Get rid of those bad habits in your working and personal life…

On 11th June 4pm Pete Cohen (former GMTV and This Morning Life Coach for many years) will be giving an inspirational talk on “Habit Busting” with tea/coffee and cookies at the Old Government House Hotel based on his best selling book.

Former GMTV and This Morning Life Coach Pete Cohen is an accomplished, professional business coach, public speaker and author who can help individuals, executives, or organisations to achieve their very best. He has worked as a performance coach with many sporting personalities such as Tim Henman, Ronnie O’Sullivan, the Arsenal football team, Ellen MacCarther and many more.

Absolutely all monies are going to “Team Hannah”. Details of the charity can be found at www.teamhannah.com

“Pete Cohen’s ability to help people transcend their unwanted habits is amazing.”Dr Hilary Jones, MB BS

We all know that our bad habits often prevent us from delivering exceptional results all the time. The relentless pace of working, the ever-increasing pressure to manage costs and still out-perform year-on-year, the importance of managing our own personal brands and reputations, the expectations others place on us to achieve the impossible and show willing. How we cope with these pressures defines our character; our character defines how able we are to manage the interference and deliver time after time.

So what are these habits that need busting? Often they are things we have  picked up along the way, things we’ve let ourselves believe, personal doubts and niggles which we’ve never put to rest and some lack of confidence. In this Habit-busting talk Pete will explain some powerful strategies that help you to unlearn your bad habits and replace them with more productive and enjoyable ways of living your life, You will learn how to make simple but highly effective changes, and ultimately you will gain more control and become freer and happier.

Please e-mail mail@citd.co.uk to book your table/seat(s)

A charity fun day is being held at the Guernsey Scouts premises on Sunday 20th May. There will be plenty of interesting activities including Bouncy castles, BBQ, tombola, bottle stall, cakes, lucky dip, craft activities, face painting, fete games and much more…

All funds raised will be split between Home Start Guernsey and the Guernsey Society for Cancer Relief.

Small traders – if you want to set up a table please email aimee.horsepool@hotmail.co.uk

Sunday 20th May from 11am to 4pm at the 2nd Guernsey Scouts premises, Rue du Haut, Vale (the lane behind Stan Brouard and Cycle World)

Welcome to the GBG online competition entry page!

You can now enter any competition in GBG magazine online. All you have to do is fill in the form below.

Entries must be in by Monday 21st May 2012

We wish you the best of luck!

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There are several more competitions within April issue of GBG magazine that can not be entered online this month so grab a copy and see for yourself!

Calendar Girl Angela Baker talks to Jill Chadwick about life after that famous WI nude calendar which sparked a Hollywood movie and raised more than £4million for cancer charities

There is a small yellow sunflower pinned on Angela Baker’s jumper and it goes with her everywhere. She explains that as her husband lay seriously ill in hospital with blood cancer she noticed that many of his get well cards featured the cheerful blooms. “How can you feel miserable when you look at these pretty flowers, “she says, and they came to represent a talisman of hope for her and John?

Angela was in the island to talk at the ABNAMRO Women at One lunch club and while she is much in demand as a speaker, she happily gives her time, and energy to help other charities.

“I have never been to Guernsey before and really fell in love with the place”, she says. Almost shyly she admits to having found love again – with the local vicar, a tall handsome silver fox called Charles.

It’s clear he adores her and is in obvious awe of all she has achieved and her ability to light up a room.

“I was invited to a ball and my daughter said I should invite Charles. He had been a great friend of John’s and we knew he wouldn’t have minded.”

But she is sombre as she recalls those dark days of her late husband’s diagnosis and the months he battled against the illness which finally too his life.

“When John was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1998 we coped with his illness by focusing on short term goals, the main one being able to see his favourite plant, the sunflower bloom again.”

“We had hoped that he would get better, so we bought seeds, and everyone in the village planted them up so that when he went out he would see them growing tall and beautiful. Sadly his illness was tragically short and he never lived to see the flowers or the calendar, but it was wonderful to see them blooming everywhere in the village after he died.”

