Please go the magazine to read this lates handcrafted feature, packed with ideas, encouragement and inspiration for a defiantly freerange, Merry Christmas season. The newsletter is just my version of a bugle to let you know that it is here! Greetings, AJ, Editor-in-Chief.
Hello Luminaries, Firstly, wherever you are in the world, I hope that you will celebrate the real meaning and spirit of Christmas this year with an outrageous new passi0n, joy and defiance. I am writing to you from my favourite local hotel, and Frank Sinatra, Count Bassie and Bing Crosby are helping the festive ideas to flow!
I love how the world begins to slow down in December and houses are garlanded with light. Going slow is a wonderful way to spring clean and reboot the mind. It's a time to enjoy stillness and silence, before a feast of slow food, fun, fellowship, freedom and maybe blind man's buff which was very popular in the Elizabethan Age.
I have also been thinking a lot about the customs and traditions which have been passed down through generations of families and how important they are. The Christmas tree always went up on Christmas Eve and my father would go and make footprints in the snow to herald the arrival of Santa.
What did Dickens say about Christmas?
Here's a Quote from Dickens's A Christmas Carol, which captures what Christmas is all about.
“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Christmas is a time to celebrate our common humanity and to rediscover the child in all of us. The little child who asked dad when is Santa Claus coming, at least a hundred times, aged six and three quarters.
So what does Christmas look like to you?
Whether that is a family lunch, with a magnificent regenerative beyond organic turkey or roast beef for twelve people, and all the while squabbling and bickering over who cheated at scrabble, Monopoly or charades. Or Christmas for one and you make up the rules, which means there aren't any! If you are a bit of a rock 'n' roll chick like me, you might dance around the house to The Stones( and Chuck Berry) at midnight before watching Brief Encounter for the 100th time, The Bishop's Wife, When Harry Met Sally or The Holiday again. Maybe you will rise early and go for a long, frost-laced walk far from the madding crowd and come home to a feast cooked in the slow cooker. It doesn't matter, what really matters is that you are free to celebrate however you damn well please.
Here in the UK and around the Western world we are facing an existential crisis about how we live on this extraordinary planet. A handful of people have acquired obscene wealth, but that is not enough for these Bond villains made real. They want to use technology to control humanity and make life miserable on a level Scrooge could not imagine. Where is 007 when we need him? Buy the DVD of Goldfinger and watch it whenever you like.
Championing Life in the Sloth Lane
As a champion for the slow life movement, I do not want to live in an ultra processed or digital gulag, and have my every move tracked and I will never, ever be coerced and bullied into taking a product again to see my dying mother, which has left me fighting for my life for the past four and a half years. I never did get to see my mum again before she passed. I was too ill. I said goodbye to her via WhatsApp for less than a minute.
The near lethal injection ruined all those Christmasses since 2021, but not this one! Thanks to Dr Peter McCullough MD, Ultimate Spike Support and The Wellness Company. Nor will I fall for a digital passport. Not ever. And let's have the royal blue paper passport back double quick.
Step into Your Power
It is time to be brave and to push back on all this malevolence and fraud. Our food, money, businesses, weather, the air we breathe and our ability to travel and roam is under threat and so is Christmas. And yet the remedy is simple. Just stop feeding the beast and become very, very good at complaining. Support farmers and buy directly from them, not food corps, go to church and marvel in the history and the archictecure and maybe sing some Christmas carols to raise the roof, bake some Christmas cakes for your neighbours, visit an elderly person facing the festive season entirely alone and do Christmas activites that you love with friends, family and your local community. Let's make this the biggest Christmas celebration ever!
I've signed up to make a Christmas table decoration at the Ventnor Botanic Garden and I am going to embellish twigs, leaves and cones with stardust glitter galore!
I'm traumatised, but I am a dynamic girl, and I am constantly moving forward and discovering ways to recover, to create new and exciting free range magazine journalism and to rediscover my joy. Here is what I am doing to get my organic girl reporter groove back.
