I can’t believe how long it’s been since I posted here. It’s been a pretty awful time with several totally unexpected bereavements, none from Covid-19 although I know for a fact that at least one of the death certificates says otherwise as per the ridiculous reporting protocols doctors are working under. Quite frankly, the losses are grievous, the causes irrelevant. It hurts as much irregardless of cause. I’ve been trying to process all that and I didn’t want to bring anyone down. We are all having our issues with all these shenanigans as it is without me making your day worse. Apart from that, work has been frantic also and I am pleased to announce the launch of two new products: SuperGlow Hero Face Cream and Du Calme, Du Calme Face Cream. They are both fantastic; SuperGlow Hero is a rich cream which contains Hyaluronic Acid and Proteasyl so use it to banish or at least soften those lines, and Du Calme² is lighter and contains Chamomile Extract, Witch Hazel, and Frankincense so it’s excellent for both sensitive and older skin. They are pretty awesome and can be used as either day or night creams and are currently priced at an introductory £24 with free p&p in the UK, saving £13. Just enter voucher code GORGEOUS at checkout.
Business bit over, I’m currently champing at the bit, waiting to go on holiday. I’m veering towards the Paris option because I can go by Eurostar so none of that airport hypertension, plus croissants plus coffee etc etc 🙂 but who knows where I’ll end up. The last five months have been mental and I’m pretty much running on fumes now. It will be extremely weird going on my hols as a masked crusader. The incomprehensible mask rules, ye gods and little fishes! Having worked all through the most intense periods of Covid with zero protection, it is absolutely preposterous to be told to mask up when the death rate is practically in single figures even with the creative counting. Apparently having any type of healthcare or food handling qualification means you can’t catch or spread Covid in your own store. However, should you venture into the cafe or shop next door, you are immediately at risk of imminent death or may very well kill everyone in that store. Double blimey, the science is so rubbish it makes my teeth hurt. As for the flimsy clingfilmesque visors, words fail me. Plus riddle me this – if the masks protect us from catching and spreading viruses, why do we all need to get the flu jab this winter? Do the magical masks only work in the summer? Answers on a postcard, please. All this is the scientific equivalent of nails being scratched across a blackboard, fo’ reals. Although the law is the law, I strongly suspect that the government might have to think it out again like Fagin in Oliver! Because we are AlaraApothecary and we cheer you up, I leave you with this splendidly apposite skit from the inimitable Seinfeld, and a remarkably prescient skit from Hale & Pace. Happy days. Have a wonderful weekend.
I just proved the theory of relativity right – a week of annual leave feels like two days, one day at work feels like two weeks 🙂 Not that I got much rest at home – I was in full Alara mode. Firstly, we got a write-up about the Wellness Sets in the Beauty Bible which has been amazing. I can’t thank them enough, they’ve been so good to me through absolutely no merit of my own which is the best type of kindness. The whole thing was arranged mell-pell. I had 3 days to get professional photos done; my photographer is 200 miles away. Eek. Have you tried sending any parcels lately? Believe me, any company that can get anything to you in less than 5 days is incredible. Thanks to the wonderful Helen Leonard of hel-of-a-beauty and Royal Mail 24-hour delivery, it got done. Proofs approved, composite gussied up by me, final photos to The Beauty Bible in less than 72 hours.
BTW, we really don’t make anything in the UK anymore. Trying to get supplies so we can keep going has been intense – we can’t get pumps, essential oils (thank God for inventory upkeep!) and forget glass bottles. It’s all imported. Globalisation is awesome, until you get a pandemic. It’s back to the plastic containers; they’re 100% recyclable but we’d only just changed to glass for crying out loud. Kudos to all SMEs that have managed to carry on if it’s been feasible to do so during the wretched lockdown.
Enough of this frippery – the full write-up is below. A big thank you to Sarah and the folks at The BB. I was going to run the promotion until end of June but I’m keeping it on for at least another month, such has been the response. Big thank you to all our customers. Now that we can all get wasted in public again as from Wednesday (who’s counting? 🙂 ), the drinks definitely ought to be on me. Have a wonderful week.