But while he was undergoing his treatment their friends had decided to produce a calendar to help John, and others like him, by raising money for research projects.

“I had it in my mind that we would do a WI version of the Pirelli calendar but based on the jam and Jerusalem themes the WI is associated with. I suppose the difference between the Pirelli version and ours was that some of us looked as though we needed a bit of an iron.”

“I remember when we first talked about it John told me that we were all talk, that we would never go through with it…..never tell a woman that! So one night we girls had plenty of red wine, locked the doors and took off our clothes!”

Up until he was diagnosed he was a young fit man who was never ill, it was such a shock.”

But the girls decided the calendar project would give something positive for John to concentrate on – and they soon had 12 models, albeit very nervous ones.

“We had originally planned that Miss July would take the shots, while her artist husband Terry Logan would shout instructions from behind the door. Sadly it didn’t work out that way. We had no idea why the lights were flashing and what lens to use, so in the end we just said, come on in and take them for us.”

They managed to get a bit of sponsorship from the village pub to help them get the calendars printed and promoted – and at first they had planned a 1,000 print run – then were told we had to have 3,000 and we wondered how we would ever sell that many.

“Eventually we sold 88,000, twice as many as the famous Pirelli calendar. We were pleased about that!” The calendar has gone on to sell in its millions, and raise more than £4m for cancer research. But more recent projects only feature six of the women who are referred to as the Baker’s half dozen.

What the women hadn’t bargained for was the huge amount of media interest the calendar would attract. “I woke up one morning to hear Terry Wogan talking about us on the radio….then suddenly the whole village was filled with huge TV vans with satellite dishes. It just went mad. Every day there were three to four hundred letters arriving requesting calendars and at one point I had to go to the doctor with a bad arm. He simply told me “Angela you have calendar elbow!”

But the success of the nude photo shoot did not end with the 2000 calendar and the many TV appearances. In 2003 the girls’ story was turned into a smash hit Hollywood film starring Julie Walters and Helen Mirren and their fame hit the headlines all over again.

“It took six months of negotiating as we wanted the film to be British, feature British actresses – and make a lot of royalties for the charity, We managed to get what we wanted although they insisted that we would not be able to meet the actresses who would be portraying us as they intended to rely upon the script to capture our characters. Then one day my telephone rang and it was a woman called Julie…I had to stop and think because I didn’t know a Julie, then she added its Walters, Julie Walters, I felt like I should be saluting.”

One by one the rest of the cast turned up in the village, though Helen Mirren was the one we were dreading most. But we need not have worried; she came to the door with tears in her eyes and a huge bunch of sunflowers and just said how excited she was to meet us.”

Even now some of the classic lines from the film based on that home spun amateur shoot live on.  Who could forget the, “we are going to need considerably bigger buns” one liner when the iced buns were not managing to cover up Miss November’s ample chest. Or the cameo role the girls played in a scene from the film when they lost out in the cake competition to an M&S Victoria sponge.

“Nowadays you could have spray tans and get toned up first, our only styling advice was to not wear a bra for a day so we would hot have strap marks!”

“We were on one long roller coaster ride and life went a bit mad. We were flown to Hollywood on Virgin Atlantic, Richard Branson and his dad came to see us off and we were in business class sitting behind Kevin Costner – and his new wife who is about 18! But once you get on a plane and turn left into First Class you never want to turn right again.”

“We were treated like celebrities, appeared on the Coast to Coast Jay Leno show – but our feet always stayed on the ground as we never lost sight of why we were doing all this.

We even visited Buckingham Palace to hand deliver calendars to the Queen and the Queen mum, and were told that indeed the royals had every intention of using them. In fact we have it on good authority that Prince Charles and Camilla are fans! But little things would happen along the way to keep things in perspective. One day an American journalist arrived in the village to interview us and we were perched on a bridge being the centre of it all. Then an elderly couple who were standing nearby with a camera seemed to be hovering and we struck a pose. “Actually we just wanted the bridge” they told us, putting us in our places!”

