Hestia loves ...Ashes and Snow

The photography of Gregory Colbert - Ashes and Snow

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Happy Wednesday :-)

Hestia...caught red handed

Sonshine and the Meerkat have just got in from school, and, ever the conscientious mother, I have just shouted hello downstairs to them and not bothered my ass to go and see what they're doing.

Sonshine has just walked into the office, not 5 minutes ago with a book, namely this book, and said: 'What's THIS?'

I was intending to 'tidy' it away at some point today.  It's a book on burlesque strippers from the 1950s.  Basically, it's a book of black and white girlie pictures - the best known burly girls from the 50s.

Mortified, I said that it was my book and that I was interested in it all for the art.

He looked unimpressed and said he was going to tell his dad when he gets home.  I've had to offer them blue ice cream to forget all about it........

Role reversal or what?

Hestia....and The Foo Fighters

Foo Fighters - Learn To Fly (Official Music Video). Watch more top selected videos about: Foo Fighters

I love this video because it shows a band able to take the piss out of themselves. What I love about Dave Grohl in particular is that he can look really ultra-geeky....and then really sexy. Well, I think he's sexy...especially with his long hair these days *sigh*

Anyway - Dave plays himself, the school girl, the fat lady, the 'steward', the pilot and the FBI man at the end. And Jack Black plays the drug smuggler :-)

I love this track, play it every Hogmanay VERY loudly !!!

Normal service resumed tomorrow :-)

Hestia.....and Church

Sonshine was up and about suspiciously quietly yesterday morning.  Sneaking downstairs without coming in for his Sunday morning cuddle and the usual stream of consciousness drivel that is 'conversation' to a 10 year old boy.

Thankful for the long-lie, I luxuriated in bed, fighting a nagging feeling that I Should Be Doing Something.  But no matter how deeply I dredged the sleepy Hestia RAM, nothing was coming up.  I assumed that I had dreamed it all and dozed happily.

Eventually, I no longer resist the flood of sunshine pouring through my bedroom windows (note: CLOSED bedroom windows) and I casually got my dressing gown and slippers.  I wafted through to the computer and caught up with a couple of e-mails. 

Half way through an e-mail the Something That I Should Be Doing surfaced from the morass of my mind.

Sonshine was singing in the Harvest Festival at church.  In an hour. 

Hestia and...the fashion blog tag

Blessed with a very quirky sense of humour, Christina Lindsay over at Fashion's Most Wanted included Hestia's Larder in her Fashion Blog tag. To be mentioned in the same breath as all those wonderful clothes/fashion bloggers by the gorgeous Christina is a bit daunting, but *pulls up her Big Girl Pants* I LIKES a challenge!

So - here goes.  I was nominated by Christina and if you have the tiniest glimmer of interest in fashion, I would urge you to get over to Fashion's Most Wanted.  Not only blessed with a fabulous address book crammed with well-known names, she has a wardrobe to DIE FOR.  Quite why she has nominated me for the fashion tag is anyone's guess......

Hestia v the window

Can one come round and close my effing window, please?

This was not how I planned to spend my child-free Friday night, believe me.  I was plunking away at the pc, googling inexpensive hotels in central London for our forthcoming 4-day adventure to the capital and I spotted a huge bumble bee struggling at the window.

Consumed with buddhist-like compassion for my fellow creature, I opened the window and flapped him out - and therein began my troubles.

Hestia....what pink eyes you've got!

Check out my pink eyes! Say nothing about my big ears though

So I thought I'd do a light-hearted blog about mascaras - try to give these excellent make-up bloggers that I love a run for their shekels.  Something witty and informative that involved wearing each of my mascaras for a day and probing the following important areas:

1 - Does it do what the advertising schmaltz claims that it will?  Am I thicker? longer? Better than falsies?
2 - Does it make my eyes itchy by 5pm?
3 - How much comes off when you cry at the NSPCC advert or Who Do You Think You Are?
4 - Ease of removal at night
5 - Do you have panda eyes in the morning?

As you can see, it would have been a hugely important blog post in the entire history of blogging - possibly even an award winner that would prompt a change of career and a magazine column advising about matt, gloss or eggshell finishes on one's lipstick.  Tom Ford, all you need to do is call me..... yeah, well, I'm prone to day dreaming as you can see.

Hestia....consults the cards!

The Fortune Teller - Caravaggio

In my other life, you know, the one that doesn’t involve having watery eyes staring at the pc screen all day, I’m a professional Tarotist.

Well, I SAY professional, I’m using the term very loosely, because I’ve not taken on much paid work because I’m up to my gypsy hoop earrings with interesting displacement activities - blogging, building websites, obsessing over litter and generally being a bit menopausal.

Hestia...and the fire-breathing dragon

http://goodlifezen.com/

My Frabjous Day disintigrated at about 3.30pm yesterday afternoon. The parental amongst you might recognise this as the time small children come crashing through the door with tales of playground derring-do, wicked teachers and inedible packed lunches

Sonshine had a small friend with him, a lovely little bespectacled meerkat of a child whom I adore.  He eats everything.

Hestias loves...Maria Mena

Heard this a lot on Radio 2 recently, but it's from quite an album that is a couple of years old, I think? Anyone got the album? She is very young and VERY talented.

