Well, here we are, in the midst of a fantastic summer. Gorgeous but drying sun, which makes hair feel like straw, much as we love blue skies…

It might be an idea to consider Aldo Coppola who use natural and organic products and treatments for hair and beauty. All their products are organic, natural and vegan friendly.

Aldo Coppola is Italy’s No. 1 premium haircare brand so they should know all about sun on the skin and hair and using natural products appeals. Aldo Coppola has 120 salons worldwide and have collaborated with some of the biggest fashion houses including Valentino and Christian Dior as well as working with some elite super models such as Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell.

At Frost magazine we’ve had a look at a hand-picked selection from Aldo Coppola Aquamare range and beauty treatments from their collaboration with CELLCOSMET.

AQUAMARE

AFTER SUN SHAMPOO FOR DAILY CLEANSING

Nourishing after sun creamy shampoo restores moisture, keeping the hair soft, full of body and easy to comb. Daily use helps to prevent dryness caused by exposure to sun, wind, salt and chlorine. Perfect on coloured hair. After shampooing, complete the treatment with Aquamare after sun Milk or Mask.

Aldo Coppola Aquamare Shampoo – £26

PROTECTIVE DRY OIL FOR PROTECTION & NOURISHMENT

This appeals – having just had surgery for a broken shoulder my hair is suitable for a haystack and not much else, and that’s without any sun drying it further.

Sun care hair oil, protects against harmful sunrays, wind, salt and chlorine with a total UVB/B shielding action. The dry non-greasy texture protects and nourishes the hair fibres deeply. Maintains the correction hydration level, preventing early aging and gives the hair body, softness and sine. Protects colour brightness. Spray on dry or wet hair before sun exposure and repeat the application during the day, including the sensitised areas.

Aldo Coppola Aquamare Dry Oil – £29

AFTER SUN MASK FOR INTENSE NOURISHING

One to take for those beach holidays.

After sun treatment formulated to hydrate and deeply nourish hair exposed to sun, wind, salt and chlorine. This mask combines intense soothing shine-enhancing to protective restructuring action, suitable on all hair types and especially recommended on coloured hair. The rich content of minerals, oligo elements and vitamins in the brown algae extract prevent early aging of the hair fibres. Apply after shampooing and rinse with care.

Aldo Coppola Aquamare Mask – £29

There you go, all sorted for summer.

Milly Adams latest book At Long Last Love published in paperback by Arrow is out now.

In Bangkok, it is hard not to notice tailors on almost every corner especially in Asok. Before I even arrived in Bangkok and having travelled in Asia previously, I knew getting copies of clothes tailor-made made was affordable and realistic. However, like all good plans they got de-railed by life.

Then one day a friend asked me if I was interested in getting some clothes made and the seed was sown once more. I messaged a Bangkok mummies group on Facebook, which turns out to be an amazingly fruitful source of top tips and recommendations and several names came up and we decided Benjama’s in Asok was our tailor of choice.

First though we needed fabric. We headed off to Chinatown or more specifically Little India in Chinatown and after an assortment of taxi’s, tuk tuk’s and sky trains, finally arrived at the Indian Emporium a large undercover fabric market spanning 4-5 floors. What a relief: fans and air conditioning.

The first stall had the kind of light-weight cottony-linen fabric I was looking for in the kind of neutral or muddy colours tones I was looking for. At 100bht/m I was sold, so was Meg who chose a couple of colour ways too.

For good measure we continued our search and went to the next floor. Yet more lightweight cottons and linens in yet more colourations and this time only 50 bht/m, d’oh fatal school girl error: we had bought before checking out prices. Kicking ourselves and our naivety and striking up much more rapport with this guy than the moody fellow downstairs, we bought yet more fabric and then wondered how we were going to carry it all home via tuk tuk’s, taxi’s and sky trains, especially since Meg was flagging a little being pregnant and all.

We vowed to return to make the most of the colourful array of fabrics and materials at the first chance we had to create dressing up costumes for the kids.

So we were set to go and headed the following week to Benjamin’s and wandered into a small shop where two seamstresses were hard at work, boxes of cotton reels and material creatively strewn around in organized chaos. I knew exactly what I wanted copied and in what fabrics so I was pretty much done and dusted in 20 minutes or so.

Meg, expecting her 4^th baby was unsure of what styles she wanted and by this time Khun Pook who owns the shop joined us and advised us she was a designer too. Ahhh fatal school girl error number two: I should have asked. But I was in danger of re-railing from the original plan so I stuck with my decisions while she and Meg came up with some bespoke ideas to get her through her blossoming bump.

Khun Pook can literally make anything from ball gowns to men’s shirts and needs only a photo to go by. When we returned only 10 days later most of the pieces were ready and I was delighted with the results and have worn the pieces almost every week, allowing me to preserve the originals for either special occasions or at least not to wear them out completely. 3 pairs of trousers, 4 pairs of shorts and 2 dresses / culottes cost just over £200. But the experience was priceless.

