We are usually harsher to ourselves than anyone else but we won’t spend any more time with anyone except ourselves, so applying the concept of making that space inside our heads a pleasant place to be, treating ourselves as we would a friend makes sense.

We are inherently really tough on ourselves but it doesn’t actually serve us or make us more efficient, productive, successful or accomplished. In fact, it can cause us more harm – the Buddhists call this the double arrow.

Something happens that causes us pain, we might not get the promotion we were hoping for, that first date with the guy we really thought we had a connection with was a disaster, we argued with our partner, snapped at our kids, whatever it is, that is the first arrow.

If we then go on to beat ourselves up about it, allow that inner critical voice to run riot berating ourselves all we are doing is hurting ourselves again, the double arrow. It doesn’t inspire us it just causes us more pain & suffering.

The problem with self-criticism is that judging & criticizing ourselves doesn’t make anything better – it’s the double arrow we talked about earlier. The best way to counteract self-criticism is to have compassion for it, replacing it with kindness & acceptance.

Self-compassion offers all the benefits of self-esteem without any of the drawbacks: people who practice self-compassion have just as high standards; they are just likely to be less hard on themselves & their goals are generally more learning orientated. They also tend not to compare themselves to others so much.

Whereas self-esteem can be a roller-coaster as our self-worth rises & falls inline with our latest successes & failures, often coinciding with self-criticism & is often linked to performance related goals & comparison with others.

There are 3 components for self-compassion:

First self-kindness – being gentle & kind to ourselves, treating ourselves as we would a friend.

This was a game changer for me: if we wouldn’t say that out loud to a friend why would we say it ourselves? I started to notice when that inner critical voice was getting on a roll & just stopped myself mid-self-beration, without judgment, just simply stopping & reminding myself if I wouldn’t say that to anyone else why would I say to myself & overtime I realized I was a lot kinder to myself.

Common humanity – a sense that we are all in this together.

Compassion literally means to suffer with. Everyone feels unworthy, disappointed, feels pain & suffering: the pain I feel in difficult & challenging times is the same as the pain you feel in difficult & challenging times, the triggers may be different but the basic experience is the same. When we remind ourselves that failure & / or hardship are part of the shared human experience we see that moment as one of togetherness not isolation.

Mindfulness – well we have talked about different aspects of mindfulness throughout is this series.

Mindfulness is the clear seeing & nonjudgmental acceptance of what is occurring at the present moment. Mindfulness helps us to recognize that we are suffering so that we can give ourselves compassion.

Self-compassion is a self-perpetuating virtuous circle – there is no finite amount of compassion so the more we express it, the more we cultivate more loving kindness, compassion & understanding for others, then the more we have for ourselves. The more we cultivate compassion, the more it grows & flourishes & the more we have for others & ourselves, often the hardest person to show loving kindness towards. A beautiful virtuous circle.

This week’s meditation is my interpretation of a Metta or loving kindness meditation. To obtain your copy email Alex at alex@alexbannard.com quoting FROSTLVG.

Alex is based on the edge of the stunning Cotswolds & has been sharing her love for all things yoga & mindfulness for almost a decade, not just in the UK but also around the world. Her mission is to help everyone discover a more mindful way of living & to encourage them to embrace regular self-care practices for a happier & healthier way of being.

If you would like more information on how to practice mindfulness, meditation & yoga message her at alex@alexbannard.com.

For free resources check out her Facebook group: Mindfulness & Yoga for Self-Care, here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/MindfulnessYoga4Relationships

Alternatively please check out her website: alexbannard.com

Sexual adventurism comes to the forefront in new play, Invisible Me, by Bren Gosling (Moment of Grace, The Actors Centre; PROUD, Studio at New Wimbledon Theatre).

Three Londoners on the cusp of their seventh decade thwart loneliness and sexual isolation by embracing a new lease of life, showing there’s fun to be had if you release your inhibitions.

