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Reasons to be fearful

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Reasons to be fearful

Following on from their well received festival in July, the Reasons team have a Halloween event of epic proportions lined up for us, dubbed ‘Reasons to be Fearful’ (subject to the kind permission of the Bailiff, of course).

With a theme based on an isolated community – once vibrant and well visited, but now firmly in decline and populated by more than a few odd characters (sound familiar?) – the team have vowed to transform a large section of Fort Regent into an interactive playground for grown ups. Expect a variety of areas (some of them hidden), including an 1800 capacity ’town hall’, cinema, curry house, salon (hosted by Liberate) and much more.

The lineup picks up the baton from the summer event, offering a wider variety of top quality electronica and roots music with a stellar cast of headliners, including the evergreen 2manydjs, technical wizard James Zabiela, turntable masters The Scratch Perverts, deep house hero Huxley, and the winning combo of Uk hop-hop hero Rodney P and Nice Up! records head honcho DJ Shepdog.

The event is also one of Austrian ski/snowboard/full on rave-up festival Snowbombing’s official launch parties – one of just a handful taking place in some of Europe’s hottest cities. This is a genuine coup for Jersey clubbing, and further proof that we can compete in this field on a wider level.

2manydjs and their band, Soulwax, have been active since the mid 90’s, but it was their 2002 mixtape “as heard on Radio Soulwax pt 2” that thrust them in to the public consciousness. A roller-coaster ride of party tracks that shouldn’t work together but somehow do (Dolly Parton vs Royksopp anyone?) it’s scientifically proven that it’s impossible to avoid smiling whilst listening to it. Obviously, we made that up, but you catch our drift. Whilst their sound is much more of a streamlined electro/techno hybrid these days, they are still renowned for their energetic sets – which always throw up a surprise or two.

James Zabiela is equally known for his unmatched technical prowess and unbounded enthusiasm for his art, always smiling and enjoying himself as much – if not more than – the audience he is playing to. Another sonic chameleon, James plays across a broad range of styles including house, techno, breakbeat and drum & bass – always with a forward thinking, progressive edge.

Huxley is part of the new school of British house producers. He manages to just about stay within the confines of house and techno, always pushing the limits – whether it be with skippy garage influenced drum programming or low down wobble that owes more to drum & bass or dubstep. His productions are always on point and he has proven himself as a DJ of repute, having played all over the world over the last few years.

The Scratch Perverts have been at the forefront of turntablism for nearly 20 years, cutting and scratching their way through more or less every genre of club music imaginable. Their Beatdown residency at Fabric brought together the best acts from a wide range of British music styles, and their sets are very much a reflection of this. Recently they’ve shown a fondness for sleek and deep house and will play two sets at Reasons; a classic hip-hop throw-down as well as a more refined house warm up in the main room.

Shepdog and Rodney P will perform together on the night, despite being better known as individual performers in their own right. Their set will take the shape of an exclusive performance in the back room. A match made in heaven – Shepdog’s party-starting selections will provide a bed for one of the lyrical content of one of UK’s most longstanding and important MCs. We can’t wait to see what they have in store!

LOST TRIBES: Jersey’s vanished scenes of alternative music

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LOST TRIBES: Jersey’s vanished scenes of alternative music

There are many things I love about my island home but if I had to draw up a list I don’t think “thriving cultural hotspot” would make the top 50, instead weighing in somewhere between #51 – “good place to look at migratory birds” and #100 – “statistically unlikely to be buried in molten lava”.

The various festivals make a good attempt at injecting some much-needed rowdiness, but there’s something about the possibility of bumping into my mum, boss and former PE teacher in the moshpit that stops me from letting what remains of my hair down.

Far too many Jersey people likes their music culture the same way they like TV dinners: reheated, served in disposable packaging and without any ingredients that are going to upset a sensitive digestion. As a result we’re a haven for dad-rock and slipper jazz, partial to polyester disco and soft house. We live in the sort of place where the Macarena caused a moral panic. If we had rappers, they’d be boasting about having a third parking space and threatening to mess up their rivals lawns. The genuinely, passionately alternative people are in a  minority, forced to indulge their pleasures in darkened rooms and out of the way venues, like members of a Scrabble club, but with more piercings. Today I choose to salute them, to reminisce about their efforts to deviate from the straight and narrow, and ask what on earth happened to all the goths.

Who were they?

Mods & rockers

Straight-laced Sixties Britain was scandalised by these two contrasting youth tribes, the denim-clad, motorbike riding rockers and the sharp-suited, soul-loving mods. Most of the British public would probably just have been bemused by the groups’ haircuts if not for their unfortunate habit of beating the p*ss out of each other via mass brawls in random seaside towns. Jersey had a small contingent of both scenes, but avoided any large-scale dust ups by dint of total infiltration of mods and rockers alike by the undercover wing of the honorary police. Some former honoraries from St Peter remain deep undercover as Paul Weller’s roadies.

