Great Tasting Water On The Go: ZeroWater Portable

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I love the ZeroWater filter so I was excited to see they now do a water bottle. The portable bottle has the all-powerful filter that filters out 95% of nasties. It is a good-looking bottle and is great for the environment. Highly recommended.

Research suggests 7.7 billion plastic water bottles are used each year, that’s on average 150 plastic bottles every year per person according to Water UK. Help cut down your own personal plastic footprint by making a small yet active change to the way you keep hydrated by carrying a reusable water bottle at all times, not only reducing your own use of plastic but also saving you money in the long run too.

zerowater, portable, water bottle,

Enjoy pure-tasting water anywhere you go! Offering 0.8L capacity the ZeroWater Portable combines all the top-performing filtration technology of the standard ZeroWater filtration jug but in a stylish, convenient cup complete with textured easy grip lid. So you can enjoy great tasting water out of your tap whether you’re at home, work or the gym, a resounding success for you and the environment.

The ZeroWater Portable uses the iconic patented ZeroWater filtration system, which combines FIVE sophisticated technologies that work together to remove virtually all dissolved solids from your water.  The only pour-through filter pitcher on the market that’s certified by the NSF to reduce lead.

What Does The ZeroWater Remove?

According to government figures 8.5 billion plastic straws are used each year. Which is why reusable straws are a great alternative and the ZeroWater Portable comes with just that, offering durability and a hard wearing design that seamlessly reflects the aesthetic of the portable cup. Another fantastic example of how the ZeroWater Portable is such a great alternative to single use plastic bottles.

How Long Will The Filter Last?

On an average water reading of 200 ppm you get 19 litres of filtered water from each ZeroWater Portable filter but please note it is dependent on the initial quality of your unfiltered tap water and daily consumption as the amount of dissolved solids in tap water varies across the UK. Each of the ZeroWater Portable filters employ a next-generation filter replacement technology. A “Colour Change” window which indicates when you need to replace your filter for added convenience. Once the replacement filter has then been fitted the other can be recycled at most Household Waste & Recycling Centres in the UK.

The ZeroWater Portable is available to buy online for £14.99 from ZeroWater, replacement filters (2 Pack), £14.99 from ZeroWater.

SISTER SCRIBES GUEST: STEPH HAXTON ON MOVING THE MUSE

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Steph Haxton was one of the first local writers I met when I moved to Cornwall. Historian turned author (or gamekeeper turned poacher, as she’d have it), her research is meticulous and her wit legendary. Unfortunately for me she’s now moved to Scotland, but how would the sometimes elusive Mrs Muse take to the change?

 

Mrs Muse, plugging a new novel set in Scotland, by June should have been sitting on the doorstep of our new home. But I’d had not a peep for weeks. She’d showed briefly at Holyrood Palace; she’s a sucker for anything royal. But after a quick tap on the shoulder, she scarpered again.

A month later I decided to head up the M90 to Innerpeffray Library, a place highly recommended by a fellow bibliophile. With an overview of where I was headed, I let the Sat Nav tell guide me. My relationship with it being troubled, when it directed me off the dual carriageway not far outside Perth, I was immediately suspicious.

‘Turn right to Roman Road.’ It didn’t look likely, was signposted something else.

But round two sharp bends, there it was! Only a bloomin’ Roman road; straight, classic width, ditches either side bordered by beautiful woodland. Wow!

I had to stop a few miles on, when the trees dropped away.  On a ridgeway, I faced a breath-taking view over the Strathearn. Thirty seconds later, four police motorcyclists in formation swept past, easily doing 50mph. Incongruous on a rural lane, they were clearly enjoying a Roman road too!

Before long the brown sign for Innerpeffray Library sent me down a potholed track. A turf path though trees, a red squirrel bouncing ahead of me, led me past ancient yews surrounding a tiny chapel where a rash of goose-bumps swept me from head to toe. Around another corner stood the Library.

‘Hello! You took your time!’ said my precocious afflatus.

Beautiful books and friendly faces greeted me. A lovely volunteer explained the Roman origins of the site and the library’s history. I took a sharp intake of breath: 1680, a date central to my next novel. I had been looking for somewhere to ‘place’ the female protagonist. Even if Mrs Muse hadn’t been elbowing me in the ribs, I’d have known – this was it!

The weird coincidences continued: the gentleman giving me a tour of the reading room originally came from the Roseland. That might account for his choice of pages in Camden’s ‘Britannica’. But his finger, pointing straight at Pendennis, the castle at the core of my books? No. THAT was extraordinary. There was more.