Three very different individuals are united by sex: Lynn, a hotel cleaner, lives alone in her mother’s house; Jack, an HIV+ recent widower, struggles with the concept of digital dating; and Alec, a divorcee with an identity crisis, clutches at his youth. But despite their hardships there’s a prevailing message of optimism to be found in the most unlikely of situations.

Invisible Me explores the under-represented stories of older singles in London. This dramatic comedy seeks to open the doors on the inner workings of singledom as a sexagenarian. Directed by Su Gilroy (Moment of Grace, Bloomsbury Festival; Gaslight, Wolverhampton Grand Theatre), Invisible Me is a thought-provoking insight into the human condition and our need for connection, highlighting how we entwine with others on an emotional and physical level.

Writer Bren Gosling comments, I’m excited for audiences to witness the stories of these three compelling individuals, lifting the lid on sex and singledom in your sixties! Invisible Me is a play full of hope, not despair. I want to make people think about the diverse identities of the older people around us – there’s a generation out there still seizing life with lust and vigour, they don’t deserve to be invisible.

Friday 3 rd – Saturday 11th September 2021

Studio at New Wimbledon Theatre, 93 The Broadway, London SW19 1QG

Running time 60 minutes Age Guidance 16+ Tickets

Tickets are available from £17.60 and can be purchased at the Box Office, online https://www.atgtickets.com/shows/invisibleme/studio-at-new-wimbledon-theatre/

or via phone on 020 7206 1174

Writer Bren Gosling Director Su Gilroy

Lighting Design Chuma Lighting Design Producers Backstory Ensemble Productions Ltd.

The Dover Cafe on the Front Line is the eargerly awaited second novel  in the Dover Cafe series. The first, The Dover Cafe at War was a whopping success, and Frost Magazine sees an even bigger audience for The Dover Cafe on the Front Line.

Bell’s writing is full of energy and charm, and she handles her characters with gusto, creating a vibrant, tense but warm scenario which has us turning the pages quick as a flash, so eager are we to see ‘what happens’ next.  Will Lily be all right? Will the cafe survive? So many ‘ifs’ ‘buts’ and ‘maybes’ just as there should be. Read it, join the girls of the Dover Cafe, enjoy and then wait for the next, as there is one in the pipeline I hear.

The Dover Cafe on the Front Line by Ginny Bell is in eBook here with the paperback due in September.

Let’s walk the Wall, we said, to raise funds for Words for the Wounded, so I booked onto a guided  Hadrian’s Wall Walk with a friend. And then set about training, plod plod. It was as well we did. We joined a small but perfectly formed group led by the intrepid Patrick Norris, our guide for this 8 day walking extravaganza.

We met at the Hilton in Newcastle, and in the morning transferred to Bowness-on-Solway for the start of our adventure along the National Trail. It was flat, gloriously, gloriously flat –  from Bowness to Carlisle. Flat and beautiful – lots of bird life, and fishermen who  used a Haaf net to catch salmon, a method brought over by the Vikings more than 1000 years ago.

Pretty soon Penny and I were established as the rear guard, walking at our reasonably speedy pace while a few pathfinders strode out at a considerably faster speed. Patrick kept his eye out, and gathered us all up to talk us through the history as we met it. It was such a good idea to have a guided walk or we would have missed so much. We learned about the territory, and the Romans, and the countryside. The first two days were long, but easy. About 14 miles each, after all we had 84 miles to cover if we were to reach Wallsend. Each night we stayed at great hotels, and ate at similarly welcoming pubs and restaurants.

Then, as the days passed, our walks became lumpy, to use Patrick’s gift for understatement. To begin with the  wall is  sod  but here was the start of the stone.  There were many examples of turrets and mile castles until we reached Birdoswald Fort. This stands high above the River Irthing, It was an important base for about 1000 Roman soldiers. Then, onwards, and as the day wore on we spent time at Vindolanda Roman Fort, still being excavated. But just before we reached it, I chanced upon an itinerant metal worker. Yeah, really I did. He was waiting for a coach full of schoolchidren who he would escort around Vindolanda.

