Lockdown and quarantine mean the actor can’t be with his family to mourn the loss of his sister, Julie.
Colton Haynes has said he is “loss for words” after his sister Julie passed away. The actor said that his sister has died “after a long battle with cancer”.
Sharing photos of his late sister, on his Instagram account, the actor said that he was trying to focus on being grateful that “she doesn’t have to suffer any longer & remembering all the incredible times we’ve had together”.
Tragedy
However, like many people who have lost a family member during the COVID-19 pandemic, Colton has found that he can’t be with other family members as governments have installed lockdown or shelter in place rulings to help “flatten the curve” of the fast-spreading virus.
He wrote, “I just feel absolutely gutted that our family can’t be together to hold one another during this crippling time”.
Julie was twenty years older than Colton and they both have different mothers, however, according to Queerty, they were both incredibly close.
According to her obituary, Julie, who was 51, is survived by her husband and three children, as well as both of her parents, siblings, in-laws, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren.
Celebrity friends of Colton’s were on hand to send their virtual love and thoughts, with Ruby Rose saying, “Sending you so much love beautiful. I am so sorry” and Michael Turchin adding, “Ugh so so sorry to hear this buddy. Sending you lots of love”
We are told that gardening is good for our wellbeing but more importantly, our mental health. Several community gardens have popped up over the past few years with this in mind and thanks to Gardeners World, it has highlighted the important impact of these and in someways championed them. They have become popular. BBC’s Gardeners World has also been mentioning the importance of gardening on our mental health almost weekly over the 2019 season.
On the 21st June 2019, I was watching Gardeners World with Joe Swift interviewing musician Will Young at his Cornwall home. Will was particularly open and candid about how his garden had helped alleviate his suffering from his anxiety disorder and how gardening grounds him with its sensory pleasures and the patience and nurturing it requires to help nurture himself. He went on to say that gardening and nature are brilliant healers. Will deliberately puts some form of gardening into his daily routine and he was more excited about his dahlia coming back than his first number 1. And quite a feat because dahlias can be fussy flowers demanding care and attention.
Is there is a link to health and wellbeing within the garden? If you’ve never been keen on gardening, find it boring, slow-paced, a bit shit, a thing your grandmother did, then you probably won’t understand the importance or get it. I’ll speak candidly about myself here and say that from a personal point of view, since having a garden I feel much more at ease with myself and the world around me. Now, this could also be because I started gardening when I turned 40 with a house move. Prior to this, I was in a flat, we had grounds but it was just grass. I never really found time to switch off when at home. I was always on the go. So it was quite a shock what happened when I got my own plot of dirt.
Now I’m not sure what happened but there has always been a nagging voice in my head called anxiety. I’ve only suffered from one serious panic attack and I can tell you, it wasn’t pleasant. I was shopping at the time and suddenly out of nowhere, I HAD to get out. I wasn’t in danger and I didn’t feel violated. I just needed to get away from the people. It took me ages to work out why my supermarket club card didn’t work for some time afterwards. I’d dumped the trolley and the scanner and legged it!
That has been my most extreme. I’ve had moments when I’ve had to return home to check the front door or most recently, the cooker. Going to my GP to discuss these symptoms and my keen interest at just going to bed and not waking up again resulted in a relatively long talk, a blood test and the offer of NHS counselling. I’ve been here before and it took over 6 months to get an appointment. That was back in 1992 and the waiting list is now much longer.
One question I was asked was “What stops you from ending it?”
Quite a finite question and to be honest, I’ve got too much to live for. And one of those things is my garden. I enjoy watching things grow. Nurturing a plant to give its fullest in its season, cutting it back and then watching it all start again in spring is quite joyous.
Evidence has shown that just 2 hours a week in the garden or a green space is good for you. Two hours. That’s not a lot of time. I can do more than that in a day on social media. Broken down, it is just 15 minutes a day. Now I can tell you, as a new gardener with a garden the size of 4 cars in length and 3 cars wide, I can spend more than 15 minutes a day in there even when there isn’t much to do.