The exhibition in the display cases was on ‘Emigration’. A member of the Library had researched and highlighted a name amongst the many hundreds in the borrowers’ registers.  Haxton. Ours is not a common surname anywhere so, of all the names in Perthshire, the odds of that had to be pretty long.

I was still shaking my head in disbelief when a charming couple came in. We were introduced. Roman re-enactors, they live about 500 yards from our new address. When they shared an experience that Mrs Muse began applauding with gusto, I beat a retreat on ‘overload’!

Deliberately taking a different road back to the A9, I found myself approaching the junction that I’d taken so warily almost exactly two hours earlier, but from the opposite direction.

There, sweeping across the carriageway ahead and disappearing into the trees, were four police motorcyclists. The same ones? I’ve no idea.

All I could hear was Mrs Muse yelling, ‘They aren’t police riders! They’re the ghosts of Romans, horsemen, and they continually ride the same route on one day every hundred years. They’ve just updated their steeds …’

I don’t care where she’s been, but Mrs Muse is definitely back!

 

 

 

Love In The Time of Corona monologues – TONIGHT

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The first of HighTide’s Love In The Time of Corona monologues available TONIGHT from 5pm.

From 5pm tonight you’ll be able to watch Jade Anouka (Last Christmas) perform Aisha Zia’s (No Guts No Heart No Glory) monologue and Katie Lyons (Manhunt) present Olivier Award nominee Morgan Lloyd Malcom’s work.

These two monologues form part of HighTide’s Love In The Time of Corona which will be available free of charge on HighTide’s YouTube and Facebook channels. Filmed and edited through support from HighTide’s sponsor Lansons, one of the world’s leading reputation management companies, these monologues will be available for four weeks from release. Zia’s piece explores the chaos of modern urban life and the feeling of apocalypse which loomed even before the pandemic, while Morgan Lloyd Malcolm looks at being a new mum trapped at home with children, and how anyone can be enough at a time like this. Three more monologues will be shared in the coming month; Sophie Melville (Bang) will take on Ben Weatherill’s (Jellyfish) piece which explores intergenerational relationships and reaching out with love to older relatives who are alone at this time.

BAFTA nominee Dawn King’s monologue about living a social media life along with a real one, will be presented by Shobna Gulati (Coronation Street). The spoken word artist Debris Stevenson (Poet In Da Corner) will perform her own piece. All five of the writers of Love In The Time of Corona are currently developing full-length plays for Suba Das’s inaugural HighTide Festival in 2021.

The Love In The Time of Corona monologues are created as part of HighTide’s Lighthouse Programme of free, brand new projects and support for artists, audiences and communities, specifically created to bring light in the weeks ahead.

The scripts will be available royalty free for actors and directors to make their own digital versions to be showcased on HighTide’s social media channels. Morgan Lloyd Malcolm comments, It’s been lovely to be a part of HighTide’s Lighthouse Programme.

In a time where many of us are unsure about what the future holds, to be able to write and send some words out into the world has felt like a lifeline. It’s been hard to create amongst the panic of what’s going on but sitting quietly for a few hours and thinking about making a small piece of work for a brilliant actor has been a proper privilege and treat. I hope what we’ve all made gives people a few moments of respite and joy.

Twitter @_HighTide_ Instagram @HighTideTheatre Website www.hightide.org.uk Donations www.hightide.org.uk/support-us/ Watch here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzbIipkB8nJXo4nKNv95V1w https://www.facebook.com/HighTideTheatre/

Surviving the lockdown through Improv Hoopla Improv Theatre Wednesday 25th March – Saturday 2nd May 2020

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Image courtesy of Rebecca Need-Menear

It’s often said that laughter is the best medicine and, Hoopla, the UK’s first improv theatre, are injecting comedy into the current crisis with online improv classes for those on lockdown. Following the cancellation of their normal workshops and the delay to their annual improv festival, the company have created online drop-in sessions, bringing improvisation to your livingroom-turned-home-office.

Packed with 100s of improv games from their regular courses, as well as interactive scenes, the focus is on having fun and letting yourself go in this troubled time – surviving lockdown through improv. Hoopla was founded with the idea of bringing people together through improv and, at a time of social distancing, it’s more important than ever to maintain interaction and stay connected for your mental health. A real confidence-boosting experience, Hoopla aims to stretch your mind as well as your perspective.