A month or so later, Meg introduced me to Glen an Australian footwear designer who ran his own footwear business from a little hole in the wall shop front in Udom Suk, not far from where we lived. I have a beloved pair of off the peg sandals I had bought a few years previously from Mango or some other high street fashion store and was I was literally wearing these bad boys to death. I badly wanted them copied. Glen agreed to do so for me.

We then discussed Meg holding footwear parties on his behalf to sell his off the shelf shoes and within a couple of weeks we were hosting just one of these parties at my house with the girls from our moobaan. A couple of boxes of shoes had arrived which we laid out as aesthetically as possible, cracked open the fizz and invited the ladies in.

One friend came with a specific style in mind to be copied into several different colours whilst others tried on what was available. I happened upon a pair of snakeskin heels with bright mustard soles, which had my name all over them. They fit like a glove and are the most comfortable heels I own. At less than £70, not technically a bargain but also did seriously not break the bank either. The afternoon was a success, some shoes were sold, some replicas commissioned and we were well on the way to our very own bespoke head to quite literally toe wardrobe.

My sandals never returned to me until after the summer holidays and I had almost given up on them if I am honest. When they did arrive accompanied by the originals, from which I thought I would never part, I realized just what a sorry state of affairs they had become. A little bit mouldy and very much distressed after spending most of the rainy season in a shoe makers workshop they made their replacements looked so spectacular I instantly dispatched them to the bin. For less than the original sandals, they are worth their weight in gold and are still going strong despite almost daily excursions.

So, the whole top to toe tailoring experience turned out pretty well. Not only fun but some stylish pieces secured at some really reasonable prices and an experience worth writing home about.

“where Ayckbourn’s middle-class angst smashes up against 21st Century issues”

I rarely give a standing ovation – call me hard-hearted, but most of the time I can simply admire performers doing their job really well by clapping very loudly.

Jon Brittain’s Rotterdam, however, grabbed me. I laughed through the tears as the four characters made war and peace, hated and loved and produced some of the best roaring arguments I have seen on stage in a long time. Many people are raving about the play’s approach to LGBTQIA+ issues. Yet, although some of those strains are what drives the plot, I think it goes beyond that. The play is about everyone: our very identity is in question and how we and our loved ones deal with who we actually are and what we actually want.

[Alice McCarthy and Anna Martine Freeman]

The play centres around the lesbian couple Alice and Fiona living in Rotterdam, played to sublime perfection by Alice McCarthy and Anna Martine Freeman respectively. Alice is trying to find the confidence to come out to her ‘very English’ parents back home. Keeping the secret is stifling her on all levels, but unknown to her, Fiona has a bigger secret.

Ed Bales-White plays a wonderful Josh. Josh is Alice’s ex-boyfriend and still hangs around, even after seven years since they split up, because, of course, he still lives her.

[Ed Bales-White and Alice McCarthy]

The love-triangle is confused further by the presence of Lelani, a local lesbian full of life but desperately lonely, played just on the right side of crazy by Ellie Morris.

This piece premiered in October 2015 at Theatre 503, before transferring to Trafalgar Studios. Then it won the Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Affiliate Theatre. Earlier this year a brief run off-Broadway followed. Now it’s back, feeling caged-in at The Arts Theatre, trapping the characters inside their world, an ingenious colourful box of primary Pride colours, superbly designed by Ellan Parry. Aided and abetted by the pumping Euro-Pop beats designed by Keegan Curran.

[Ellie Morris and Alice McCarthy]

Donnacadh O’Briain’s direction has the actors pushing the boundaries of comedy and tragedy. The theatrical mask with its two emotionally opposing faces was designed for plays like this. It’s where Ayckbourn’s middle-class angst smashes up against 21st Century issues.

A must-see play.

Production Photographs are by Hunter Canning

Performances until  Saturday 15th July 2017

Monday – Saturday at 7.30pm

Thursday and Saturday matinees at 2.30pm

Running time:          2 hours (plus an interval)

Twitter:                     @ArtsTheatreLDN, @RotterdamPlay, @hartshorhook

Producer:                 Louis Hartshorn and Brian Hook, Hartshorn-Hook Productions

Location:                  Arts Theatre, 6-7 Great Newport Street, London WC2H 7JB

www.artstheatrewestend.co.uk

Box Office:               Tickets are available from £15-£55 from the Arts Theatre Box

Office and www.artstheatrewestend.co.uk

Or by calling 020 7836 8463

Notes:                      Age recommendation of 14+

Like most writers I have a real-life job that makes most of my ‘days in the life’ pretty dull to read about! And even on weekends writing is squeezed in amongst the multitudes of other time-chomping tasks. But very, very occasionally I get a few days in a stretch where I can sort-of focus on writing. So I’ve cheated and I’m going to tell you about a ‘week in the life of’. Specifically, the week in which I wrote, illustrated and published ‘Little Hoglet’s Egg Race’, which won second prize in the children’s picture book section of this year’s Words For The Wounded.