What happened to them all?

They turned into cool dads, or possibly mutated into hippies if they were still young enough. If you’ve got a dad of a certain age with a collection of seven inch soul records, a dusty scooter and a framed picture of Roger Daltrey then he was probably a mod. If Dad still wears Brylcreem and knows how to fix an Enfield motorcycle, he’s probably a rocker.

Who were they?

Hippies

Over on the mainland, the long-haired flower children were protesting against war, experimenting with free love and expanding their minds with a variety of illicit chemicals. There wasn’t much point protesting against war in Jersey, and we already had several Parishes that tolerated “unconventional” attitudes to sexual morality. However, growing your hair was and still is a reliable way to scandalise the grandparents, and mind expansion could be achieved by the burning of joss sticks, stolen horse tranquillisers and the odd afternoon stroll around Mourier valley.

What happened to them all?

If you were a proper hippy, you either joined a cult that lived in a pants-free compound in Arizona, or went to California to become an unscrupulous capitalist millionaire in the nascent IT industry. In Jersey you eventually got a haircut, trained as an accountant/lawyer and waited til you could bore your kids with stories about Jefferson Airplane and the time you tried to put on a version of Woodstock in St Catherine’s woods. Some hippies remained true to the dream, and have been forever quarantined in yoga studios and St Ouen’s bay.

Who were they?

Punks

Punks rejected polite society, spat in the face of authority and terrified grandmothers with their fuschia Mohicans and bondage trousers. They nurtured a still-influential DIY aesthetic that meant you were encouraged to try forming a band before you’d learned to play an instrument. A perfect fit for Jersey, where most forms of culture are already DIY because if you don’t do it yourself nobody else will.

What happened to them?

Those punks who survived the pitfalls of septicaemia from home piercings and were smart enough not to get tattoos on their face have blended into the background of the society they used to despise. Like studded butterflies they only emerge when the time is right – i.e. when punk music comes back into fashion for the eighth time and they need to lecture teenagers about why they should be listening to Crass instead of Green Day.

Who were they?

Goths / metal fans

Technically these are two different subcultures, but Jersey is so small that they have traditionally observed a truce based on a shared love of black clothing, graveyards and cider. They do both like music with guitars, but in larger communities there’s a deep schism between goths and metalheads over whether the lyrics should be about Satan or vampires.

What happened to them?

Even if you think you haven’t seen anybody with a Slayer T-shirt recently, heavy metal will outlast all other products of human civilisation, even in Jersey. The last man alive in St Ouen will probably be listening to Black Sabbath and Pantera before the mutant cockroaches take him down. Goths, on the other hand, are deeply sensitive and require careful protection. After years struggling to breed goths in captivity, Durrell plans to open a nocturnal habitat where their pale, beautiful faces can be observed in a candle-lit natural environment, decorated with ornamental skulls and Sisters of Mercy posters.

Who were they?

Hipsters

These insufferable, sockless, Noah-bearded know-it-alls appeared out of nowhere a few years ago and have infected coffee shops and university campuses everywhere with their ironic tattoos and pretentious retro lifestyles. Jersey is no different, even though it’s impossible to pretend you were “into that band before they were cool” when the island is tiny and everybody remembers that you used to be an emo kid or dress like a member of Limp Bizkit.

What happened to them?

No solution has been found. For every Jersey hipster who goes to art college or moves to Brighton to open a shop selling unicycles and vintage tweed, one more rises in their place, like a mushroom that only listens to music on vinyl. The government is considering a cull, achieved by distributing poisoned beard wax and exploding ukuleles. The stragglers will be mopped up by hipster traps disguised as poetry workshops or craft beer appreciation groups. 

Alternative Gadgets

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Alternative Gadgets

For anyone that has read this section of the magazine before, I know exactly what you’ll be thinking right about now. You’ll have seen the theme for this month and instantly assumed that I would take this opportunity to, once again, vent my frustrations at the modern world of alternative fashion and behaviour.

Usually, my friends, you’d be right.

I’d love nothing more than to use these pages to spread my usual messages of conformity and conservatism, utilising this monthly epigram of mine to make sure you all learn the dangers of the “hipster” life. But this month, in this strangely sunny September (I know it’ll be October when you’re reading this, but kids one day you’ll learn that nearly everything is either written or recorded long in advance *shakes fist in a distinct rage at Big Brother for shattering childhood dreams of live comedy*), I am going to change the often satirical, but more often juvenile, pages of the Gadgets section. That’s right you alternative types, you can rest easy for the next 30-odd days, safe in the knowledge that I will not be attempting (unsuccessfully) to convert all of my readers to the life of the herd-following sheep. This is not to say I’ll be advocating your lifestyle, oh no far from it, however I will not be taking every liberty I can in a family magazine and completely ignoring the implication of serious technological reporting given by the title of this article. That said, please don’t assume that you will actually learn anything whilst reading the next 1500 words, no matter how hard I try I will never have the patience to actually research these products properly. A fact that I’m oddly proud of. Take from that what you will.