Improv classes are one of the fastest growing hobbies sweeping the UK. Starting as a weekly workshop above a pub in Balham, Hoopla are now the UK’s biggest improv school and usually run multiple courses every night of the week in venues across Central London as well as regularly running corporate workshops to clients including Google, Facebook, and Accenture. Steve Roe, Director of Hoopla, comments, Entertainment before TV was communal with music halls, dance halls and my Grandad on pub piano. I previously thought of video calls as just for super awkward job interviews, but with some experiments we found we could have loads of fun with it. People can play different characters, students can create costumes using whatever they have in their house, props can be gathered from the kitchen.

Image courtesy of Unai Garcia

It’s meant that people from around the world can join us. There are a lot of people sat at home with nobody to talk to, and improv is giving people the chance to come together (virtually) and play and have a laugh for a couple of hours. We are even going to have a virtual songs around the piano night like my Grandad.

This is also happening across the wider improv UK scene, with The Maydays and The Nursery also working together to provide online classes. Liz Peters, of The Nursery and The Maydays, added, We are improvisers. We adapt and grow and fail and learn and build. And we spread joy. So this is just one way we will ‘Yes and’ this situation. As the world begins to isolate, the need for human connection is greater than ever! They’re calling it ‘social distancing’ right now.

Let’s change that terminology to ‘physical distancing’. We are and always will be social animals; connection is part of our survival and last night proved that it is still very possible and still very fun. So come and join the ride.

Drop-in dates Monday – Friday, 7 – 9pm Saturday & Sunday, 2 – 4pm Price: £10

Age Recommendation 18+

Location Online using Zoom. All details for login for Zoom will be emailed to participants on the day of the workshop

Social Media @HooplaImpro, #hooplaimpro Website www.hooplaImpro.com

Enjoy Virtual Tours of The Enchanted Interior

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13 March – 14 June 2020

 

The Enchanted Interior, the major new exhibition at Guildhall Art Gallery, has unfortunately had to close its doors to the public due to the current health crisis. This powerful exhibition will instead be available to enjoy online with exclusive virtual tours of the exhibition led by the curator, Katherine Pearce.

Turning the historic depiction of women on its head, this empowering show sees artworks by Pre-Raphaelites placed alongside modern and contemporary works by female artists including Martha Rosler, Maisie Broadhead and Fiona Tan.

Through these videos, visitors can now engage with these mesmerising and exciting artworks remotely, enabling online visitors to challenge the idealisation of women as passive beauties, exploring female empowerment and reclaiming female identity. You can access the virtual tour here: cityoflondon.gov.uk/enchanted. along with images of the exhibition here:

The Enchanted Interior explores the recurring motif of female subjects in art, as depicted in enclosed, ornate interiors. Such images are inherently alluring yet sinister, carrying implications of enforced isolation. This theme is prevalent in nineteenth-century British painting, with many Pre-Raphaelites and Orientalists showing a fascination with the so-called ‘gilded cage’. Visitors encounter work by a breath-taking variety of artists from the high Victorian through to Art Nouveau, Aestheticism, Surrealism, and pieces by contemporary female artists, who ‘speak back’ to the historic tradition.

The exhibition features works by artists including Edward Burne-Jones, Evelyn De Morgan, James Abbot McNeill Whistler, Emma Sandys, Francesca Woodman, Fiona Tan, John William Waterhouse and Clementina Hawarden.

The Enchanted Interior is brought to Guildhall Art Gallery in partnership with Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, and features key works from these and other national collections. Paintings, furniture, photography, film, decorative objects, sculpture, and installation interweave throughout this major exhibition, which is dazzling to the eye and thought-provoking in equal measure.

Images courtesy of Paul Clarke Photography

cityoflondon.gov.uk/enchanted.

 

Living with Alzheimers – Waving from the Road by Chris Suich

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Waving from the Road

After a restless night I knew what I had to do. I had to see Bob come what may!

I stood in the side road next to the care home and the care worker brought Bob to the  window on the first floor. He looked down at me and I waved madly but he didn’t seem to know me at first. As I waved my hanky at him the emotion overwhelmed me and the tears spilled down my cheeks as I tried to smile at him and do a ‘thumbs up.’  The lady opened the window and shouted down, ‘He says he loves you’ .

‘I love you too, darling, I love you too and I miss you madly. ‘ I shouted unaware of who else might be in the street watching this lunatic woman.

My lovely Bob is now in a care home as I simply couldn’t cope anymore. The lack of sleep due to the terrible nightmares and terrors that occurred at 4am most nights and the physical demands of it all had finally got to me. I knew the time had come. It had been 5 years and 3 months since we were told there was a memory problem. It had got much worse in the last 2 years and since the hospital admittance October 2018 for severe anxiety.