And Calendar Girls is now a sell-out UK stage show tour, and eight more calendars have followed.

But it is Angela’s ability to be funny, sweet and touchingly grateful for the interest that still surrounds her charity, which is so endearing.

“I can’t stand people who are up themselves,” she whispers. “I just know that John is looking down at all this having a real chuckle.”

Serves 1 x 20cm round

Ingredients:

450g Mixed Dried Fruits (Cherries, Prunes, Sultanas, Mixed Peel)

335ml Strong Black Tea

100ml Orange Juice & Zest of one Orange

75g Guernsey Dairy Unsalted Butter

335g Self Raising Flour

2 Free Range Eggs

25g Demerara Sugar

Place your choice of dried fruits in a bowl. Prepare hot black tea with your choice of tea or teabags and allow to infuse. Strain and pour the hot tea, orange juice and zest onto the dried fruit. Cover with cling film, then leave for at least 3 hrs or preferably overnight.
Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Grease and line the base of a 2lb loaf tin.

Beat together the Guernsey Dairy unsalted butter and sugar until light white and creamy, then beat in the egg followed by the sieved flour. Carefully stir through the fruit mixture. Spoon the mixture into the tin, then smooth over the surface with the back of a spoon. Sprinkle over the top over with a fine layer of Demerara sugar.
Bake for approx. 1 hr or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Leave to cool in the tin, then turn out, cut into slices and serve with refreshing cup of tea and Guernsey Dairy Whipping Cream.

This fruity teacake can be made up to 1 week in advance and stored in an airtight tin.

Burning mouth syndrome (BMS) is a common but complex problem that causes patients to experience a burning or scalding pain on the lips and tongue (and sometimes throughout the mouth). There are often no visible signs of irritation, and the cause of the syndrome may be caused by various factors, ranging from the onset of menopause to psychological dysfunctions to vitamin deficiencies. Sometimes a cause just cannot be identified. BMS may affect up to 5 percent of the population and usually occurs in people over the age of 50.

Though members of both sexes are susceptible to BMS, it occurs more frequently in older women (between 18 and 33 percent of post-menopausal women are estimated to have BMS).

The syndrome is also called glossodynia (tongue pain) and stomatodynia (mouth pain). BMS is not a form of, nor can cause, cancer.

The exact cause of BMS is difficult to determine. In 30 percent of cases it is caused by a variety of existing conditions that affect the oral and systemic health. Some conditions include the onset of menopause, diabetes and deficiencies in such nutrients as iron, zinc, folate, thiamine, riboflavin, vitamins B6 and B12 and complications of cancer therapy (radiation and chemotherapy).

In the majority of cases, no specific diagnosis for the symptoms can be made. BMS symptoms may occur from xerostomia (dry mouth), tongue thrusting, bruxism (teeth grinding), irritating or ill-fitting dentures and thrush (a common fungal infection characterised by a white lesion). Some research points to nerve disorders and damage; psychological factors, particularly depression and anxiety; allergies; acid reflux; and medications that cause dry mouth. It’s not unusual for a patient suffering from BMS to have more than one cause attributed to the ailment or to have health care providers fail to find any cause at all.

About one-third of patients say BMS symptoms first appeared shortly after a dental procedure, recent illness or medication course.

Treatment for BMS depends on the patient and the cause. If the cause is related to the oral cavity, your dentist has a variety of ways to provide relief. For dry mouth, your dentist may advise that you drink more fluids, or he or she may prescribe medicine that promotes the flow of saliva. Thrush may be treated with oral antifungal medications, such as nystatin or fluconazole. If dentures are the culprit, your dentist can make adjustments so they won’t irritate the mouth, or replace them with better-fitting dentures. Topical capsaicin, the natural chemical in cayenne pepper, may provide pain relief in some patients with BMS.

If you think you may have this condition contact your dentist and discuss the issues rather than leaving it.