Scaravelli Yoga
A year ago, a month or so more Christmas, and when I was feeling very upset, ill, frightened and overwhelmed, the universe helped me out and informed me about a restorative and spiritual form of yoga called Scaravelli Yoga. A profoundly nurturing, holistic system of yoga that began in Italy with the concert pianist Vanda Scaravelli. I took my injured body to one of Lou Burtwell's Scaravelli workshops in a village hall and spent two hours moving and reconnecting with my body in the most gentle, thoughtful and compassionate way. It was nothing like any yoga class I had ever experienced before.
Amazing Scaravelli Yoga
During the workshop, we were given uplifting, handmade essential oils to sniff and seriously good homemade chocolate goodies half through the class. We were also invited to pick shimmering crystals that reflected how we were feeling. It was two hours of nurturing, kindness and holistic pampering and I was hooked! I have been attending the weekly hour and fifteeen minute classes every Monday for more than a year, and I marvel at Lou's ability to take the class on a different, magical journey every week around the body and make it all feel like the most beautiful restoration, with added sparkle. At the end of class, her miniature poodle, Lola comes arounde each and every one of us and gives us a cuddle! Lou Burtwell runs Scaravelli yoga classes and workshops on the Isle Wight and in Sussex. To find out more visit the website.
Dear Danny Show
I'm a girl in need of new friends who are wide awake after the events of the past five years. I discovered Danny Bedford, the Cockney pied piper of not falling for the dastardly behaviour of the industrial complex on Instagram. Social media can be a big fat energy drainer, and just occasionally very, very useful and enlightening. Danny looks like Charles 1st with a dash of Captain Sparrow and er, Jesus. The face and the hair is quite something. He also gives good scarf with a touch of Paddington Bear. When he talks, he is even better. Danny is fearless, blunt and makes me laugh. In person he is kind and encouraging, like a good shepherd. He is also a born showman out of the age of Vauderville for good and most importantly a warrior for freedom, critical thinking and practical ways to reclaim our lives and autonomy.
Step into Your Power
I took part in one of Danny's online seminar courses and I loved it. Danny is a latterday Scarlet Pimpernel. A catalyst for igniting your power, courage and building resilience through discipline, authenticity and kindness. As a result, I am back meditating before I start my day, together with coconut oil pulling and going for a walk before I begin work. It all adds up to a beautiful meditation and then I can begin my day with a mind at peace and with renewed clarity. The course improved my focus after so much trauma and suffering. I have yet to try the cold therapy. At some point I will give it a try. I am looking forward to Danny creating a free folk community I look forward to joining and meeting up with some of my fellow free range folk for fun, solidarity, friendship and arranging magnificent adventures to look forward to. Oh, and working on repairing our world to make it a place that is an bloomin joy to behold and one that utterly sustains us. Who is with me?
Danny Bedford - Free Folk Follow Dear Danny on Instagram here. Danny has Telegram Channel and Stages Live Talks, Festivals and Courses via Zoom.
A Four Mile Walk in Nature to Collect my Vintage Mazda Sportcar, named after Marilyn Monroe
I bought my vintage Mazda MX-5 just before Christmas 2022, as a gleaming silver chariot carrot to put the joy back into my life after I was seriously injured by the Astra Zeneca Vaccine in May 2021. I had no idea how to drive a sportscar. My appetite for beauty and speed was nurtured by writing about Jaguar Cars and interviewing their head of automotive design, Ian Callum, before the woke nonsense. I learnt to drive the MX-5 in between bouts of severe autoimmunity with a car-mad ex salesman turned driving instructor who was very laidback, cheerful, patient and a meticulous teacher.
I love my car, she makes me feel free as the wind, driving her is like being in a cockpit of a Spitfire and she is perfect for a rock'n' roll roadtrip with the Stones, Tom Petty or the soundtrack to Daisy Jones and the Six.
Alas, with an exciting car, it is even more important to find a really good, reliable and honest garage, that does't patronise a woman for daring to drive a sportscar. The first time I took my car on a roadtrip after this years's annual MOT, she started to shake violently at 50 miles an hour on a road on top of the South Downs. It was horrible and I had no idea what was wrong. Marilyn had sailed through the MOT. She should not have done. Initially, my insurer sent out a useless subcontractor to assess my breakdown. The middle aged man in a shabby parka didn't seem to know much about cars, but he did have the audacity to ask me if I knew how to drive my car!!!! Fortunately, he left, and the RAC sent out a fantastic man who came out and diagnosed the problem when we took my car for a very short test drive. The caliper on the passenger side was black and blue and burnt out.