This month, I have chosen to actually earn my wage and try to bring you gadgets that stick to the theme of the magazine. We’ll be celebrating, still in an unmistakably sarcastic tone, the gadgets out there that seemingly offer us absolutely nothing but an alternative to the norm. That’s right, these products, including Lord Alan Sugar’s Amstrad E-m@ailer and the once-fabled TV Remote Gun, are symbols of the efforts made by those who truly have no sense of originality. Those who simply see a well-established gadget that has changed the world around them, and have the astounding self-belief (more accurately, Lear’s hubris) to think that they can change them for the better, providing the adoring public with, in an ideal world, a new design that will not only change the market, but the lives of the masses. In reality, as you’ll see here, on the whole we end up with pretty useless shit.

YourBell USB Doorbell

I’m going to assume here that, because we live on an island of culture and at least relative class, we’ve all seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Given this fact, I will also assume that we all remember the scene in which Ferris cleverly uses a system of tape recorders and technology that a high-school teen simply wouldn’t have been able to master in the short time his parents were out of the house to fool Ed Rooney into believing that the hero (or if your beliefs align with mine the antagonist) is indeed sick in bed. Now, don’t try and tell me that the first time you saw that movie, you didn’t see the potential behind this trick. Pah! Fooling your head teacher into believing you’re ill is nothing compared to what could be accomplished. Try to imagine the look of intense joy on the faces of all when they ring your bell, expecting the sultry old “ding-dong” that has become such a quintessential sign of the British household, only to have your voice bellow out, shouting words of your choosing at them (what they are very much depends on what kind of person you are, no judgments here). Now, the novelty bell has been around for some time, but it is only now that we are able to load our own MP3 files to a USB drive and upload whatever kind of sound we choose to be the first greeting that guests receive at your home. I kind of ran out of things to say about this after the Ferris Bueller reference, simply because I can only question what you can say? A not so subtly sarcastic congratulations to those who, in their infantile mind, decide to upload themselves telling people to “F@!k off!” loudly down the receiver (would you look at that, judgment after all), and I dread the day I turn up at someone’s house only to be instantly disgusted enough to turn and leave the moment I hear the latest House music song being blasted at me (I understand the “irony” you buffoon, and I hate you for it…lots of judgment, what else did you expect?). All in all then, as with most of the products here, I struggle to find the point in this. Nobody gains much other than a few cheap laughs and an awkward entrance into your house, and the thing costs $90.00.

If you must subject your “friends” to this, try the YourBell (come on) website                www.bcsideas.com/yourbell.php.

TV Remote Control Gun

Gun crime is not funny. Pretending to lay prone behind your sofa fighting the enemy using your TV remote as a gun is. Don’t look at the page (and subsequently me) like that, we’ve all done it. At least all the guys reading have, gender stereotypes aside it just happens when you’re young. The biggest problem facing our youth today is not obesity, human trafficking or poverty, it’s that remote controls do not provide an adequate grip for situations which require immediate evasive action in your own living room. We’ve all seen the pictures of controls that have gone through screens or smashed light bulbs (you haven’t? You don’t spend enough time on the internet my friend), and only the manufacturers of meager controllers that cannot handle an extreme warzone can be blamed for these damages, not a child’s imagination. Luckily we don’t live in the U.S.A, and it’s actually pretty difficult for a child to get their hands on a gun, however the country’s death toll’s gain is often our imagination’s loss (please don’t read into that, I’m not advocating anything untoward), Thank god, then, for the Sharp Shootin’ Remote Control Gun. Whilst I’m not entirely sure whether that is an ingenious marketing ploy by Sharp the electronics company, the product itself is one that, although useless and offering an alternative to changing channels that is actually a step backwards from the standard remote (it can only change one channel up or down), the technical details of this gadget matter not when it allows us to realise our greatest and most animalistic childhood dreams. That’s right, our generation’s memories revolve around TV, have fun with that psychology students.

This must have item is available in a few places online, but I’d try Firebox. I can only find the Euro price, but with the market how it is, 20 can’t translate to anything too scary.