“It has been an amazing year of practise and enlightenment since the last time I had a GBG photo session with John de Garis. As we dive forward into spring its time for reflection and contemplation, using this time to readjust the goals that maybe got lost in space after New Year. As I continue to bumble along the path of Yoga its amazing how you can see the true goal of yoga is sometimes or often frequently confused with the outer appearance. It doesn’t matter if you can do a one handed handstand, or if you can touch your toes as you bend forward.

What is important if finding the peace within.

During my recent adventures in India I took a vow of silence for 10 days to meditate. With no phone, music, pens or paper as the 10 days progressed you could really begin to see the games the mind plays! So in time and with practise we take this stillness onto the mat. Taking the time to really see where you are right now. Not how you felt last week but becoming increasingly aware of where your body and mind will let you go today. It’s five years since I began teaching and I encourage you to not let your mind limit you to what you can achieve.

Happy practising.”

Paschimontasana

Seated forward bend.

Sitting on the floor draw the fleshy parts of the buttocks away from you, Sit up really tall and soften the shoulders down your back. As you inhale lift the arms over head and begin to lengthen towards to your feet, ankles, shins or wherever your flexibility will take you. Stay with a long breath.

Keep the face soft and let the release of your breath draw you into a comfortable space. If your hands reach past your feet you can wrap one hand around the wrist.

Forward Bends are very introspective and have a very calming effect on the mind. Great for relieving stress and anxiety. This asana provides benefits for the digestive system and also tones the kidneys. Don’t worry if your feet are not in reach. The goal is to find a place so comfortable you could stay for 5 minutes or more.

Advanced Yoga Practise is really when you can find the stillness.

Further information about Alice Marshall’s Yoga classes can be found at aliceyoga.com

There is no excuse for keeping those feet covered up – time to get them on parade and ready for the big inspection! Having a pedicure literally gives our feet a mini break and you will feel as though you are walking on air. Spring and summer means one thing – time to get out the flip flops and sandals so it’s goodbye to nasty nails and hard skin, and hello to smooth toes with nicely clipped and painted  nails.

Every day we put more stress on our feet that on our bodies, but they tend to be the things we ignore most on the health and beauty front. One of the most basic, and avoidable ways of feet becoming painful is the build-up of hard skin on the balls of the feet, the big toes or heels. That’s why it is vital to spend just a couple of minutes a day to use a foot fi le to buff off that rough skin. This prevents a build-up and you won’t experience the burning sensation of walking on painful soles.

A professional pedicure is by far the best solution for putting your best foot forward, even if you opt for a single treat to start you off and get you into a proper beauty regime. The other daily must is to moisturize your feet every day to keep feet soft and comfy. Always wear proper fitting shoes and never squeeze your feet into too small shoes, even if they are of the Jimmy Choo variety! Once feet are soft and nails are clipped and tidy then go mad with nail polish..the brighter the bolder the better!

We found beautiful 40s vintage tea dresses and silk shirts, evening dresses and fabulous shoes and retro handbags, and most outfi ts cost under £10. We found fashions through the decades which would have fi tted the bill for sailing off an Edwardian adventure, cycling off to a 1940s picnic, or enjoying some stylish down time in the nifty fifties.

And for those on a tight budget the great news is that there are some great bargains to be had. Accessories are key to this seasons vintage looks so whether you love the sexy 40s or chic 50s fashions, there are some rich pickings. Belts, bags and scarves are the key and we were amazed to fi nd authentic labels – and almost cried when we had to leave behind a LuLu Guiness number as it was the wrong era!

Our models Natalie and Janine, who both work as secretaries at Ogier, were so impressed with our finds they intend to spread the word!

Our thanks to Communicate, The Red Cross, Health Exchange, The Salvation Army and Cheshire Home charity shops for providing all the clothes accessories and props, including some amazing Occupation suitcases and handbags which were used for the Liberation celebrations no doubt. All items are now safely back on the charity rails so head down and grab yourself a vintage bargain.