The silver chariot was not safe to drive, and it had to be recovered to a local family garage that I found very helpful and reassuring on the phone. They also had excellent reviews. I won't return to the garage that charged me £30 to change the windscreen wipers, didn't want to know when I broke down and failed to spot a serious problem with passenger-side caliper during the MOT.
The Joy and Freedom of a Long Walk in Nature
Three days later, the car was repaired at the new garage and ready to collect. I decided to walk to the garage from my home to celebrate being alive and not in agony, not this week. Oh, and that Marilyn was back in action. I walked four miles along a coastal road, on a bright, sunny November day, with the English Channel as a spectacular, glittering companion.
Along the way, I admired grand sandstone Victorian villas and coastal gardens, with elegant palms, hugging the edge of land. About half way, I stopped and lent up against a huge stately beech tree for electrons with electrifying, witty advice from Dr Tennant at The Tennant Institute, and revelled in the peace and solitude, and the fact that I was able to walk and not feel profoundly exhausted or lacking my god-given essential life force. The last time I attempted a walk like this, about eighteen months ago, I had no energy for two months. Together with the McCullough protocol, I take Ashwagandha and NAC, the miraculous master antioxidant which neutralises the spike protein. Eureka they both work! I like Pure Encapsulations NAC which I buy from Healf. I also eat pasture-raised offal and make bone broth and silken liver pate. Yes, I will publish the recipes soon in the magazine. I promise along with my lamb mince cottage pie, with a mushy organic olive oil fava topping with Parmesan or Manchego.
Now back to the chariot. Despite my walking wings, I didn't push my luck. I phoned June, the lovely lady who answers the phone at the garage and a mechanic came and picked me up in my car for the final half a mile. I knew that four miles was a victory and I felt amazing!
I have now arranged for Marilyn to have a full service so I can fly over the downs and drive with confidence.
Let's Revive our High Streets - Support the Butcher, the Baker and the Candlestick Maker
The moral of this story? Make a beeline for local family run businesses from farmers to butchers, artisan bakers, greengrocers, fishermen, independent artisan shops and old school garages and help your community thrive. Going real food shopping is life enhancing. It brings out the hunter gatherer in each of us. Ask a lot of questions to get a feeling for a business. If there any red flags, walk away. Let's bring life back to our High Streets, wherever you live and create safe, thriving communities that also reflect geography and a history, and not a made in China tag or fake, craptastic food-like substances produced in a laboratory, not by a real family farm. This is the female-led farm shop on the island where I buy the most incredible pasture meat - Nunwell Kitchen Farm. You can find more beyond organic, slow and regenerative producers I like and support in this slow food feature - Organic Box Scheme Farm 2 Fork Producers Feature
Now it is time to decide where to source my fragrant Christmas tree, grown by a local Christmas tree farmer, close to my home. I can't wait for that roadtrip.
Finally, more good news!
Englands's Hottest Botanic Garden and a Citrus Grove
I have filmed a documentary style interview with Raindance Film School London, at England's Hottest Garden, The Ventor Botanic Garden. I interviewed head gardener Wayne Williams, as we discuss the UK's first Mediterranean outdoor Citrus Grove, where lemons, oranges and pomegranates are flourishing on the south sloping terraces, flanked by an established olive grove.
I will launch a crowdfunding campaign on Crowdfunder.co.uk shortly to crowdfund a budget to cover the filming, presenting, research and editing costs and pay the university student film director and editor. The main reward will be a premiere for all our supporters. Follow us on Instagram for updates. Who wants to come? The premiere will be online, with a possible old school physical premiere if we can pull it off!
Now, who wants to meet up and come on a New Year walk and magnificent day out from Lewes to begin 2026 with a Luminary flourish?
Until next time, AJ, Sloth Editor-in-Chief. XXX
Ends.
Copyright Alison Jane Reid. December 2025. Copyright. All Rights Reserved. No copying in any format including Ai.
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