On our way we had walked amongsts hayfields of herbs, wild flowers, even orchids, or viewed them from above. The sun grew hotter. I grew more like á tomato with every step. We learned how the stones were chiselled to fit into the wall. I learned how Patrick could perform a magic trick with a cable tie, when my sole began to lift from my boot.

On we walked and the terrain became more challenging, with a number of sharp gradients and ascents eventually reaching Winshields Crag and the highest point on the Wall. Lordy it was hot. A glass of wine tonight at the pub, not the small I had been having but a schooner, thank you  very much.

And still Patrick was a bundle  of information, ‘See the kestrel, see how the Romans chiseled their marks on the stones. listen while I tell you about the make up of the Roman Army. ‘On and on we walked, travellers together now, not a group of disparate strangers. Patrick showed us one of the best preserved sections of the Wall: Clayton’s Wall after John Clayton of Chesters, a Newcastle lawyer who devoted every Monday to restoring the wall.

Well, Clayton was not alone, for the same restoration and care happens today. We met Alan, who has spent 15 years volunteering to keep the Wall and walkers safe. He was also drawing every single stone in the wall on ‘his’ patch as there is no written record. Patrick spoke often of Gary, whose job it was to facilitate passage alongside the wall and around the area. ‘We should see him soon,‘ Patrick would say. But no Gary.

‘Where’s Gary?’ went up the cry. We created a sign for Patrick to tweet to Gary ‘WHERE’S GARY?’ The next day we walked on, Patrick wearing an enigmatic smile. We crossed the road, then back. We crossed the road again, and there… there… Was it Gary!! Yes, Yes. But for social distancing Gary would have been mobbed. Patrick, typically wonderfully, had arranged for us to ‘bump into Gary’. Such happiness. A spring in the step of us all as we marched on.

We passed Housesteads which is the most complete example of a Roman fort in Britain, standing high on the Whin Sill escarpment, with fabulous views. It was once garrisoned by a cohort of around 800 infantry. And while on the subject of views – these were of a pastoral England that we remembered from our childhood: meadows, sheep seeking shade wherever they could find it. Cattle. Hay. Tractors taking in that hay meadow. And another. Again I say, there were orchids galore. Even a Roman altar still in place from Roman times.

Day 8, having stayed at a variety of wonderful hotels, (each of which gave me ice cubes in a polytheme bag for my feet), and eaten at pubs and restaurants, we reached Newcastle. We’d almost made it. The relief, the experience, the knowledge that had yet to sink in. Alongside  the Tyne we went, with its bridges.   We passed for the last time the four Geordie blokes who had been shadowing us, and in our turn we had shadowed them. We had stopped a man and his son on the third day, as they walked towards Bowness, the father wearing a Macmillan T shirt. They were raising money for Macmillan in memory of their wife and mother. We donated.  At a pub we had all given an pound or more for funds for the local primary school. Community lives in the north, alive and well. It began raining. I was humming to The Full Monty, and snapped about to launch into some sort of routine, in the welcome rain, I might add, wearing my sunhat to keep the rain off my glasses. The tomato in an action shot.

We had chatted to locals, and fellow travellers, and one another. We were a gang on a mission. And here it was, a signpost. 84 miles to Bowness, our starting point. We  just had a bit to go, until we reached Segedunum  Roman Fort on the banks of the Tyne in Wallsend, and the last outpost of Hadrian’s Wall. For almost 300 years, Segedunum was home to 600 Roman infantry. There we looked, listened and wondered, then had a cuppa and a cake. Of course we did, and said our goodbye as Penny and I were to be picked up by Dick.

Will my feet ever be the same? Of course. Have I missed out many things in this feature? Of course.

Such was the variety, the immensity, the history that it cannot be encasulated into one, two or more  features. So, tell you what, book on a walk with Shepherds Walks Holidays. Make sure you have Patrick Norris as your guide. Have a look at what other walks they do here:  Shepherds walks, and check out Patrick Norris’s Footsteps in Northumberland. He does some great walks in his beloved Northumberland.

Was it a good week, a memorable week? Of course it was.

