I should say so, said the Frost Magazine Team

Frost Magazine team was intrigued by Not just a shop which does seem to be the place to discover unique home, fashion, giftware and artwork by University of Arts London students and alumni. Their products will not break the bank either, but are original enough to be  treasured by the recipient. Or why not keep a couple yourself. That’s not a question, but a hint. We think they are all fabulous and found something we would like to buy from each company, but had to sort of do an eyes shut lucky dip or we’d be here all day.

This resulted in these beauties: Eco felt slippers and  the utlra reasonable fabric pocket mirrors.Then we all felt the notebooks were a must. Do have a look at everything and buy your gifts in good time. You truly will not regret it.

Handmade  Eco Felt slippers £45                                 Fabric Pocket mirror £4

AURA QUE is an abbreviation of designer Laura Queening’ name, who founded the company in 2008 after graduating from London College of Fashion.

AURA QUE products are developed in collaboration between Laura and the small producers she works with in Asia. She sources and works with various charity handicraft units and fairtrade producer groups in Nepal, Vietnam and India to bring local sustainable materials, craft skills and designs to western markets, both for AURA QUE and bespoke projects.

The AURA QUE studio is based in Peckham, but the brand’s handbags, accessories, homeware and gifts are stocked by independent boutiques throughout Europe.

Get going on those big plans with this cool ‘Grand Ideas’ notebook.from Tom Boulton at Type Tom: or why not the Go For it cheerleader of a nobook.

Tom Boulton is a letterpress printer and typographic designer who lives and works by the sea in West Sussex. Obsessed with hand printing, hand making and restoring old machinery, he aims to revive interest in traditional printing skills that are sometimes considered obsolete.

Under his brand Type Tom, he hand prints and makes products including: greetings cards, notebooks, stationery packs and prints. Everything is designed and printed on letterpress machines from the 1900’s using his collection of antique wood poster and lead type.

Hand printed on a 1900’s Cropper Charlton Peerless letterpress by printer and typographic designer Tom Boulton, these notbooks  contain 36 pages (white plus 4 bright yellow).

Each notebook is hand bound using a traditional Japanese stab binding technique with a suitably contrasting thread.  Made from FSC certified card and 120gsm paper. A5 note pads @ £7.50 each but Type Tom offers more fabulous products.

Images courtesy of notjustashop.arts.ac.uk which is where you can have a really good look around and learn more about the craftsmen, and their Christmas, or anytime gifts.

These can be purchased on line,( notjustashop.arts.ac.uk) and at their physical shop in Holburn.

Yesterday we discovered how Calvin Niles, the Mindful Storyteller, navigated a series of, in his words ‘mini traumas’. Today we continue to explore how his story evolved. For Calvin with maelstrom of changes going on in his life, changing jobs seemed reckless, so he settled at his corporate job. I say settled because he admits to a deep sense of dissatisfaction but not enough to do something about it.

So Source, The Universe, God gave him something which would catch his attention.

Early one winter’s morning Calvin’s car span out of control on ice & flying across 3 lanes of traffic into the central reservation, crushing 3 sides of the car. He walked away miraculously with just a scratch on his elbow. Waiting for the pick-up truck to tow him & the car home he meditated. He received the clear message to call time on his corporate career. He’d been feeling discomfort at not living his passion or purpose but had dulled this down until The Universe made it crystal clear to him. He handed his notice in the next week & hasn’t looked back. Synchronicities abounded as they tend to, because once The Universe has out attention she likes to remind us she’s listening – it’s a gentle nod to come back to conscious awareness because you’d miss them if you weren’t paying attention.

For many there were cosmic & mystical happenings usually experienced during deep meditative practices that defy language or words so other worldly but sublimely peaceful & connected they are. Everyone’s experience is unique & true to them but once you’ve experienced this when others try to describe theirs you just get it even though words do not suffice.  The insights, healing & growth continue & do so today in ‘ripples’ as Calvin describes them.