As I also write novels (‘Wyrm Gold’ was Highly Commended in this year’s Words for the Wounded) which take a year plus to write, it’s great to have a much smaller scale project to work on. The ‘Little Hoglet’ books have a much quicker turnaround because the time required (if not the mental effort!) to write them is much less.

Having already published ‘Little Hoglet’s Christmas’, and written and sketched out ‘Little Hoglet’s Bonfire Night’ (yet to be published), I already had a few ideas about a Spring story for Little Hoglet (I planned one story for each of the four seasons).

On the Saturday afternoon I sat down for a few hours and played with a few ideas. What did I want to see in a Spring story? What amazing things did I want to introduce children to? Spring, of course, means eggs, and a story naturally came about where Little Hoglet was looking for friends to play with and met a succession of birds and their eggs. And whilst sketching a couple of scenes, a couple of eggs developed legs, and the EGGS WITH LEGS! concept found its way into the story.

A simple beginning, but it took a few hours to pin down the specifics of who Little Hoglet would meet on his journey (the last egg layer is a butterfly, for example, as a little surprise after all the birds), and how the story would end. Happily, of course, but how? It’s really fun to come up with the answers.

On Sunday I sketched out the scenes very roughly and tidied up the text so I had a solid foundation to work from. Children’s writing is very much like writing poetry – minimum words with maximum impact.

Monday to Thursday I drew the illustrations in pencil, which gives a lovely soft children’s book feel. This is also a fun part of the process.

Friday I scanned in all the pencil drawings into the computer and added colour.

Saturday I formatted the book ready for publication, and then in the evening submitted it to Createspace (Amazon’s publishing platform). This part is less fun but not as unfun as you might expect.

Sunday I made corrections, checked the online proof, and resubmitted. In the evening the submission was accepted and I pressed the button to make the book live. Within an hour or so I was then able to go onto Amazon and order a copy which arrived a couple of days later!

But was is it any good…? Well the Words for the Wounded prize certainly helps. As do the ten 5 star reviews on Amazon, along with comments like: “What a gorgeous little hoglet, having fun and making friends, beautifully illustrated, “a lovely little tale”, “fun for both my 2 and a half year old to be read and also my 5 year old who can read it aloud himself”, “the story builds to a conclusion that will warm the heart and keep you wanting more from the next one.”

Ok, so that’s encouraging. I’d better find some time to start ‘Little Hoglet’s Summer Holiday’!

Richard Middleton’s books can be obtained from Amazon.co.uk in paperback and e-book.

www.wordsforthewounded.co.uk

I’m lucky enough to have an  adjustable VariDesk which enables me to STAND or sit, with a flick of a lever and is a total boon to anyone desk bound for much of the day as I am. It saves that wretched neck and back ache which quite frankly made little Miss Sunshine pass under a cloud, not that my family call me anything approaching anything sunny – far from it.

I work not only as a contributor to Frost Magazine, but also an author and am heavily involved with a charity, www.wordsforthewounded.co.uk  and therefore I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time sitting as well as standing at my, desk and my fitness is suffering, not to mention my rear end, and my legs. A seat that adjust to match the Varidesk would be my dream, or so I was thinking as I put the WforW LitFest to bed for another year, and embarked on the second in the series of The Waterway Girls for Arrow.

In the nick of time I’ve been sent a Varichair to test drive. Honestly, it’s a complete boon.

It solves all my problems, so no more clouds in my life.

Designed to engage leg, back and core muscles, the VARIChair really does give me the freedom to move throughout my day, letting me stay active while seated or leaning. As I have recently broken my shoulder, my exercise is anyway reduced so it really is brilliant. The durable, cushioned seat and articulating pedestal offer a wide range of motion, so you can rock or stretch while sitting. The air-lift piston also raises the seat up to 32.75” (83.19 cm), allowing you to lean comfortably when standing.

Featuring a low back design that encourages good posture, it also has a weighted base, so it stays put while you do the moving. Like other VARIDESK products, the VARIChair comes fully assembled. Simply remove it from the box and you’re ready to go.

I can’t bear having things I have to put together, because it takes ages and never quite fits together.

A really good buy. Use it, get fit while you work. You’ll find you don’t actually NEED that beer or wine at the end of the day but you’ll still have it, of course you will.

The Varichair  at £250 is worth every penny, as is the Pro Plus 36  Varidesk at £365.

www.varidesk.com