A lonely young woman, Mellie, in France, in a seaside town, and it’s raining when a bus arrives. Only one passenger alights. Where is he going, with his red bag, bright in the greyness? Mellie is alone in the house. The stranger forces his way in, rapes her. Why her? Why Mellie?  By midnight he is dead. Mellie, the victim,  has  killed the predator. The sea is the perfect place to lose a body.

Will it stay lost forever. Has she got away with it?

Later, Mellie is at a wedding. An enigmatic Harry Dobbs is there too. He is an American, and seems to know her secret, but not enough. He wants to know more. Hour by measured hour the man and the young woman circle one another, relentlessly, Who is the cat, who the mouse?

This is an extraordinarly novel. Written to a relentless rhythm, like a dance that can’t be brought to an end. The rhythm mirrors the strange hypnotic story, one which almost seems suspended in time. It has been made into a film several times, the first in 1970, starring Charles Bronson. The last, thus far  The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun starring Charlize Theron. It was a Sunday Times Top 100- Crime Novel.

It is extraordinary. Put time aside, read it in one gulp, though that’s the wrong.. You need each word, each phrase, each image so clear, the language so economic.

Linda Coverdale has done a cracking job with the translation of Marseille born Sebastien Japrisot’s Rider on the Rain. Japrisot  died in 2003. He was a screen writer, author, and film director. He was nicknamed The Graham Green of France. His book is a masterpiece.

Rider on the Rain by Sebastien Japrisot. pub Gallic Books.. pback. £8.99. Translated by Linda Coverdale.

This is one of those memoirs where it’s really good to know at the beginning that the protagonist has turned out ok, or otherwise you might not be able to read it. I spent the entire read longing to reach in and hug her really tightly.

Gavanndra Hodge is the daughter of two reckless, alcoholic, drug taking parents. At the age of seven, she is staying up until the early hours making sure the junkies don’t set fire to the house with their falling cigarettes, turning off the TV and record player, and then wondering why the tooth fairy has forgotten her again. She does everything she can to protect her family, but her younger sister, Candy,  dies of a rare medical condition when Gavanndra is fourteen.

When she becomes the mother of two small daughters she realises that she cannot remember her own sister and, in an attempt to find Candy and deal with her own grief, she goes back to her childhood and those hidden memories of her chaotic, traumatic life with addiction, betrayal and philandering. But she also reveals her bravery, telling the policemen on a raid that they shouldn’t stand on her bed with their shoes on, managing to still get to Cambridge to study Classics, and coming to terms with her parents, who despite everything, very clearly loved her dearly.

Gavanndra Hodge is an experienced journalist and captures the ebbs and flows of the story brilliantly, moving between time periods to fit where she is in her process of discovery. I really enjoyed how she captures little details that reflect and contrast with the bigger picture.

So it’s a heart-rending tale, and if you are anything like me you may need tissues, but also funny, uplifting and optimistic with the ending you are definitely hoping for.

The Consequences of Love by Gavanndra Hodge £8.99

ISBN 978-1-405-94322-2 Penguin Books

In the UK bread has always been our staple, be it office sandwiches, kid’s parties, picnics or a quick lunch on the go.

It used to be a good and tasty food source, before the advent of the white sliced loaf, stuffed with preservatives – I remember keeping one for a couple of weeks as an experiment – at the end it looked and tasted just the same – white, bland and unpalatable – even the mould seemed to have given it a wide berth.

So how lovely that we are reawakening our love of true artisan bread – and turning to experts like Jason Geary. As a fourth generation master baker he’s skilled in the traditional (and not always straightforward) art of making a good sourdough.

Sourdough has become very popular over recent years, but what actually is it? It’s been around a lot longer than yeast-risen bread – since several thousand years BCE. A mixture of lacto-bacteria and wild yeast called a Starter is used to make the bread rise. This is clever, as the bacteria digest what the yeast cannot, and vice-versa – so they work together to produce a slow and effective rise. They also weakens the gluten in the bread, making it more digestible for us humans and the starter is more effective than pure yeast for raising rye grain. Starters are saved batch after batch and are prized for the distinctive breads they produce.