And that’s led us to the next part in a spiritual journey: that there’s no end point to a more conscious awareness. No-one is ever finished. And that’s really quite liberating. Everyone’s path is different: some experience all these stages again & again, others may skip some stages. I know one person who I would describe as have a spontaneous awakening. He never meditated or practiced any contemplative study, he wasn’t religious, nothing epic happened in his life just one day he awakened to a deep connection to source. The point is this conscious awakening is possible for everyone & available for us all to experience, it’s our birth-right if you like.

Calvin exudes serenity, compassion & presence that speak volumes to the inner work he has done & reflect his inner peace & equilibrium & you’ll discover this energy is amongst those who have embarked on a more conscious & present way of living & being. At the end of our chat he summed up everything he’d been sharing with me in his poem, which I’d like to share with you:

Water and Fire – A Poem by Calvin Niles

A trickle is how it starts
Sometimes you don’t see it.
Too busy thinking about thoughts.

A spark is all it takes
Not everyone notices.
Too busy worrying about worries.

When the rivers burst their banks and forests turn to cinders
Everyone in the neighbourhood notices.
Wouldn’t you say?

Can you see the small things?

Do you feel the tiny tickle before the pain?
Or the little drizzle before the rain?
Can you spot the wildness within the tame?
Or your irks before you complain?
Or is it all the same?
Let me ask you again.

Do you feel the space between your breaths?
Or note the taste in your mouth of whatever’s left?
Do you feel abundant or bereft?
Are you in the now or seeking the next?
Can you do and not impress?
Or is give and not expect?
Each moment is a new opportunity to choose.

Choose to see not just look.
Choose to listen not just hear.
Choose to love.
Choose to forgive.
Choose to let go.
Choose to live.

Choose wisely.

Listen to Calvin’s podcasts:
3. Stories of Awakening
4. Mindful Conversations

Read Calvin’s Fiction Spiritual Adventure: The Sun Rises in Eastmoor available here
Facebook: @calvinnilesofficial
Instagram: @calvinniles
Website: www.calvinniles.com
Email: contact(at)calvinniles(dot)com

Calvin Niles is a mindful storyteller, guiding businesses & individuals in authentically telling their story. We met a couple of years ago co-presenting in a mindfulness online retreat & a friendship has blossomed. He recently asked me to share my story of spiritual awakening in his podcast – you can find out more in the link below.

So I thought it might be nice to turn the spotlight onto our mindful raconteur & asked Calvin if he would like to share his story of conscious awakening. What a wonderful morning we shared as he spoke publically for the first time about his journey from automatic pilot, unconscious living into a more present consciousness.

I wondered how on earth to do a master storyteller’s own story justice. I reflected on the similarities of our own distinctly unique but also familiar transitions, the catalysts, the moments of clarity & knowing, the shifts that ran as threads through our own stories but also through the story’s of others.

What is a spiritual awakening? I would describe it as a shift in consciousness, or as Marianne Williamson describes it: full recovery from the fractured sense of self. It’s not something you do or something to attain because it is much more about an inner sense of peace, equilibrium, a feeling not a doing.

It’s a different feeling, a different experience for everyone but at some point along the rocky road of life, opportunities will present themselves that open up the door to awareness, acceptance, lessons, learnings, healing & growth.

As children we are really quite present & more consciously aware. This can be conditioned out of us by society or trauma. We can become disconnected from our emotions & feelings because they were intense & frightening, disconnected from our mind body connection, thinking, acting & behaving unconsciously & automatically. We are beginning to understand that 80% have experienced some kind of trauma. That’s a lot of disconnected & unconscious people.

Calvin explained that even though he had grown up surrounded & influenced by the metaphysical texts of his mother’s bookshop he was not consciously aware of it nor was he immersed in this world. And a series of as he describes them, ‘mini traumas’ encouraged him to be less conscious & more disconnected with his own emotions.

Many who experience some kind of spiritual awakening experience a cataclysmic ‘life’ event which is a catalyst.

There’s the thing, The Universe wants us to learn the lessons we came here to & often they are presented gentle whispers & soft nudges so we often miss them. So the next one is a little louder or a more forceful nudge but still we may not heed the calling & so on until something gets so loud & so uncomfortable we have to do something about it: that cataclysmic event, the catalyst for the inner work.

