooperation become ideological pillars for society.'

Yes I am a fan of Russell Brand, fortunately I am not biased against him having not really ever come across him till watching him on News Night and then following his Trews so I never encountered his sex, drugs and rock and roll persona.  He stands for a lot of things that I believe in and this book spells out his vision for how the world could be.
I enjoyed the book, although initially couldn't stop imagining his voice as I was reading it which was a bit distracting.  It's beautifully written, often sounding like a poem or rap in places, he is a fabulous wordsmith.
This was not an easy book to read, I did have to pay attention and that can be challenging with two children that frequently wake thought the night resulting in me having the concentration span of a knat!  However I did get a lot from it, and will probably read it again.

Brand gives us an insight into his childhood and youth which help us understand some of the more unfortunate parts of his adult life.  He says "When I was piping and chasing and f***ing and faming, what I wanted was a connection, and with no map, no key, no code, I settled for sedation".  As well as how this helps us relate to where he comes from, his world view, I also love the way he uses the words here, the alliteration, the repetition of the same word through out the phrase and the rhythm, it feels good to read and the whole book is like this, it's a pleasure.

Some people might be turned off by Brand's view of religion, he believes in God, but not in a conventional sense, Some people might use this as an excuse to reject his ideas, but I found his views fascinating and inspiring and they helped me learn more about what I believe.  He says "My belief is that we do not currently operate on a frequency of consciousness that is capable of interpreting the information required to understand the great mystery".  I think many people put limits on God, when really it's just that there are aspects of Him that we don't yet understand given our limited senses.

Another thing I like about this book is how Brand isn't afraid to admit that he can let his ego get ahead of him (which is why he wouldn't ever be a politician), he shows he is human and still has weaknesses just like everyone else, he says, 'erring is a daily occurrence.  Each evening when I reflect on the days events...there's usually one or two clips where I wince at my selfishness or missed opportunities to move closer to the source.'.

 He also uses humour to get through to his readers with witty phrases such as:

"Any British politician, like Prime Minister David Cameron, who claims to be a Christian, which means 'to practice the teachings of Jesus Christ', has to, like Jesus, heal the sick, not, like a c**t, sell off the NHS."

It's funny but it's true.




Here are a few paragraphs that really resonated with me and some of my thoughts recently:

"We are living in a zoo, or more accurately a farm, our collective consciousness, our individual consciousness, has been hijacked by a power structure that needs us to remain atomised and disconnected.  We want union, we want connection, we need it the way we need other forms of nutrition, and denied it, we delve into the lower impulses for sanctuary. 
We have been segregated and severed, from each other and even ourselves.  We have been told that freedom is the ability to pursue petty, trivial desires when true freedom is freedom from these petty desires. "

"Science required faith the way religion does.  Science required acceptance of metaphor, just the way religion does.  'Does science cause wars the way religion does?'  you might ask.  I would say those conflicts are actually about territory, either ideological or physical, and that those ideas are materialistic in the same way science is - and the weapons with which those wars are fought, who creates those?"

"Immigrants did not cause the financial crisis. Benefit cheats did not get multi-million-dollar bonuses."

This one might make you chuckle (unless you absolutely adore the royal family, in which case, scroll on):

"..in England we have a Queen for f**k's sake. A Queen! We have to call her things like 'Your Majesty'. YOUR MAJESTY! Like she's all majestic, like an eagle or a mountain.  She's just a person.  A little old lady in a shiny hat - that we paid for.  Or 'Your Highness'! What the f**k is that?!  What, she's high up, above us, at the top of a class pyramid on a shelf of money with her face on it?  We should be calling her Mrs Windsor.  In fact that's not even her real name, they changed it in the war to distract us from the inconvenient fact that they were as German as the enemy that teenage boys were being encouraged, conscripted actually to die fighting.  Her actual name is Mrs Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.  'Mrs Saxe-Coburg-Gotha'!!  No wonder they f***ing changed it.  It's the most German thing I've ever heard - she might as well've been called 'Mrs Bratwurst-Kraut-Nazi'."

"You are enough, you're enough, there's nothing you can buy or try on that's going to make you any better, because you couldn't be any better than you are."