One of the loveliest things during these strange, scary times is to give your friends a gorgeous treat – not forgetting yourself, of course. These charming linen bags, each with three products wrapped in pretty tissue paper, fit the bill perfectly. (And speaking of ‘bill’, the Wellness Sets are an incredibly good price – £20 for three products that would normally notch up £41.)
We discovered AlaraApothecary a couple of years ago at one of those big shows. In fact, we sniffed it out like truffle-hounds, following a trail of honeysuckle fragrance until, round a corner, we happened on Alara founder Funmi Lampejo.
A practising pharmacist in the West country, Funmi’s longtime special interest is everything to do with skin and she drew on plant-based recipes and remedies still used in Africa and mainland Europe.
Funmi’s formulas are mostly natural ingredients with the minimum of synthetic chemicals – and no parabens, sulphates or MI (methylisothiazolinone), which is a common skin irritant. The products are blissful to use and highly effective – in fact, Sarah is just stroking fragrant Honeysuckle Body Oil on her always-tending-to-dry legs this very moment.
So – the Wellness Sets come in three fragrances: Honeysuckle (Sarah’s all-time favourite for wafting away), Rosa (scented with delicate tea rose and warm creamy vanilla) and Citrus Burst (fresh and tangy, sweet and soft). Each contains a luxurious 50ml pot of body cream, body oil in 100ml pump, and 100ml body cleanser.
A very dear friend is just going into hospital, so we’re ordering for them now!
Hello dear readers. Sorry I’ve been AWOL but it’s been really busy – I’ve got a gazillion plates all merrily spinning in the air and it’s been pretty intense. But now, rejoice! rejoice!, I have one precious week off work. You know how you keep going on and on because you have no choice, and then you get a week off and you’re hit with a tsunami of exhaustion? That was me on Friday night; I hadn’t realised how difficult it’s been to just keep functioning and smiling for the last 4 months. It feels like I’ve got PTSD which is highly dramatic and obvs not really true, but it’s the only way I can describe it. I was considering sneaking off to France which as a healthcare worker I’m allowed to, no quarantine (awesome) but I decided not to. I don’t want to lie on the form to say I’m going on business when I’m not. Obviously I wouldn’t be flying – that was miserable enough before Covid. Can you imagine now? Nope, Eurostar all the way baby, hence Paris or Amsterdam or summat.
Instead, I shall be staycationing and working on much-neglected AlaraApothecary business. The retail industry is in a real bind at the moment. After the initial flurry, footfall is declining again because the shopping experience is so rubbish. After being on my feet for 9 hours each day, I can’t tell you how much I hate queueing up at the supermarket etc. And so does everyone else – you know what you hardly ever hear now? Laughter. Molto depressing, as we say in Firenze. Shops have to bring back that fun element or the high street is doomed. If I owned a non-essential store, I’d get a whole Hawaii vibe going : leis upon entry ( you can sanitise them and let them dry before individually bagging them), and little shot glasses of punch – boozy or otherwise. Let’s get this party started. In this spirit, I’m going to have nothing on here today that is not amusing. There is just too much depressing stuff going on. AlaraApothecary: we lift your spirits. Therefore, I’m sharing all my favourite memes and videos etc from the last 4 months (4 months! It’s so wrong!!). No post would be complete without an example of how amazing God’s creation is. Have a deko at the video of the Aurora Australis at the bottom; consider it your sermon for today. Don’t let anyone convince you that you’re nothing special; compared to you, the aurora australis is a cheap handheld sparkler. Have a fabulous week.
Hi everyone, sorry it’s been a while. In the fortnight since I wrote a post, the world has shifted again. I just got used to being able to drive around freely and went on a mega-trip a fortnight ago to shake off the tainted air of confinement. The weather was glorious, and it was just really nice to hang around in Highgate, watching Londoners doing their thing, loll around in Waterlow Park with my peeps, just listening to two of the most magical sounds on the planet — children running around, going bananas, and birdsong. I realised I usually illustrate my blog with pictures of scenery or products or buildings I like. To hell with all that! The planet is not worth a damn without the people on it so this week my image is of two of the nicest people I met when we exhibited in Harrogate. They just look like they are having a great time, love this pic.
