So, you’re a man in a rock band. You have all the support you could need on vocal care, relaxation, and more, but there is still one aspect that you need to look at. That beard.
It isn’t enough to just stop shaving. No, a beard to be worshiped requires love, attention, and nurture.
You wouldn’t get a puppy and expect it to just grow up fine with just food and water would you? Your beard is that puppy. It needs food, water, love, walks… ok, maybe not walks…
Here are 5 easy tips to Beard Magnificence.
Washing
Where are you going with that face scrub? You don’t want to dry out your beard, or even worse, exfoliate it. You do need to keep it clean and fresh though.
Shampoo your beard like you would the rest of your hair, mild shampoos are more gentle. Make sure you properly rinse that bad boy though or you might go flakey.
Conditioning
Rock beard doesn’t have to mean it feels like rock too. Use some conditioner when you wash it too, so that your beard hair feels softer, like the puppy.
De-tangle
That puppy is now all soft and clean, but its fur is a mass of knots. Using a boar hair brush, and/or a beard comb will remove those tangles and make a subtle but huge change to it.
Shiny
Here is where you can get fancy. Beard oils, balms, and waxes are available to help make your beard and mustache shiny, sleek, smell amazing, or into some awesome shapes.
Trimming
Now, you can cut your own puppy’s hair, or you can take them to a groomer.
Taking your beard to a professional who knows exactly how to shape it is that final step to make your beard ascend from Magnificent to Godlike. Barbers spend their days looking at beards, and making them do their bidding. Trust them.
There you have it, how to have an amazing rock puppy. I mean beard.
The Arts University Bournemouth has a fascinating display into the evolution of architectural design processes across four decades. From handmade models, to the latest in 3D and virtual technology, Zaha Hadid Architects, working with the BA (hons) Modelmaking course at AUB show the range of techniques.
The lower floor shows work from the students, recreating iconic ZHA designs, in a variety of mediums such as modern 3D printing.
There is also the more traditionally hand made from copper sheet, copper wire, brass rod, and timber veneer.
As you progress through the exhibition you will see more of the designs created by ZHA themselves throughout the decades.
Make sure you visit during opening hours though, or Angry Lady will introduce herself to you….
Bournemouth University is hoping their new flagship £19.9 million building will be a hit—including previous residents, the Badger Family, with any luck. By working with environmental specialists they are ensuring that the Poole Gateway Building will not only keep current wildlife secure, but will encourage the growth of new species, and the return of old friends.
Matthew Saunders, senior building manager, informed us that it is not just outside that will be environmentally friendly, but that solar panels will cover the roof of the new centre, which will contain media, science and technology specialties including a 75 seat cinema, motion capture studios, and sound editing suites.
It is not just the badgers who are rejoicing. This project is providing work for up to 200 people, including apprenticeships with local Isle of Wight based company John Peck Construction. A time lapse view of the project can be found on the Wilmot Dixon website, with photographs being taken every 15 minutes throughout the building process.
Leaving her home to go to the air raid shelter, and seeing the London sky ablaze from German bombs is one of Toni’s earliest and most enduring memories. Beginning her life in war, and then living through a world that changed rapidly has shaped Toni Mindel, 77, into an inspiring woman.
Approaching her house, you see a car on the driveway with the sticker “Well behaved women rarely make history”, and already get a feel for who you are going to meet. She says that she is happy to talk about anything, but that some things may be censored for adult content, and breaks into a laugh.
Born just outside of London in 1939 to parents of Ukrainian descent, Toni was raised in a very traditional family with her mother, father, and elder brother. Her father owned a barber shop and women’s hair salon, and her mother was a house wife. Moving from Ukraine to England with no money or contacts other than Jewish communities, her grandparents made a life for themselves in their new country and successfully raised their children to be professionals within their community, and their grandson went on to become a doctor. She says that they are her biggest inspiration in life as she saw from an early age just what could be achieved if you believe in it and work hard.
Toni in her art studio haven
Toni has always had the fight and passion within her, but feels that she let the culture of her generation hold her back. She remembers her mother teaching her how to iron her father’s shirts because she would “need to for her husband too”, but her father wanted more for her than being “just” a wife. He would send her to the library with a list of books to read so that she could keep learning and expanding her mind. When she began working, he would push her to believe in herself and to aim higher rather than settling at the most basic level. He could see that society was changing, and that she was the right kind of woman to change it.
One of Toni’s fashion designs from the early 80s
Working as a fashion designer for many years, she was able to use her love of art to provide a living for herself. Her biggest regret however is that she didn’t go further. There were opportunities for her to become extremely successful in fashion, but she held herself back as she didn’t have the confidence in herself or her work, and didn’t feel that women had the power to go further at that time.
At the moment, Toni is single and plans to stay that way “for now”, but it hasn’t always been that way. She met her first husband as a teenager and they were married for 19 years. The time came when they felt it wasn’t working, and they divorced. She went on to marry another man, but he turned out to be an alcoholic and lost everything that they had. Single and penniless, her first husband contacted her and said that he wanted them to get back together, and that he had a life for her in Bournemouth. She moved to be with him and got herself back on her feet and her life back together. They remained together until his death twelve years ago. When asked about her first love, she explained that she doesn’t think she has ever had a love. She has had lust, and relationships with the husbands and numerous affairs, but that feeling of love is something that she doesn’t think she will ever truly understand. The love that her husband had for her is apparent though as when showing her fashion sketches she reveals that she had thought she had thrown them all away as unimportant, but when he had died, she discovered a folder of her old designs from when she worked for his company, something important and that he felt should be kept.