So if you are someone who thinks they heard Russell Brand telling people not to vote and are dismissing everything he has to say based on that, I suggest you have a bit of a re-think, listen to some of his Trews and if you like what you hear have a gander at the book, and let me know what you think.  

If you are thinking on buying the book then it would be really awesome if you clicked on the link because then I get a little bit of dosh for your efforts.  Us full time mums gotta get our tea drinking money from somewhere!!

Sunday 3 May 2015

Home Preschool Themes - Dinosaurs part 2

Continuing on from Monday, we have done some more Dinosaur related activities.  It's worth pointing out that I am not, at the point in my children's education, too worried about what they are actually learning from all this, I don't expect them to learn any of the Dinosaurs names, or what periods came before or after the Jurassic, or how to spell Piatnitzkysaurus!  For me the most important thing they do is play, and my hope is that I will be providing them with opportunities to play whilst also having fun and exploring new things.
So here are some more activities we have done this week with our Dinosaur theme:

Salt Dough Dinosaur Bones:

Boris and I had a go at making some salt dough dinosaur bones,
1 cup of plain flour,
1 cup of salt,
1/2 a cup of water.

Obviously I made most of these bones, but Boris had a good time rolling the dough into little worms which was good for his fine motor skill development and creativity.
I made a lot of vague bone shapes and used a picture of some dinosaur bones from a book as a guide but I wasn't trying to make it anatomically correct or anything.


We laid them out on a tray to bake in the over for 3 hours at about 170 degrees. 


I over baked the bones so they came out golden brown like biscuits so like some crazy mother I painted them white with poster paint at about 1.00am in the morning!!


Then we had a good time laying out the bones to make them look like some kind of prehistoric monster. We can also bury the bones to search for in the sand pit.  


Plaster of Paris Dino Eggs:

So I decided to use our plastic Easter eggs as part of a little archaeological excavation activity. I filled each egg with plaster of paris and squidged a little plastic dinosaur in each one to chisel out.  I think this would have been a really great idea if I had coated the inside of the eggs with vaseline, or lined them with cling film or something because I had a nightmare getting the blinking things out. Anyway I got them out eventually and we had a ball smashing them with wooden hammers.  (Probably would have been a good idea to wear goggles)


I decided to take the activity outside onto the patio after Biscuit dropped one of the eggs onto my breakfast tea plate and smashed it.


Woo hoo!! A Dinosaur!!  (I think Boris wasn't convinced there was actually anything in there till he saw a bit poking out)




The little dinos left lovely imprints in the plaster of paris.  I might do a bit of dry brush painting on these to really bring out the shape and textured. This activity was definately one for the gross motor skills.


Finally - Dinosaurs in Jelly!:

Because, why the hell not?!  You can never go wrong with three year olds and jelly. 

Another mad moment; me mixing poster paint and black food colouring into some jelly at stupid o'clock in the morning.  Now that's commitment!

How raaaaawesome does this dinosaur look coming out of the jelly?!




Obviously the jelly didn't stay in the water table and I had to warn visitors who went into the garden to watch out for the prehistoric slime on the patio. 



Grey jelly mmmmmm.



Thursday 30 April 2015

My Skincare Routine

If you have met me you may be wondering why people might be interested in learning my skincare routine, I'll be honest, my skin doesn't look great, it's not especially smooth (I am 31, there are wrinkles) and I get the odd spot.  But the reason I wanted to share it with you is because for years I suffered with terrible eczema, particularly through my teenage years, it's sensitive, flare-ups of eczema still happen from time to time, but I know how to deal with them now without a load of toxic chemicals and I wanted to share my routine and the products that I use so that if you, or your child has a tendency towards eczema you can have some ideas of how to treat it without the use of prescription medicines.

It all began a few years ago when I read a book called Skin Deep by Pat Thomas.  Until then I had been using Nivea soft as my main moisturiser and rather shockingly (but at the time I didn't think that much of it) after applying it my skin would burn (why did I think this was ok?!)

After reading the book I realised the damage I was causing to my skin and body by slathering it with chemicals, and not just my moisturiser but also toothpaste, deodorant and shampoo.  I immediately switched to using natural oils on my skin and gradually changed all my other toiletries to more natural products too.  There was definitely a transition period with my skin where it felt dreadful, it lasted about a week but once I got through that, I haven't looked back.  