Amstrad E-m@iler

There once was a very deep schism within my soul that tore at me daily. I lost hair, sleep and, at times, complete control over my body because of it. The crux of the problem was one man (this isn’t me coming out in Gallery), one symbol of the wealth and entrepreneurial talent that every part of me wants, and yet one incomprehensible clown that constantly, and seemingly purposefully, made me hate him to his very core. This man, this legend, this intolerable thorn in my side is the one and only Alan Sugar. The man who, using a business acumen that is the envy of all who believe in the foundations of capitalism and, minus the negative connotations produced by almost every Hollywood film in the last century, the American Dream, built an empire on the back of his first company Amstrad. And then somehow managed to turn economic success (he’s still worth £1.04 billion) into a television show that pits complete wastes of oxygen against each other in business tasks that, as proven by the BBC’s Young Apprentice, actual children can accomplish. All whilst he sits in a glass office gently petting and polishing his God complex, whilst getting rid of the only man that the nation has collectively loved on a competitive television show, Nick Hewer (however the new and improved Countdown with him as host is perhaps some of the finest programming ever seen on Channel 4). Anyway, enough about my incredibly confusing feelings towards Lord Sugar, it’s time to focus on one of the unmitigated disasters that he has successfully managed to sweep under the carpet when it comes to our generation, that dastardly genius.

As we all know, email is a relatively modern method of communication in the grand scheme of things. Yes, it started early, but it didn’t really kick off outside of businesses for a number of years, and really since the introduction of the system onto smartphones it wasn’t used to its full potential. So, as with any relatively low-key application or method of communication, it seems logical that it should be initiated into larger systems like the computer first, allowing its popularity to build until it became a widespread phenomenon and required its own products to perform all the necessary functions that it could (this is the days of early computers, so slow processing speeds meant that if you were sending anything larger than an RSVP you were better off writing and delivering it by hand). However, Sir Alan and the good men at Amstrad saw this as an opportunity to cash in on the market early, and thus the Amstrad E-m@ailer was born. It’s not enough that typing that name is one of the most infuriating things on earth (the number of times I’ve seen E-m”iler in the last 10 minutes could turn a good man turn bad, to borrow a phrase from Morrisey), but the design of this monstrosity was so unappealing to the eye it made the ear-splitting tintinnabulation of the fax machine seem like a warm hug. All in all, to use a phrase that the Cockney Prince of London would understand, Sugar really cocked up. This wasn’t a machine offering an alternative to something great, it was a mediocre effort to join a race that had already started. You can still get these on the Amstrad website, so just Google it. I can’t see a price but if it’s anything more than £15 it should be considered a hate crime.

And I bet you were expecting a “You’re Fired” joke. You should know me better.

Alex Farnham’s Soapbox

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Alex Farnham’s Soapbox

Being alternative, or ‘taking part in activities that depart from or challenge traditional norms’ is, I think, important to everyone. We are all a bunch of unique, strange, ugly looking creatures – and I can prove it by telling you all to put your phones to the front camera whilst you’re lying down.

Well, truth be told I can’t speak for anyone else, but when I open my camera and it’s in ‘selfie mode’ it makes me wish I’d never been born. It looks like somebody ran over a fart in a tractor. I’m not showing you a photo, you’ll just have to trust me, we are an odd bunch. The subject of being alternative interests me, because it implies the existence of ‘normality’. I don’t really care for the word ‘weird’ as an adjective, because I don’t think it means anything. For example when people see a movie and come out saying ‘that was so weird’, I just don’t understand what they mean? Weird compared to what? A normal movie? What’s a normal movie and in what way does that sound like something anyone would want to watch?

I guess there are social norms that we all adhere to, like getting dressed, eating, covering our mouth when we cough, sighing and talking about how bad your life is just because it’s Wednesday… you know, that sort of thing. I’ve noticed that there are certain ‘rituals of normality’ that we follow that, when looked at out of context, seem extremely bizarre:

Shaking hands

What the hell’s this all about? “Lovely to meet you, Sir… Let’s hold hands and move them up and down, together.”

Scaring people when they get hiccups

‘BOO!’ Jesus… leave these people alone, they’ve got enough on their plate without you making them jump then taking the credit for curing their ailment.

Kissing

“I like you. Before we have sex, let’s put our lips together and exchange mouth juice.”

Yawning

“I’m tired, look down my throat.”

Applauding

A lot of hand stuff goes on in the world of social normality. “I appreciate your talent; let me slap some of my skin together to show it.”

Smiling

“These are my teeth. Don’t worry, it’s a good thing.”

Everything that we take for granted as normal can be construed as ‘weird’ if you look at it from a different angle. I think that’s my problem with it – if you think of the world in terms of normal and weird, usual and unusual, you first have to establish the former – but what if you treat everything you do as unusual? I think a big part of opening one’s mind is learning to see things from a different angle (hopefully not the lying down selfie angle) and appreciating the oddities in normality. Do you ever get that thing where you say a certain word lots of times and it ends up sounding like it doesn’t make sense? I love it when that happens. I love it when that happens. I had it with yoghurt the other day. Yoghurt. Yoghurt, yoghurt, yoghurt. Cool.

At my place of work we have a set of ‘core values’, and one of them is ‘unconventional’ – which I really like. It’s pretty similar to alternative I think. For us it means, don’t just do what’s expected, look at things from another point of view and find its uniqueness. I’ve been here a year now and the ability to be unconventional is one of the main reasons I love it so much. It doesn’t mean ‘be weird’ or ‘do things in an odd way just for the sake of it’, but rather it’s more of a focus on how to think outside the box and see everything slightly differently.