Toni’s painting
Art has always been Toni’s passion, from working in fashion design to running art galleries. She has drawn and painted throughout all of her life, and never stops trying to learn more and improve. In her late 50s she took an A level in Fine Arts, achieving an A, and had plans to go on to study at a higher level at Winchester, but then her husband became sick and died, and it was too much to manage when she was suddenly alone.
She feels that her husband dying was the start of the part of her life that she is most proud of. At his funeral she became aware of conversations doubting her ability to manage by herself as she had always had someone with her. She thought back to her grandparents and decided that she was going to succeed. Finding ways to make an income to keep living in her house was problematic, but she settled on taking in foreign language students. It gave her the money that she needed, but also company and new experiences. Two hip replacements, a cancer scare, and most recently, receiving cochlear implants have all been things that she has worked her way through since becoming a widow. The implants are the most exciting to her as she feels it is giving her a whole new lease of life, she only wishes she could have had them years ago. In amongst all of it she is continuing to paint and take regular courses, and is also an active member of her local gym.
Great grandmother
Looking round Toni’s house, you see her art work everywhere, and some examples of other artists who have inspired her work. The room that she describes as “her” is her art studio. She considered using it as an extra student bedroom, but the need for an art space was far more important to her than any extra income. There are paints scattered around, several sketches and paintings that are half completed. Her current project is a portrait of her great grandmother based on a picture she has, seemingly it isn’t quite right yet, but “that’s ok, there’s plenty of time to start again and make her right.”
Over the course of the next year Toni intends to continue with life as it is, she will be happy so long as she has her cats, her house, and her art. She is also planning a trip to Poland to visit Auschwitz during 2017. As a child she wasn’t completely aware of the atrocities, and decided that she would learn about it when she was in her twenties and has studied it in depth since. She feels that it is essential as part of her Jewish heritage that she experience it for herself, and having lost two close friends over the last two years, thinks that it must be now so that it doesn’t become too late.
“Don’t live based on past memories” was the best piece of advice that Toni feels she has ever received and wants to pass on. Just because something happened one way the first time you did it, doesn’t mean that it will always turn out the same. Fear of the past can hold you back from amazing future experiences, which is something that she feels she learned late in life, but that it is never too late to embrace that advice and live as fully as you can.
Christa Harrison (left) with Toni Mindel, artist and inspiration (right)
Had to do a creative writing thing about my life for uni. I had to decide what to write about, there were lists suggesting life changing moments, big memories, funny, sad… The most life changing thing has to have been my partner’s cancer, but writing about that is so broad, and dark. I needed humour. So it came to the Dyson Incident, the point that I look to where it all started, I know it had been lurking silently for a while before, but that is the point I know it all changed.
It was the week when everything would change, but we could never have seen it coming.
Five years ago, the children had broken up from school for Easter. The weather was horrible, so we had been stuck inside for the weekend, but on the Monday we decided to brave the elements and visit friends. After a fun few hours the eldest was looking pale and tired, so we headed home.
The electricity was off when we got back, making the house cold and dark. Once that was sorted, all the children went to bed and I curled up with a book knowing that Adam was at his place for the night.
After finally stopping to sleep, I began to doze off when my slumber was broken by a familiar panicked yell “MUM!!!”. It was the tone that any mother knows means to run in as fast as you can with a bowl before a child turns into a sickness volcano.
A few hours passed, she finally settled to sleep and I braved returning to bed. Two hours later and I was awoken with another yell, a different voice… the illness sharing was begun.
For three days this continued. My life was a mass of washing bedding and holding broken babies as they tried to sleep. I managed to sleep in short bursts, but I was contemplating a caffeine drip just to survive. Then, the inevitable happened. I was no longer just tired… I took to my bed and ohana kicked in. We all pulled together to get through. By now Adam was just as ill in his own home, so not able to help. His was lasting the longest, purely because he likes to win, I’m sure.
Friday came and the sun broke through the clouds. We all felt pathetic but healthy again. Now was the mission to fix the hell hole that the neglected house had become. Children were set to tidying toys, I took to the Dyson. Wanting everything to be spotless (I suspect that was over exhausted insanity speaking), I set out to vacuum the stairs.
Never any problem in the past, but today I decided that I didn’t trust the machine just waiting at the top of the stairs. No, I would make it safe and wedge it into place. Halfway through the stairs, I was realising that I had lost my mind, but I was finishing the job dammit! I moved up a step and felt the tension in the hose release. I looked up as everything went into slow motion. The monster of a vacuum cleaner was headed straight for me. I had no time to think, no time to move or save myself. It crashed onto my head.
Pieces of plastic scattered, blood dripped down my head. I sat and swore, then cried that it was all Adam’s fault with his excessively long sickness…
The Dyson was dead, the concussion lasted a few days, and Adam… he never stopped being sick.
Writing 