Commercial skin care products contain many ingredients that can be harmful to the body.  One of the most commonly occurring being mineral oils such as paraffin oil.  According to Pat Thomas mineral oils can "Impede the skin's ability to breathe, attract moisture and detoxify.  It can also slow down cell renewal and promote premature aging".  This is just the tip of the iceberg, and moisturises that claim to access deep layers of skin contain chemicals that drive the moisturisers further into the skin which therefore drives the nasty, sometimes carcinogenic chemicals further into the skin (and the body) too.  And that's before we even start to talk about ingredients like perfumes, preservatives such as parabens and foaming agents like Sodium Lauryl Sulphates which can all be harmful to the body.

So I began by using natural oils on my face initially olive oil, then wheatgerm and jojoba oil.  I found a fantastic website called Akamuti that sold natural oils and moisturisers made from natural oils that suited my skin perfectly. I also found you could buy some natural oils in bulk such as shea butter (which is fairly traded with Ghanaian women)  and coconut oil.



Before I shower in the evening I do a quick bit of body brushing, it exfoliates, gets the lymphatic system moving, it improves circulation and releases stress.  I wash with just water and a bit of organic soap where I need it.  I wash my hair about every other night.  I have had about as many problems with an itchy scalp as I have with eczema and have tried many many shampoos.  At the moment I am using Avelon organics scalp normalizing shampoo and conditioner, and inbetween I am treating my scalp to an overnight coconut oil mask which also includes a few drops of lavender oil, eucalyptus oil and tea tree oil.  All of which have anti-viral, anti-fungal and antibacterial properties.  I wash it off in the morning with the shampoo.  It has really helped a lot, though I don't feel like my scalp is totally normal it is much better.



Sometimes I have a detoxifying bath using pink himalayan salt (or epsom salts if I am out of the pink stuff), bicarbonate of soda and fullers earth clay.  This treatments is really good for drawing out toxins and heavy metals and soothing irritated skin.  It's also really relaxing and just feels like such a treat.


After my shower I use the Akamuti Avocado Night Cream on my face and coconut oil on my chest where I also get dry skin from time to time, which I buy from a website called Real Foods. Coconut oil is an excellent moisturiser because it is the most similar to the skins natural sebum, the small molecular structure of coconut oil allows it to be absorbed easily into the skin.  I also use Shea butter on particularly dry areas such as my heels and lips.  Shea butter is a rich, creamy, hard moisturizer when unrefined and melts into a smooth oil on the skin, is rich in vitamins A, E and essential fatty acids.


I begin my day using Akamuti Evening Primrose Day Cream on my face.  If my skin is going through a bad patch I might use some of their Replenishing Rose Face Cream or another natural oil such as Pomegranate Seed Oil. I also use some organic unrefined coconut oil as a moisturiser on my chest.


As for deodorant, I stopped using them years ago in favor of a deodorising crystal.  Weirdly I don't get too much body odor now, compared to when I was teaching anyway.  I think I am a bit like a skunk; if I am put in a particularly stressful situation my body reacts like a skunk does in the presence of a predator and releases a ghastly odor from my arm pits to scare off the predator.  I don't face the same stresses as a fulltime-mother as I did a teacher (still stressful but different types of stress) so I find I don't even need to use the crystal deodoriser.  I do use some coconut oil and if it's a special occasion I might use a dab of essential oil such as lavender. I also use a bit of coconut oil on my armpits in the evening before bed.

Millions of plastic toothbrushes end up in landfill every year here in the UK, so my teeth are now brushed with natural bristles held a bamboo tooth brush (I bought this one) and I brush with a non-foaming (slight phobia of bubbles) fluoride free toothpaste called Sarakan which I also buy from Real Foods.


So there you have it.  That's how I roll as far as my skin goes, it's working for me at the moment, and I feel good about the fact that I am not using nasty chemicals, which are harmful to me and the environment, they are also all vegan.  I highly recommend switching over to more natural skincare products, many of which can be made at home which also minimises packaging. Check out Trash is for Tossers' home made tooth paste and whipped body lotion.  By the way I am not affiliated with any if these products. I just genuinely love them.