Often these big events centre around a relationship, relationships being a spiritual practice, the playground of the ego & the spirit. For some, like Calvin & myself it was in the acrimonious ending of our marriages. For others a may be a different fractious relationship.

There is a catalyst & finally The Universe has got our attention.

In the wake of this seismic shift often there’s a dark night of the soul experience. For some this is a self-imposed exile, a time to turn inwards, do the inner work & practice, a conscious decision: they go on silent retreat, into rehab. For others is is more imposed upon them. And for many it’s a combination of both.

For Calvin the suffocating & deafening silence of an empty house when the kids spent time with their Mum after being so used to the hustle & bustle of a busy family life & home was excruciating. Something I completely empathize with.

This is when we tend to turn to our practices as sources of comfort, peace, guidance, surrender. And this is often when the magic starts to happen.

Insights, shifts, an inner knowing, a change in beliefs. For Calvin it was a realization he was part of something much bigger. I felt a deep sense of being taken care of. Whatever the words or what it looks & feels like it is a profound connection to Source, God, The Universe, whatever you want to call it.

From thereon you can’t un-know what has been revealed to you. But life tends to bumble on. Sometimes we dip & fall in & out consciousness. Sometimes there’s more work to do. And if we don’t take heed of the whispers & nudges these reminders The Universe or Source will do something else to catch our attention.

Find out tomorrow what was in store for our mindful storyteller.

Listen to Calvin’s podcasts:

1. Stories of Awakening
2. Mindful Conversations

Read Calvin Fiction Spiritual Adventure: The Sun Rises in Eastmoor available here

Facebook: @calvinnilesofficial

Instagram: @calvinniles

Website: www.calvinniles.com

Email: contact(at)calvinniles(dot)com

To listen to Alex & Calvin together please click here: https://youtu.be/q–PivQeINw

I kept thinking as I read that I should know this, know that, know the other. That I should have thought more deeply, understood for myself the depths of a particular point. So thank heavens for Paul Corner’s  illumination of the past for us all, and for highlighting the tricks memory, or the transfiguring of memory plays, leading us into a perilous preferred acceptance of what amounts to a myth.

I suppose these days it’s called ‘my truth’ , which alarmingly is gaining credence as an  explanation of a lie, or something at least which bears little or no relation to the facts. What it does do is fit in with what others are saying, in other words, their preferred memory, in which facts have been ignored.

So, on to the book: an examination of the brutal reality of the Italian dicator’s fascist regime. Well quite.

For some reason Mussolini has more often than not had a better press than Hitler and Stalin. Indeed, there has been a certain indulgence in that yes, he was a Fascist, but a kindly one, or at least a less than awful one. One that certainly was not like ‘the others’.

In Italy, as elsewhere, he is ofte remembered as strong decisive leader, and who did many good things.

Paul Corner argues against this rehabilitation, not shying away from the corruption, inefficiencies, and the violence of a deeply repressive regime, but for me what was most important was that Mussolini in Myth and Memory went some way to discussing the vagaries of memory, the tendancy in so many of us to rework the facts to fit in with what is comfortable for us.

Is this why some citizens still choose dictatorships? Have they created a mythical memory of the past? Gone is the repression, instead the memory of order and peace overlays the reality.  But this preferred view ignores the burgeoning reality of the pressure to conform, to join in group think, to think as others think, or pretend to do so out of fear of ostracisation, cancellation. In the name of this new dogma texts are deemed unacceptable if they refute the group think dictat. Texts are therefore altered, books are burned, the main stream media is biased. From here, the slippery slope to the Totalitarian regime begins. Totalitarianism is not pretty, there might be a strong leadership, strong forces of law and order which rewards  rigid obedience but at what cost?  None of these beginnings into totalitarianism should be remembered through the lens of ‘my truth.’ The facts must be writ, clear and loud.

Mussolin in Myth and Memory is a warning, a revelation, a profound study of the realities of dictatorships which with time, can merge into acceptable and appealing myth.