The joy of gardening comes from experimenting and never being afraid to mix plants up, move them around or be aggressive with them. My loosestrife is an absolute bully and needs to be kept in check otherwise it’ll take over four other plants near it. And pulling out the wayward growth might be extreme and not in-keeping with well being, but in doing so I am looking after the others around it like my banana plant and daisies. 2019 saw the daisies shine with me taking control.
And this goes someway with your mental health. Taking control of a situation, no matter how insignificant it might be at the time, can have massive benefits in its outcome. Likewise, tackling the ongoing battle you have when you grow lilies with lily beetles. I wasn’t going to let them decimate my flowers and so I went to battle. I have since dug up the bulbs and moved them to pots. Again it is that going headstrong into the problem, coming up with a solution and controlling it as best you can.
But never fear to try something in the garden. It doesn’t always work. I’ve lost several plants over the years and two plants needed to be moved three times before I found their spot. Now the hypericum thrives and the bees love its bright yellow flowers. How ironic then that Hypericum (St John’s Worts) is used to support a healthy nervous system and yet here it is growing in my garden and giving me visual pleasure in all that it now does.
On January 2nd 2018, we lost motoring journalist John Slavin to suicide. He was struck by a train. He was just 30 years old. John had succumbed to his own inner demons and mental health issues. Long-standing battles with depression had started in puberty and there were many crisis episodes where John had felt suicidal. Never wanting to burden others, John had developed skills to hide his depression from those around him. I sadly never got to meet John but I remember the day well thanks to Twitter and it has stayed with me. I can’t explain it other than I could feel empathy for him and his family. It also wakes you up a bit too about your own mortality and your own health of mind, body and soul.
John loved sunflowers and following his death, motoring Journalists and friends of John, Simon Harris and Adam Binnie started up a sunflower challenge game called the John Slavin Sunflower challenge with money raised going to the CALM charity. CALM Campaign Against Living Miserably. Offers support and information to people when they need it. They exist to prevent suicide which takes 18 lives everyday and is the single biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK.
Since I started to write this piece we have now been under lock and key by the Coronavirus outbreak. As a keyworker, I have the ability to legitimately leave my home and go to work but for those who don’t, not being able to do those things we took for granted can be harrowing for most but more so if you feel isolated and alone. And that’s when having someone to talk to on the other end of a device or phone is important.
Now here is the fun part. I’m told by John’s mother, Sylvia, that he wasn’t much of a gardener and preferred to grow decaying motorbikes in the soil but he did enjoy growing things especially edible produce. And that’s all that is needed. A little bit of enjoyment from seeing something grow from seeds. Gardening is all about growing and nurturing. And there is a reward at the end. Like nurturing yourself, you can be rewarded with great blooms, misshapen peppers that you won’t find in the shops but taste 50 times better because you grew them yourself. And sunflowers are the perfect way to get quite a lot from not much so why not try.
And the growing doesn’t stop there. For John, he is remembered with growing sunflowers and sunflowers are one of the easiest things to grow. They also grow really tall from one seed so they give you so much. What’s more, sunflower seed sowing starts in April and can be done indoors from a window sill. And despite the lockdown, you can still buy sunflower seeds online so there really is no stopping you.
As for me, I’ve sort of cheated. From last year’s growth I’ve had random sunflowers start popping up around the garden. You’ll be amazed just were the seeds end up but that hasn’t stopped me starting from ground zero again.
So far the John Slavin Sunflower Challenge has raised £3,453. Come and join in the fun and the remembrance of John for 2020 here at Adam’s Just Giving page. Proceeds going to www.thecalmzone.net.
Share the link on your social media and get others on board. It’s easy to do.
If you’ve not heard of the #NakedBoyfriendChallenge yet – it’s because it’s yet to truly take off, but we really need it to.
Are you starting to get a little antsy due to the current lockdown? Have you managed to cut your own hair and have you Marie Kondo’d your entire house? Then this challenge might be the rest-bite from boredom you need from those long, drawn-out days.