I think it works for life in general as well. I guess it’s a more evolved ‘glass is half full’ thing. If you don’t confine your judgement to yin and yang, normal and weird, you can appreciate the unconventional and, like I did previously, appreciate, love how bloody ridiculous we all are. Think about this magazine for example… who’s idea was it to gather a bunch of people together, to gather a bunch of words in a specific order to tell you all about things and stuff? How weird is it that ‘flicking through magazines’ is just a normal thing to do. All other animals just seem to be happy with eating, sleeping and shagging, but for us it’s different… well, I guess these things are pretty crucial, but where has all this other nonsense come from? Why don’t we see horses shaking hands, and why don’t giraffes cover their mouths when they cough*? Also, I don’t know about any of you, but I’ve never received a round of applause from a goose.

Body recomposition; an alternative to weight-loss

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Body recomposition; an alternative to weight-loss

These days you can barely log onto social media without a sponsored ad from one of the ever-growing number of personal training (PT) providers popping up on your timeline and offering you a total transformation in X amount of time. 

Many of these ads contain a ‘before and after’ picture of an existing client, complete with testimonial and many focus on the amount of weight lost, and the (usually short) amount of time it took to achieve this reduced poundage.

Striving for weight loss is commendable, especially in this age of convenient calories and ‘walk-deprivation’, but often, removing the excess intake (usually starting with sugar) and furiously stepping up the activity for a prescribed amount of time doesn’t really constitute a transformation; rather it’s a temporary period of calorie deficit that can’t fail to show on the scales, but hasn’t addressed the opportunity for long-term life-improvements that the arrival of a ready and willing client presents.

You see, in biological terms we humans are generalist animals – survival machines – that have populated almost every part of our world. We’re so successful as a species partly because we have amazing bodies honed (by evolution) for homeostasis – the inbuilt mechanism to control internal variables and keep our systems stable.

Let’s explain it this way; when you’ve held a certain bodyweight for a constant period –particularly 12 weeks or longer – this weight has become your ‘set point’. You’ve had time to grow all the extra nerves, lymph and capillaries (blood supply) to carry this new tissue (fat or otherwise). On the average weight-loss program, you’ll restrict calories in, less food (less calorie-dense food such as carbs and fats) and increase calories out (via exercise).

This cannot fail to force your survival-machine (body) to use your stored fat and glycogen (an energy source held in muscles and the liver) to preserve your critically-important and energy-costly functions, such as breathing and digestion, and you’ll lose weight.

However, your ‘set point’ is your previous weight. This explains why so many people who undergo rapid weight-loss simply rebound when they revert from a the intensive, PT-guided programme to what they hope will be an easier maintenance routine. 

But, there’s an alternative – body recomposition – and it offers not only an improved appearance but health, longevity and lifestyle benefits far beyond fitting into a wedding or holiday outfit for a while.

Non-injured human tissue is mostly regenerative – for example; every cell in any one of your bones will be totally replaced over a decade, and your skin cells over two weeks. This incredible capability comes with a caveat though… it’s truly ‘use it or lose it’.

Sedentary lifestyles and sitting-down jobs offer little opportunity to use the body as it was evolved to be used. We all know that muscles grow when (reasonably and consistently) over-used, and shrink when under-utilised. The same is true for tendons, ligaments, our lymph and blood delivery networks and even the parts of our brain and nervous system that ‘tell’ the muscles to move. Losing this tissue is known as atrophy, and atrophy is a characteristic of aging. 

So, in this age of MRI scans and scientific research, we know that exercise causes the above tissues and functions to increase, and that when they begin to decrease, we age.

What’s more, bone and especially muscle (and to a lesser extent ligaments and tendons) are metabolically active –  that is, they require energy to maintain – and our energy comes from the food we eat; calories in. 

So, by regularly demanding slightly more of our muscles, bones, ligaments, tendons, brains and nervous systems, we can force them to up-regulate and thus upgrade ourselves. The best way to do this – regardless of who you may be, or what you may do – is to begin a strength and conditioning programme, particularly one that involves compound resistance exercises involving the prime movers of your body; your hips, your thighs and your back and shoulder musculature.

You won’t ‘bulk up’ (unless you really try to), but you’ll change. You probably won’t see dramatic weight loss on the scales, as the increases in muscle and bone (which weigh more than the equivalent volume of fatty tissue) will level this out. What you will see will definitely ‘outweigh’ this, however. Having more muscle, and the support systems for it, can allow you to burn more calories ‘at rest’, meaning less restrictions in your diet.

You’ll also find that your ‘set point’ changes. 