Buy it: Mussolini in Myth and Memory – The First Totalitarian Dictator by Paul Corner. OUP Hardback £20.00

Paul Corner is Emeritus Professor of Euopean History and former Director of the Centre for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes at the University of Siena

This is a corker of a  ‘ book of the week’ from Joffe who are thrilled with HIDDEN ON THE MOORS by acclaimed author Priscilla Masters. It’s out now for 99p/99c:  a man is seen lingering outside the gates at the local school. Then a five-year-old girl goes missing. The team begin a desperate search for the little girl, but she could be hidden anywhere on these moors.   The clock is ticking . . . Can Detective Joanna Piercy find the girl before it’s too late?

CLICK HERE TO BUY HIDDEN ON THE MOORS BY PRISCILLA MASTERS FOR JUST 99P | 99C.

Silent Death by Volker Kutscher really appeals to me. Priced at £2.99

AT THE DAWN OF TALKING FILMS, A MOVIE STAR IS SILENCED FOREVER . . .

“Ingenious . . . a portrait of an era through the lens of genre fiction.” New York Times“Atmospheric and immersive.” Sunday Herald*Please note our edition of The Silent Death is only available in the UK.

Such excitement:: Beachy Head by Adam Lyndon is coming soon:

BEACHY HEAD, the brand-new Detective Rutherford Barnes mystery by serving police-officer Adam Lyndon is launching next week and is available to pre-order now for just 99p | 99c.

DC Barnes, back on the job after an eighteen-month suspension, is in no position to refuse a case no-one else wants: a one-punch homicide. But soon Barnes’s no-win case becomes something deeper and darker than anyone could have imagined

Joffe Books Publishing Director Kate Lyall Grant says: 

“Adam Lyndon played a blinder with his stunning debut, DEVIL’S CHIMNEY.  But he has surpassed himself with his second novel, BEACHY HEAD. From the tension-fuelled opening scene, I was drawn in right away and held gripped throughout this intriguing, multi-stranded read, with its plentiful twists and turns.  There is one particular twist, about halfway through, which took my breath away, and changed everything I thought I knew about what had gone before.”
CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER BEACHY HEAD BY ADAM LYNDON FOR JUST 99P | 99C.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH A COVER REVEAL FOR BEACHY HEAD BY ADAM LYNDON.      Readers LOVED Adam Lyndon’s debut novel, which introduced the character of the young and ambitious — perhaps too ambitious for his own good — DC Rutherford Barnes.  Get your copy today and prepare to be hooked! 

CLICK HERE TO BUY DEVIL’S CHIMNEY BY ADAM LYNDON FOR JUST 99P

NEWS

Joffe Books Publishing Director Kate Lyall Grant has signed two novels from bestselling author McGarvey Black, who is joining Joffe Books with two psychological thrillers.

McGarvey studied voice at Manhattan School of Music and was later a theatre major in college. She pursued an acting career but later moved into a magazine and digital media career. During that time, she sold advertising and managed sales teams for companies like Conde Nast, WebMD and worked for brands including GQ, Travel + Leisure, and Allure.

In between, she took a year off and backpacked alone around the world. Later, after having two children, she left media and became an executive recruiter for internet companies. In 2017, she began writing full time and has since published six novels.

McGarvey Black says: 

“I saw a podcast interview of Jasper Joffe and was really taken by his outlook on publishing. He was incredibly positive and normal and I liked his philosophy. He mentioned that Kate Lyall Grant had moved to Joffe Books and when I looked at her background, I thought I want to work with them!  Joffe Books has had remarkable success publishing high quality fiction that include a slew of bestsellers. I’m hoping mine will be one of them.”

Kate Lyall Grant says:

“I’ve never come across an author with quite such a darkly inventive imagination as McGarvey Black.  She comes up the most ingeniously twisted plots which pull you in from the outset and keep you gripped until the end.  I’m absolutely delighted to have acquired her next two books, TRUST ONLY ME and TWICE ON CHRISTMAS for Joffe Books.”

Kate adds: Watch this space and be among the first to read Black’s thrilling new suspense novels in early 2023! 

For more on Joffe’s latest releases – Joffe Books