If you look up #NakedBoyfriendChallenge on Twitter you’ll only get a couple of hits at the time of us publishing this article, but we’re hoping that will all change soon.
So what is the #NakedBoyfriendChallenge? It’s actually a really simple challenge to undertake and it’s perfect while we’re currently in the current coronavirus lockdown.
Simply, all you need to do in order to take part is to film yourself walking in on your boyfriend whilst you’re in nothing but your birthday suit and film his reaction to your nakedness.
Twitter user, The OrangeFrog86 recently decided to do the challenge and walked in on his boyfriend, who was innocently playing on his computer and the result was hilarious.
His boyfriend, who was playing a game on his computer, barely looked away from the screen but did crack a smile, before returning to the screen. When OrangeFrog86 enquired, “is that it? … I’m naked”, his boyfriend replied, “when are you not naked?”.
So, grab your phone, get naked and walk in on your boyfriend at an unexpected moment and don’t forget to tag the results with #NakedBoyfriendChallenge.
I’ve been using a pair of Jabra 65t earbuds for a while now and they have become pretty invaluable. Going out without them feels as bad as leaving your phone at home.
Aesthetically, the Elite 65t is a pretty compact pair of earbuds and are well shaped to sit, largely, flush with your ears. They are supplied with 3 pairs of ear gels, I use the largest. They fit snugly and have never fallen out or even come loose while I’ve been using them. The 65t’s are comfortable and light and actually, you don’t even notice you are wearing them.
I think that’s the beauty of these earbuds. They are so convenient, so easy to use, they become essential.
You can of course use the Jabra 65t as a handsfree kit. Jabra’ four-microphone technology seems to be effective in reducing wind noise. There are perforations on the body of the buds with mics inside to supply ambient sound. The amount of ambient sound can be controlled by the app and we’ll come to that in a minute.
The Jabra Sound+ app is the perfect companion to your Jabra earbuds and allows you to customise your sound so your music and calls experience always suits your surroundings. Through the app, you can personalise your experience by customising the way your sound is delivered. You can choose your preferred voice assistant from Amazon Alexa, Siri® or Google Assistant™. I use the Google Assistant installed on my phone to keep things simple.
Sound quality is very good. There is a deep warm sound which was a pleasant surprise. Earbuds are so small, it is often difficult to get enough bass due to the size of the speakers. In this case, the speakers are 6mm for example. However, the sound quality is excellent for earbuds.
The Jabra Elite 65t earbuds and charging case are made entirely out of plastic. I have used some with a metal case that tend to feel a bit more premium, but these headphones still feel like a premium product and the case is very practical, durable and fun. The lid is a bit of a pain at first, hard to open. You quickly discover that the lid has a cool, spring-loaded hinge that needs to be pushed back, then flipped up.
The earbuds sit neatly inside and an LED signifies they have made connection and are charging.
Battery life is great at up to 5 hours. Perfect for long drives or a boring meeting. The case provides a further 2 full charges. That’s a serious amount of battery life. The case is charged via a micro USB.
Controlling the music and playback is simple. Fingertip controls give you easy access to core functions. On the right earbud, you can control: play/pause music, answer/end call, reject call double-press the button when you receive an incoming call, voice assistant. on the left earbud, you can control: volume up/volume down, next track, previous track.
When you crack open the case and remove the buds, they turn on automatically. Wireless performance is excellent and you can connect more than one device which is a great feature. I have two phones so this works well for me.
Through the app, you can control a range of functions from updating the software, customising the sound through the inbuilt equaliser, modify your call settings by adjusting how much of your own voice you want to experience on a call for a natural, comfortable sound and adjusting the amount of ambient sound you let in.
You can also select from a range of presets for situations like commuting, relaxing, and others, although the 65t’s can sense if you are stationary, moving, in a quiet place and more, and it will select the correct preset for that situation. Oh, there’s also a handy ‘find my Jabra’ function in case you lose them too.