How was I to know that the next day the home would be in lock down and 2 weeks and 3 days later I still had not held his hand in mine or been able to kiss or hug him.

It was a different kind of torture.

I have transferred one nightmare for another! So I am taking in to the reception area of the home photographs of us and the boys in happy times, little letters to be read to him, pictures that we had at home and cards with little newsy updates on. His soft comfy blanket for the bed, he must have that!

I am trying to keep the memory of us alive. I hope he will remember me a little longer but I know in his heart I am there and he will always be in my heart and soul! I am lucky to have been so loved by him, my husband, loyal and supportive.

This CV19 is a terrible virus and we are all having to make sacrifices but for me it couldn’t have come at a worse time.

The Dilemma By B. A. Paris Book Review

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B. A. Paris

The Dilemma is a book that stays with you. The characters are so rich and the premise of the novel is so breathtaking. I would label The Dilemma is a psychological thriller albeit one in the domestic setting of family. After all, is that not where the most complex things are? I dare you to put this novel down. I raced through it, my heart in my mouth. It is beautiful, sad and vivid. Perfect.

It’s Livia’s 40th birthday and she’s having the party of a lifetime to make up for the wedding she never had. Everyone she loves will be there except her daughter Marnie, who’s studying abroad. But although Livia loves Marnie, she’s secretly glad she won’t be at the party. She needs to tell Adam something about their daughter but she’s waiting until the party is over so they can have this last happy time together.

Adam wants everything to be perfect for Livia so he’s secretly arranged for Marnie to come home and surprise her on her birthday. During the day, he hears some terrible news. He needs to tell Livia, because how can the party go on? But she’s so happy, so excited – and the guests are about to arrive.

The Dilemma – how far would you go to give someone you love a last few hours of happiness?

One day that will change a family forever, The Dilemma is the breath-taking, heart-breaking new novel from the million-copy-selling, Sunday Times bestseller, B A Paris

The Dilemma is available here.

4 Reasons Your Skin Is Looking Dull – and What You Can Do About It

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There are many reasons why your skin might be looking dull, but there are just as many solutions. Dull and unhealthy skin can lead to a tired and wrinkled appearance, and no one wants that! The good news is that simple changes can make a big difference when it comes to combatting a lackluster complexion. Here are some common reasons why your skin might be looking dull – and what you can do about it.

The Environment

The air both inside and out contains many pollutants and small dirt particles, all of which are bad for your skin as well as your body. When dirt clings to your skin and clogs the pores, it gives it an uneven texture, which also diffuses light. This can make you look even more tired, and as though you have more wrinkles! The only way you can remedy this is to make sure you cleanse your face thoroughly at night before you go to sleep. If you don’t, all that dirt will start to cause untold damage to your skin. So, remove all traces of makeup with a gentle makeup remover, followed by a splash with warm soapy water.

Your Diet

What you drink and eat can be contributing factors to your dull complexion. Of course, drinking plenty of water should be common sense, as it helps to hydrate the skin and increase blood flow to your face. Additionally, any wrinkles you do have will appear deeper in dehydrated skin, so water is a great way to help reduce them. However, while drinking enough water is important, you should not neglect your diet, assuming that your water consumption will offset any negative effects. If you continue to eat foods high in sugar, salt and fat, you will reduce your skin’s ability to retain any moisture. So, try to eat plenty of green leafy vegetables, fatty fish, nuts, seeds, and eggs.

Stress

Stress is also a major reason why you may be suffering from dull-looking skin. And when you are worried about your appearance, it can lead to more feelings of stress, leaving you in a never-ending cycle. If you aren’t looking your best for an important presentation at work, a first date, or another special occasion, your confidence levels will suffer, and your fight or flight response will kick in. This means all your blood flow will be concentrated on your vital organs and not your skin. It’s easy enough to suggest avoiding stressful situations, but this is not always impossible. In these cases, you can try giving yourself a facial massage to help get the blood flowing. You should be left with plump looking skin and a more glowing complexion, which in turn will boost your self-esteem.

Not Using the Right Products

You might already have a skincare routine and still suffer from dull skin. In this case, it may that you are using the wrong type of product. For example, if you usually have dry skin, you should avoid oil-absorbing products, as this will simply exacerbate the problem. Also, products that contain PEG (polyethylene glycol) should be avoided, as it is said to reduce or alter the skin’s natural ability to retain moisture. It’s best to look for products that contain natural ingredients; for example, here’s a facial serum with vitamin C that helps to brighten and even skin tone and reduces inflammation, with additional ingredients such as green tea and aloe.

By taking the tips listed on board, dull skin can be a thing of the past!

 

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