Reawakening the need to produce collagen (to build stronger tendons and ligaments) in your body will improve the function across the board – skin usually improves on well-designed strength programmes. Mental function and balance improve as your body learns new movements and responds accordingly. Last but not least, the movement of blood around the body improves health generally, mood and heart function.

So if you want to make a true transformation, don’t think ‘weight loss’, think ‘body recomposition’, and go and become the strongest version of yourself. You’ll find it’s the healthiest, best ‘you’ you’ve ever known, we guarantee it.

The alternative world of healing medicine

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The alternative world of healing medicine

Namaste! Om! Guten abend! Shabba! Whatever language you speak I’d like to give you a loving welcome to this gateway to alternative medicine, opened by me, Mary Mulabandha – qualified massage therapist, ordained Wiccan priestess and fifth plateau angel healer. I’ve dedicated my life (at least in this incarnation) to spreading the word about good health for the body and the mind, and through the medium of interpretative dance I was able to persuade the wonderful people who publish this magazine to devote a few pages to sharing my wisdom with you, the lovely readers.

It’s too often that alternative medicine is dismissed by the mainstream media, which is pedantically obsessed with things like “proof”, when in reality we can offer something that science, logic and conventional medicine cannot. I don’t mean the ability to survive on lentils without getting diarrhoea, but the possibility of healing not just your body, but your eternal soul. You won’t get that from your fancy paracetamol, whooping cough vaccines and kidney dialysis.

Yes, the biased media would like to dismiss people who don’t use conventional medicine as cult members who worship tofu and have sexual feelings for dolphins. Although this is true of me, there are plenty of more “normal” people who also put their faith in alternative medicine, like Prince Charles and David Bellamy. The likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna are just as cynical as I am about what the doctor tells them, so crystal healing is for normal people too, not just for those of us who live in a yurt and sleep standing up.  I hope that eventually the world will see sense and there will be as much room at the hospital for homeopathy and past life regression therapy as there is for MRI scans and stitches. Until that happy day, you’re welcome to come to me instead of your GP. This first bit of advice is free, but my general rates are a very reasonable £80 for a half hour. Om!

Nutrition is the foundation of all healthy lives

One of the biggest weaknesses of conventional medicine is that it is so obsessed with pushing pharmaceutical and surgical solutions that it ignores how easy it is to stop the majority of diseases with just a few (hundred) changes to your daily diet. In olden days, before food was full of chemicals, people didn’t need orthopaedic surgery or Prozac because they had lifestyles that flowed in harmony with nature. Our tribal ancestors regularly lived to 200 years old, never got flu, and could speak with the whales. This was all lost as soon as modern society developed, which is why there aren’t any written records of this golden age, just folk songs and cave art depicting recipes for brown rice. Even without written history, and despite the efforts of “big pharma” to suppress it, nutritional wisdom is still available to us all – I attended an (online) university for an entire month, learned all about superfoods, and can now call myself a Dr. in China, Nigeria and twelve US states. Did you know that a kale enema every morning can reverse heart disease and make you look 20 years younger? I bet you weren’t aware that no society with a gluten-free diet has ever launched a nuclear weapon, or that artificial sweeteners were invented by Nazi Germany. The first step to immortality is to put down that hamburger and pick up a handful of organic wheatgrass – you can get this a lot of places now but the variety sold by my clinic is also guaranteed to have 200% of your daily serving of antioxidants. Only £8 a box.

Mother nature is our wisest teacher

The great miracle of Gaia is that the planet produces so much healing that we could all live in disease-free harmony if our bodies weren’t corrupted by negative thoughts and selfish behaviours.  I am sad to say that this definitely applies to the people who reported my mail-order supplement business to the Trading Standards Bureau – your bitterness is your own burden, and it will accompany you to an early grave, before you will be reborn very low down the karmic cycle, probably as slugs or beetles.  You’ll never be happy. Anyway, I don’t have the time to dwell on negativity –  because I am nourished by the love I feel from all the plants and animals that surround me, even stinging nettles and the one-legged pigeons that live in St Helier. The birds of the air and the beasts of the field show us that it is possible to live a healthy, harmonious life without disruptive technology like petrol engines or pacemakers. They are all friends together, singing the beautiful song of the universe. Except when they fight each other, go extinct, or are grizzly bears who tried to eat me even though I had only joined their community to teach them yoga. I should have stayed with the dolphins, but their possessiveness was stifling and a barrier to my personal growth.

We are bound by hidden currents of powerful energy

Any person who studies the subject will come to understand the universal truth that the ancient people of the earth possessed great wisdom that modern societies simply do not. It wasn’t just that they avoided the dangers of gluten and dairy – they were wise enough to understand how hidden currents of energy connect all things. This energy really does power everything, from the moon angels that cause women’s monthly cycle to the spirit vortex that lets me speak with Cecil the Lion. Yet we must be cautious – if not used with proper training, it can be deadly, so just as advanced yogis can nourish themselves from pure solar rays it is also true that sunbeds and fluorescent office lights cause our DNA to go mouldy. This is why wireless internet is a health hazard, even though you can’t actually see it without a special pendant (available from my website for £39.99). Luckily, I can train you not just to see this energy, but to harness it for the power of your own health. A great tribal elder by the name of Yoda once said “luminous beings we are, not this crude matter” – these are words I live by every day.