If I had to criticise, I would say the case doesn’t feel as premium as other earbuds I’ve used but is tough and durable. The earbuds themselves are smooth and on occasion, I have almost dropped them.
Other than that, they’re great. I use them every day and always have them in my pocket.
Lockdown means you can’t get your hair done right now, but Chris Appleton has some basic, easy to follow instructions on how to do your hair during the quarantine.
He’s most famous for being a celebrity hairstylist for the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian, but Chris Appleton has shared some tips on how to do your own hair (or at least get a partner or housemate to do it for you) at home, during the current COVID-19 lockdown.
If you’re not quite ready for a Joe Exotic style mullet, you might want to take the tips offered by Chris in an Instagram post he recently published. There are only a few steps to recreate that freshly barbered look – according to the stylist.
He starts the video saying that you’ll need four items for the perfect trim.
Scissors
Clippers
Sectioning clips
Comb.
He starts off by explaining that you’ll need to section off the hair, so you know what is going to be short and what parts are going to be long. Sectioning the hair also helps you keep focused on one part of the head at a time.
He also suggests that you use a razor number length that is a bit longer than you’re used to. He suggests a number 4 to begin with because it will leave you a little longer to play with – just in case things go wrong.
Chris then suggests that you start in front of the ear with the razor in an upward motion towards the top of your head while moving slowly towards the back of the hair. Once you’ve done one side, you’ll be ready to start on the other side of your head.
Once you’re finished with that you’ll need to start grading the hair to the top part.
It gets a little bit more complex, but you do this with your scissors and you start from the back and move forward to the front.
“The company has had to make the difficult decision to close with immediate effect”
Legends in Brighton has instructed an insolvency firm to help wind down its business, a statement released today has said.
Since the outbreak of coronavirus, thousands of businesses across the UK shuttered indefinitely with many now struggling to stay financially viable with no customers.
The venue, which was a hotel, club, bar and restaurant on the Brighton seafront issued a short statement on its website, stating,
“The company has had to make the difficult decision to close with immediate effect and a licensed firm of Insolvency Practitioners has been instructed to assist in placing the company into Creditors Voluntary Liquidation. Therefore, no further bookings can be made”.
It also suggested that those who had pre-existing bookings should contact their credit card providers to check if they were eligible for a refund.
The UK has been in lockdown since the end of March and the Government ordered that all bars, restaurants and clubs close, except where they could provide takeaway services.
The closure of this legendary venue is yet another blow to the LGBT+ community which has seen the widespread of Pride events planned for this summer cancelled or postponed.
Organisers of Brighton Pride responded to the news of the closure by saying that the venue, had been “sad news… such a big supporter of Pride and community fundraising in our city over the years”
The company “sincerely apologised for the inconvenience” that was caused by its decision to close.
Due to the coronavirus lockdown, Netflix has seen an unprecedented surge in streaming activity and the documentary series Tiger King, starring Joe Exotic has been the undeniable breakout hit of quarantine.
The lockdown has also meant that it’s near impossible to get a haircut, which is why, the mullet, like the one that Joe sports, could be seeing a resurgence, according to one hair brand, Fudge Urban.
According to the brand, history could be repeating itself as many guys will be forced to cut their own hair or get their partners or housemates to get the scissors out.
“Having previously been one of the most iconic men’s hairstyles back in the 80s, the mullet’s short on the top and long at the back style has had its fair share of jokes.
“The fresh and modern mullet means you don’t need a head full of long hair. With its new even shorter length at the top, this modern-day spin on this vintage style is stylish and sharp. As seen on the runway by Gucci and YSL, it’s high fashion with many celebrities sporting the new look”.
So how do you feel about growing a mullet? We’re not so sure.
LGBT and in a violent relationship? Your step by step guide to seeking help from the Family Courts
I hope you have managed to read it in peace. I hope your friend, work colleague or family member has bookmarked it and saved it for you. I hope the person causing you pain sees this article and seeks out help for themselves. This article could save both of your lives.
Am I a victim?