In that time, we’ve had the murder of George Floyd, the protests all over the world, and ever more draconian decrees by our governments. I haven’t watched the video, I can’t bear to see it. I still find it hard to forget the executions of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Ghadaffi which I chanced upon, and I wasn’t a fan of either so watching what is essentially a snuff film? No, thank you. I have enough trauma to contend with in my daily life as I watch my patients succumb to bouts of Covid-19 and have to deal with the Covid-collateral patients who are now end-of-life or newly diagnosed with cancers that should have been caught 3 months ago. We did take part in blackout tuesday; I thought that was a really strong statement considering how addicted we all are to social media. By the time I had the opportunity to go on IG after work, #blackoutuesday had half a billion posts. It was so encouraging to see that so many people agree that it’s wrong to see their fellow human beings being brutalised. Black lives matter? You bet! Especially mine!! I’ll go further and reclaim the fact that all lives matter; I believe we are all made in God’s image – how about that for upping the ante? That’s because this is not a black and white thing, it’s also a rich and poor thing, and an enfranchised and disenfranchised thing. I believe that a worldwide lockdown has shown a lot of people that we are all in this together for real – intelligence, race, gender, money, power, beauty, influence, none of these things will protect any of us from an apocalypse. They may afford some wriggle room but at the end of the day, we would all be toast.
While all this has been going on, our dastardly leaders have been sneaking in outrageous laws under the radar, hoping we are all distracted. You can’t have anyone in your house who is not a member of your household unless they are working. Who the hell voted for that? The police are going to come into our homes and in effect ask, ‘Where are your papers?’ I fell asleep and woke up in Nazi Germany. We must all wear masks on public transport, and probably to come soon, whenever we leave the house, or face an £80 fine. Pity the government wasn’t so concerned about me wearing a mask when I went to work everyday as a pharmacist for eight solid weeks without any PPE, as they risked my life and that of millions of essential workers at a time they were still telling us half a million people would die from Covid-19. They know what they can do with their mask. We did actually pay some attention in physiology classes: I know how small viruses are, and how big the holes are even in medical-issue masks. Muppets.
Anyone who still thinks this is all about a virus must be a real innocent abroad. Even though the infection rates are now negligible by medical standards, they’ve increased the interval between lockdown reviews from 3 weeks to a month so each period has been prolonged, and they are putting out ever-more draconian laws. In other news, it’s been found that H-2 antagonists such as Ranitidine and Famotidine help with recovery from Covid-19. Would you like to guess which class of drugs has been unavailable since last autumn because all Ranitidine supplies worldwide were found be contaminated with a rocket-fuel component? (How? Search me) Ding! H-2 antagonists. All of them. And despite the nonsense you are reading in the media, hydroxychloroquine is being used successfully all over the world including the UK to treat Covid-19 patients. I read the medical coverage in the media and look on in astonishment at the lies and propaganda and misinformation.
As of today, WHO says 399,013 people have died of Covid-19 worldwide. Meanwhile, in 2017 the same WHO said the average worldwide mortality burden of influenza every year is 389,000 – ranging from 290,000 in a low year to 650,000 in a bad year, and that’s from respiratory causes alone. Forget the associated complications like cardiomyopathy and myocarditis. Source: NCBI https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6815659/ Russian flu in 1977-78 killed 700,000, Hong Kong flu in 1968-69 killed between 1 million to 4 million people. You probably don’t know that because there wasn’t 24-hour rolling news full of scary charts in primary colours.
This is a headline from the last time we had a bad flu season. Nicely terrifying figures: 64,000 deaths in the UK alone in one month. I don’t remember the whole world giving it the full Chicken Licken: ‘The sky is falling! The sky is falling!!’
The prolonged lockdown is the most senseless thing I have ever witnessed and the less virulent the disease becomes, the more controls get imposed on us. For those who are willing to trade their civil liberties for ‘safety’, history tells us that you will end up losing both. So let’s not fall for the divide and conquer tactics. Black, White, Asian, Hispanic – we are fighting a truly powerful enemy at the moment. Believe it or not, we are winning as the plan seems to be falling apart, hence the ‘headless chicken’ quality of the rules and regulations.