This article has been too brief, but I hope it has opened your third eye to some divine and powerful truths. These words come to you with love, and they are so full of positive energy that you’ll be able to cure minor illnesses simply by standing out in the beautiful sunshine and rubbing the magazine hard against your face for 20 minutes. If you’re still feeling out of cosmic balance, then call my clinic for an appointment. Just check with the girl on the desk that I’m not snowboarding or in Ibiza that week. Namaste!

Old Dog. New Tricks

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Old Dog. New Tricks

PHOTOGRAPHY AND STYLING: Danny Evans

MODEL: Plato

BODY DOUBLE: Ben

DOG WRANGLER: Russ

A contemporary twist on a classic

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A contemporary twist on a classic

This impressive four bedroom, high quality, converted granite farmhouse has been lovingly renovated and extended. The developers behind the project have not only paid attention to all of the up to date modern details you’d want from a property like Holly Lodge, but they’ve also retained the original Oak beams, which complement the modern theme of this vast property.

The exterior of the property boasts the original date stone, you’ll also see dotted around the salvaged beams and the horseshoes which would have been nailed in by the original owners for good luck.

Located only a short drive to village amenities and five minutes by car to your choice of two of the islands finest beaches and with rural views over unspoilt agricultural land in St Ouen. This is a perfectly situated property for those who long to be away from the hustle and bustle of island life. It is close to all the amenities of St Quen’s village and on a regular bus route, whilst town is just a 25 minute drive away for those commuting to work.

The development work has been carried out using only the finest materials to make this a truly one off stunning, low maintenance, high efficiency family home in the country.  As soon as you walk through the front door you are struck by the peaceful environment the property provides, the soft feel underfoot of the porcelain tiling in the entrance hall is welcoming and the light installation suspended from the third floor really is a feature in itself, each glass orb has been handcrafted and is individually strung, adding a real wow factor as you enter Holly Lodge. 

Off to the right you have the crown jewel in this property, a kitchen / dining room that would keep any home, or professional, chef happy for hours.  The kitchen was designed and installed by La Haute Cuisine and has been created with entertainment in mind.  You won’t find a single wasted space amongst the endless supply of cupboards and draws, all hand finished and soft closing.  Even the softly rounded corner cabinets are functional, making this a real dream come true for those who love to cook.  There is also space to house a significantly sized dining table, meaning that your guests won’t be far away from you, or the under counter wine fridge.  Even the fridge is a delight, this and the other high quality appliances, are top of the range and have functionality you may only ever have dreamed of before.

With double doors leading on to the south facing patio area you really do have the most incredible flexible entertaining space within this property. The patio provides a great al fresco dining option and is wired for electrics and home to the date stone and archway of the original property, which have both been lit to provide a spectacular feature when the sun sets. Just off the kitchen diner is the spacious lounge area, a light and airy room perfect for relaxing in once you’re finished entertaining in the kitchen. The downstairs also has a further reception room which would lend itself to many uses, perhaps a playroom, a formal dining room, or even a gym, the choice is very much yours.

On the second of the three floors you’ll further discover just how flexible the living accommodation is within this property.  Firstly the impressive Master suite and dressing room, fitted with a vast selection of built in wardrobes, a luxury en suite, incorporating a large walk in shower, his and hers wash basins set in Silestone worktops, enough space to tango in, if you would wish to. A further double room, with another beautifully finished en suite bathroom and a further two rooms, one which would make an excellent cinema room or man den for the tech savvy homeowners and a smaller room, which would make an excellent home office, nursery or even a craft room.

Moving up to the third floor you really get to experience just how well the space within this property has been used.  There are a further two double bedrooms, both with en suites.  One of which could easily provide a self contained option, for those with growing children wanting a little bit of privacy.  This larger bedroom, has a Juliet balcony with beautiful rural views, light flooding in from the Velux windows and room for a walk in wardrobe that would be the envy of many.  This floor also hides a further door, which leads in to a large floored storage area, perfect for all those essentials you need, but don’t want to see on a daily basis. To the exterior there is also a good sized level lawned garden, separate patio areas around the house, a double integral garage, and generous parking facilities.

Holly Lodge offers a truly exceptional opportunity to purchase a traditional granite barn conversion, with all the benefits a modern property provides, set in a fabulous location.