This isn’t a silly question. Everyone reacts differently under pressure, everyone has failings. Everyone has lost their temper at some stage in their lives, and in doing so has reacted in a way they never thought they would. Some may even have behaved terribly for a few days or weeks or even months. However, you know this is not what I am talking about.
A victim of domestic abuse suffers harm at the hands of a family member or partner. The harm is physical, mental, financial or sexual. The abuser targets you, hounds you. You find yourself giving over personal details that you wouldn’t ordinarily, change your behaviour in an attempt to soften theirs and you lie to others about you’re suffering because your abuser has blamed you for their hideous behaviour.
So what next?
Do not feel alone, sadly, in such a small minority of just 1.1 million, at least 1 in 4 victims of domestic abuse are lesbian and nearly 1 in 2 victims are gay. The figure rises to nearly 80% if you identify as transexual.
If you reach out there are people there who can and will help, so ditch the embarrassment. There is nothing you can say to the charities listed below or perhaps your lawyer, that hasn’t been said, sadly, a million times before (over a million calls to the police are made every year citing domestic abuse).
Charities will not only signpost you to other charities or support groups, but can also help identify legal routes available and continue to support you through the process.
Ⓒ Yogendra Singh / PEXELS
If you do go down the legal route you will be offered protection and even protection for your home, whether you own it or not. This could be via the criminal courts or the police who have the power to offer immediate protection for up to a month, securing you and your home under a Police Protection Notice (or Order if there are children in the household). However, this could lead to criminal proceedings which would be public.
Family Courts can offer you protection by making a Non Molestation Order (an injunction) and/or an Occupation Order (forbidding the abuser from returning to the home you shared) for a minimum of 6 months. Such an application can be made urgently, even over the phone during lockdown, and most importantly, it is private.
The statistics tell us that it takes on average 2 1/2 years for a victim of abuse to seek help. By reading this article you are taking the first step, take the next by making contact with one of the organisations below.
Joe Exotic, the star of the Netflix hit Tiger King has been quarantined over concerns about COVID-19.
As the world enters lockdown over the spread of the coronavirus, inmates in the world’s prison system also find themselves doubly locked down and isolated.
The move to further lock down Joe apparently came after his move to the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth.
On the 31st of March, his Twitter feed suddenly came alive after two years of being dormant. The account, which is still unverified, but it is the username featured in the Netflix documentary series, a Tweet read,
“Joe is still in quarantine due to COVID 19 with his move to the Fort Worth FMC. More to come on that front. In the meantime, Joe is overwhelmed with appreciation and the love from all his supporters”.
A further tweet sent on the 1st of April, a Tweet confirmed,
“Joe is still in quarantine. Pray for everyone who has this illness and that you all recover soon. Pray for all the souls we have lost in the world due to this. Joe sends his love and thanks. He will soon be back to answer you all soon”.
Then yesterday, word came that Joe was due to be released from quarantine in just two days. A Tweet read, “Can’t wait to see all the tweets. Thanks for all the love and support. #FreeJoeExotic”
Fans have started to urge the former X Factor star to start an Onlyfans site.
Bradley Hunt, known for being one half of the controversial X Factor duo, Bratavio, has just uploaded a stunning series of photos which show an epic body makeover, which he says has helped him with stress relief.
In the post to his 17,100 followers, the star wrote, “I joined the gym about a year ago for stress release and to try and gain muscle and I’m happy with the results so far.”
Making sure your back passage is clear from poop is one of the main worries for guys who are interested in anal sex, pegging, finger play or prostate massage. So what’s the best way to make sure you’re clean down there?
The bodyclock
Image by Mylene2401 from Pixabay
The least hands-on approach to being clean is all about timing. Knowing when your likely to have a clean passage. This is usually in between your regular poops. However, it’s not very reliable because it’s all very dependent on what you’ve eaten in the last 24-48 hours and how much fibre and hydration you’ve had.
There’s also still a chance that you’ll have poo inside your rectum, even after you go, which could lead to chucks being dislodged during play – which let’s face it nobody wants.
If you’re keen to be really confident, then you’ll have do some douching.