As a Christian, I often get asked if God is real, why doesn’t he intervene to stop evil? It occured to me this week that most of what we call evil is man-made. Hunger, poverty, assaults, wars, inequality – they are all man-made and we can solve them if we want to. All countries have no money to help the poor but the UK alone can find £300,000,000,000 behind the sofa in the space of a fortnight. The US government has $1,000,000,000,000 handy. Granted these are two of the richest countries in the world but up to now the US has been spending $750 billion on defence on average every year and more than $900 billion on the space programme since 1958. The country is neither at war nor has it put a colony on the moon. It does not have a fit-for-purpose healthcare system. How crazy is that? Copy that for every country in the world – The money is there, it’s a matter of priorities. So, no God is not going to come down and sort this out for us when we can fix it ourselves. But with this lockdown, the enemy is big enough and we can’t fight it alone and if you ask any Christian, they’ll tell you they can see Him working big-time thwarting some pretty scary efforts to enslave the human race. So, again, don’t be afraid and don’t trade your humanity for a life of ‘safe’ self-imprisonment. Even if you don’t believe in God, you are a rational, smart human being. I’m going to assess the risks and benefits and think for myself. Resist the devil, and he will flee you. That’s Christianity 101 – it also works against jumped-up dictators if there are enough people on your side. And there are definitely more people who want to just get on with their lives than there are wannabe tyrants. As this is AlaraApothecary, we finish with the utterly wonderful Eva Cassidy singing the utterly wonderful Curtis Mayfield song ‘People Get Ready’ Love for all, hatred for none. Have a fabulous weekend.
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Let’s get the business bit out of the way. Because we are AlaraApothecary and our aim is to help you survive post-lockdown confusion in style, we are launching 3 Wellness sets : Rosa, Citrus Burst, and Honeysuckle. Ta-dah! Each one contains 1 x 50ml cream, 1 x 100ml body oil, and 1 x 100ml body cleanser, comes in a nifty eco-certified linen bag, and costs £20. A quick check by the clued-up will show these 3 items would ordinarily cost £41 so it’s obvs a bargain. You can’t get to the countryside? Let the countryside come to you in a jar or a bottle.
Actually the idea is to offer something that is affordable which you can buy as a treat for yourself or someone else – God knows we all need cheering up. The idea gelled as I was watching ‘The Most Expensivest’. Since the lockdown started, I’ve found I can’t watch anything realistic or programmes where people are being mean to one another. Exception? The Blacklist, obvs. But then it’s really like a cartoon anyway; Raymond Reddington is a fantasy figure. So, I’ve been watching stuff like ‘The Most Expensivest’ which is a hoot. Watching 2 Chainz in a succession of highly extravagant outfits proferring one ludicrously expensive item after another for our delectation is a blast. I can live without his constant throwing of the devil horns but other than that, highly recommended. I pretty much want every crazy item he covers – gold-inlaid bamboo fishing rods that cost $12,000 each? You bet. And no, I can’t fish. What’s your point? 🙂 My fave thus far is the customised truck that costs $380,000. You can have a rifle mount fitted to the back, and it’s called The Velociraptor. No, I can’t shoot either….. It’s a must-have, for real. Anyway, though I have nothing but max respect for the workmanship involved in making these products, I really just want to make something nice that people who aren’t gazillionaires/crazy/ spendthrifts* (*delete as applicable) can enjoy. Hence the Wellness Sets. The products smell amazing; buy one for yourself and everyone you know, today.
What else? I’ve been watching ‘Another Life’ which is a sci-fi series starring Katee Sackhoff aka the inimitable Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica. You haven’t seen Battlestar Galactica? What exactly have you done with your life thus far? Get the box set ASAP (after buying a Wellness Set, of course), and I’ll see you in 3 weeks’ time. It is amazingly good. Anyway, ‘Another Life’ is not as high-voltage but it has everything – psychopathic astronauts, homicidal plant-life and spider-like beings on alien planets, morally-ambiguous captains, inscrutable alien artifacts – sci-fi heaven. I’ve also been reading John Bude mysteries from The British Library Crime Classics range. He’s very funny and people get what they deserve in his books, so not too lifelike then 🙂 Now that we are all obviously not at risk of imminent demise, I leave you with some of my favourite memes. The best is the Mother ‘home-schooling’ her child. Priceless. Have a great weekend.
According to Matt, when it gets to Lemon & Herb, we can all go to the pub again.Absolute all-time favourite