Holly Lodge, Le Puits De Leoville, La Route De Vinchelez, St Ouen

£1,795,000 (guide price)

Savills, Jersey – www.savills.je – 01534 722 227

• 3900 sq ft/362.32sq m

• 4 bedrooms

• 4 bathrooms

• 3 reception rooms

• Large kitchen/dining room

• Walk in roof storage

• Haute Cuisine Kitchen

• Original Features

All mains except gas, fully double glazed throughout, wired for digital TV and Fibre Optic.

Wet electric under floor heating through out the ground floor, radiators on the 1st and 2nd floor.

Small communal charge agreed between the 3 other houses on this small exclusive development of £250 per annum for gardening services of the communal areas and the driveway.

 

a blinding architectural faux pas

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a blinding architectural faux pas

Embracing innovative, vibrant and off-the-wall design cues when it comes to architecture to contrast and complement the existing constructed history of a capital city can enable it to reap vast and valuable social and economic benefits from the resulting trade and tourism.

But despite being advanced enough as a race to have a constant presence in space with humans occupying the International Space Station it seems that our mathematical abilities are still not quite up to scratch when it comes to engineering down here on terra firma. If you’re reading this from the ISS I’d like to apologise for any panic that I may have just induced.

As if it wasn’t already mortifying enough that the general public had likened Rafael Viñoly’s architectural masterpiece at 20 Fenchurch Street to a ‘Walkie Talkie’, its mass of concave glass just had to take things one step further and add to its notoriety by coming together to form what has been commonly referred to as a death ray, capable of melting Jaguars* with ease come mid-afternoon during the summer. Was that not on the blueprints? I swear I had pencilled in a solar energy farm somewhere…

Visually striking, the 20 Fenchurch Street building is a stunning expanse of airy glazed dining, relaxation and that all-important office floorspace spread over 34 floors. It even incorporates a garden on the uppermost floor filled with lush greenery, presumably so that when it’s finished burning the rest of London down using the harnessed solar energy of even a typical gloomy London day akin to some sort of skyscraper equivalent of a crazed Decepticon bursting with malevolence for reasons that nobody even remembers, the remainder of London’s upper-middle class population can thrive comfortably behind its glazed frontage for years to come.

Sun louvres removed from the original design during a round of cost-cutting measures by the developers were intended to prevent the skyscraper from torching toupés and scalding the scalps of passers-by following a previous design penned by Viñoly four years prior in Las Vegas where he managed to inadvertendly create a hotel that projected the sun directly toward the outside area housing the swimming pool. The cost advantage of solar pool water heating compared to conventional methods must have been phenomenal though.

Viñoly has allegedly since created plans for a building in China that uses a shape reminiscent of a bowl to focus rays of light harnessed from the sun directly onto an obelisk light energy receptor which currently remains unbuilt. I’m unsure as to whether the film Stargate was widely acclaimed in China but there’s a chance that a popular translated version exists and the people of the People’s Republic aren’t willing to take the risk. Either that or Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey really resonated with them and they’re scared of obelisks. Either way, third time lucky, maybe?

*To my knowledge, no large cats were harmed following the construction of the building, only an executive saloon car produced by an ailing British vehicle manufacturer.

Plémont gets planted

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Plémont gets planted

It’s a year since the demolition of the former holiday camp began and Plémont Headland has transformed from a dilapidated eyesore to a green open space. The next stage of the site’s transformation is to sow heather seed across the site in the hope that it will establish and develop as part of a maritime heathland habitat. The National Trust for Jersey’s Lands Team will be working alongside the States Environment and Transport and Technical Services departments to cut areas of Heath at Les Landes and collect the arisings to spread across the former Pontins site with the help of year 4 and 5 from Les Landes School. As well as Common and Bell Heather the Trust hope that seed and cuttings from other heathland plant species such as western gorse and broom will be picked and also spread across the site. National Trust Lands Manager Jon Parkes commented:

“Dwarf shrub heath and maritime grasslands are two of Jersey’s most diverse habitats and such an iconic part of our north coast. Our aim is to help facilitate this restoration process by giving nature a bit of a helping hand. Heather isn’t easy to grow and requires quite specific conditions such as acidic, free draining shallow soil and low nutrient levels. It may take a number of years for these conditions to be suitable, but getting a seed bank of desirable plants into the soil is a good start.”

The Trusts Education Officer Jo Stansfield commented:

“We are delighted that children from Les Landes Primary School will be joining us in our continuing mission to restore Plémont to its natural beauty. We hope that the children and their families will enjoy the area for many years to come”

The seedbed preparation and sowing with Les Landes School will take place on Friday 18th September from 1pm till 2.30 pm at Plémont Headland (next to car park).

The Trust Rangers will also be taking groups from the school around the site to explain what has happed to the site since it was acquired by the Trust in July last year and the future hopes for the site.

For further information regarding this press release please call Conservation Officer Jon Rault on Tel 483193 or email jonrault@nationaltrust.je or Lands Manager Jon Parkes; jonparkes@nationaltrust.je

learn more about the national trust at www.nationaltrust.je

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