Jason sent me his Olive and Basil Sourdough to try – all I can say is, ‘WOW’. They say we eat with our eyes, and this loaf looked so attractive, with swirls of bright green, emulating extra virgin olive oil. In fact the green was a mixture of spirulina concentrate and safflower – both considered to have health benefits. Checking out the other ingredients – just wheat and rye flour, Nocellara olives, basil, sourdough starter and salt. It contains no artificial preservatives or flavourings.

The bread itself was simply delicious – I tried it fresh with San Manzano tomatoes and then later, toasted with butter – both worked extremely well. In fact it tasted just as if I’d added fresh olive oil and basil to the bread. And yes, it was more digestible – despite eating rather more than I should have (it’s downside is it’s impossible to stop at one slice) I had no unpleasant bloating afterwards.

The other big plus with Jason’s sourdoughs is that you don’t have to travel miles in search of an artisan bread maker – they’re available at Asda, Ocado and M & S. I strongly suggest you add this to your shopping list.

By Dr K Thompson, award-winning author of From Both Ends of the Stethoscope: Getting through breast cancer – by a doctor who knows

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01A7DM42Q

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01A7DM42Q

http://faitobooks.co.uk

Note: These articles express personal views. No warranty is made as to the accuracy or completeness of information given and you should always consult a doctor if you need medical advice.

We have talked previously of automatic pilot, which we can spend up to 46% of our time stuck in & of our innate negativity bias.

But did you know that we also spend approximately 50% of our time ruminating on the past or worrying about the future? Couple this with the time spent in automatic pilot there’s not a lot of time left for the only moment that really matters, the present moment, right here right now.

Many of us ruminate on past events but there is little point – the past has already gone we can’t change it. Similarly, obsessing about & trying to control the future is also as pointless. A certain degree of planning for future events such a big meeting is certainly beneficial. But how often have you churned over an important meeting going over every detail only to attend the meeting & for it to not go exactly as you planned it? I would hazard a guess at more often than not.

Something else to consider. Our brain is a product of our past experiences. These experiences also create emotions. If you experience a highly charged emotional event, good or bad, that moment becomes neurologically embossed into your brain as a memory. If you continually obsess about a certain event this hard wires your brain for the same patterns. By obsessing about the past you are in effect hard-wiring your future for the similar circumstances that produce the same emotions that you have already experienced.

Energy flows where your attention goes, so if you are continually ruminating on past event, your energy is in the past. If you then start obsessing about all the things you have to do & people you have to see, you are directing your attention & energy into a predictable known future that is based on your past. You are continuously keeping your life the same by keeping your attention (thoughts) & energy (feelings) the same.

This is why learning to be present in the here & now is so important. If we are constantly distracted by the past or obsessing about the future, we are directing our creative energy away to the outer world, leaving little energy for our inner world to create new something new in your life. And you will keep repeating the same patterns.

But by turning inwards, staying present, then we really have the potential to create, heal, grow & take action & that’s where our true power lies. Meditation allows us to take our attention away from all that’s going on in our outer world & turn inwards to change our internal state, which is where true healing occurs. Bringing your attention inwards as you stay grounded in the present moment, free from the constraints of your past & limitations of a future that is determined by past events & emotions, builds the energy you have available to create something new. And this is where the magic happens!

This week’s meditation is a past & future meditation – a visualisation, this meditation gives us the opportunity to release our past & our future & enjoy the liberation of being grounded in the present moment. To obtain your copy email Alex at alex@alexbannard.com quoting FROSTP&F.

Alex is based on the edge of the stunning Cotswolds & has been sharing her love for all things yoga & mindfulness for almost a decade, not just in the UK but also around the world. Her mission is to help everyone discover a more mindful way of living & to encourage them to embrace regular self-care practices for a happier & healthier way of being.

If you would like more information on how to practice mindfulness, meditation & yoga message her at alex@alexbannard.com.

For free resources check out her Facebook group: Mindfulness & Yoga for Self-Care, here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/MindfulnessYoga4Relationships

Alternatively please check out her website: alexbannard.com