Ali x

Hestia and ...the frabjous day!

Hestia and the ironing monster

Callooh! Callay!  Tis truly a frabjous day in the land of Hestia!

I have a monster mountain of ironing that needs slaying and I CAN'T DO IT!

Yessiree - yesterday  my vorpal blade (ie the iron) threw its hand in and promptly tripped the main circuit breaker every time I tried to iron something.  Three times the power went down!

The final time was when my beamish boy was doing something on the mac with a binweevil or some such social networking crap for under 12s.  He called upstairs to me 'You need to stop doing the housework - the electricity doesn't like it!'

And who is to argue with either a grumpy beamish boy or the Bandersnatch that is Electricity?

Hestia loves...the Glasgow Boys (in numbers)

Old Willie - Guthrie

9.30 - the time of the ferry that we catch to the mainland

1st - outing to the mainland in the new car.  Indicators still giving me trouble.  Day Carer looks concerned, but not overly so.

£1 - cost of parking for 4 hours at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Muesum (surely we'll be round the exhibition in 4 hours.  SURELY?!

£5 the cost of a ticket to the Glasgow Boys Exhibition per head.  Not too eye-watering, plus rest of museum can be explored for FREE.

Hestia....toots her trumpet for local artists

Ruth Slater - Chicken

I love art.  I love looking at paintings, photos, sculpture....the whole nine yards.  For years I've been telling Tertarus that the continually slovenly appearance of our bedroom is an hommage to Tracy Emin.

Hestia covets.....

The Throgmorton - I wants it BAD

......The Throgmorton ladies watch.


I don't tend to wear a watch, preferring instead to rely on clocks around the house if I need to get anywhere.  And let's face it, I don't go anywhere!


My last surviving watch gave up the ghost after I accidentally smashed the crystal glass whilst working in the garden.


Juno gave me instructions earlier this year that I *needed* to get a watch and that she would spring for one as a birthday gift.


I perused page after page of watches - all nice in their own way, but nothing that really struck me as MINE.  Then THIS one caught my eye.


It's made by J & T Windmills of London and is just what I'm looking for in a watch.

Hestia and .....mental deterioration

Will she be this year's John Sargent?

Scene 1:  The ferry, heading for mainland and the glory of The Glasgow Boys exhibition in Kelvingrove Art Gallery....the conversation has fallen to the welcome return of Strictly Come Dancing to the telly.....

Me:  I hope Anne Widdicombe does ok.  I hate when people take the piss out of older, less agile folk.

Day Carer:  Anne Widdicombe?

Me:  Yes, you know, the MP?  Writes books?

Day Carer:  Mmmmm - not sure, enlighten me.

Me:  SHE was the MP who said: 'He has something of the night about him about.....fuck.....you know......Tory MP'

Dar Carer *blank expression*

Me:  You KNOW......not John Major....but of that time.  Oh GOD I can see his FACE.......glasses.....smarmy looking

Day Carer: 'Alan Clarke?'

Me:  Nooooooooooooooooo - much smarmier looking.  Oh for God's SAKES........he was a Cabinet Minister.  He might even have been leader of the Tory party....

Day Carer:  Michael Heseltine? William Hague?    Was he Scottish?

Me:  Noooooooooooo not Scottish.  English.  Oh - this is going to drive me mad ALL day  *fade out*

Hestia and .....the goddamned fashion wilderness

Hestia in the fashion desert

EMERGENCY POSTING!

My friend The Vet is getting married in October and my good Monsoon frock is getting its third outing.

I got a couple of years ago for a friend's wedding.  Since then it's been worn to another wedding (well, entirely different set of folks - they weren't to know that it was bought for another gig) and this lot of reprobates won't know that it's not brand new either.  They'll be drunk.

Hestia and bramble jam #fail

Despite, my injuries (wounded pride more than anything) I picked loads of brambles yesterday and set-to having a very Hestia-inspired day. The kitchen was littered with mixing bowls and used pots as I gamely tried to make meat-balls, lasagne and bramble jam ALL AT THE SAME TIME *waits for applause*.

Hestia and THE STIG

No - it never WAS Michael Shumacher

Would you credit it? All this palavar about The Stig and the BBC taking out an injunction to prevent him from disclosing all  in his autobiography, when the original Stig brought out his autobiography YONKS ago!

Yes, I met The Stig at a racing event out at Mount Stuart many years ago.  And he was signing copies of HIS autobiography.

Hestia warns...bramble picking is not for wooses

The spell of warm and dry weather is just about to break, so I decided to take a freezer bag with me on my jog to Loch Fad this morning - with a view to running very hard and very fast to the Loch itself and then having a gentle amble back up the farm tracks whilst filling my freezer bag with brambles.

For a start, there was no 'very hard or very fast' running.  My legs felt like lead for some reason.  I'm going to put it down to hormones rather than a weekend of cakes and strong coffee.

Plus, the wind was blowing into my face. I'm not a dog.  I don't enjoy that.

Hestia and....autumn gardening

don't be daft - of COURSE these are not mine!

I love Autumn, it's the perfect time to sit down with your catalogues and spend (at least in your imagination) vast sums of money on bulbs and shrubs for next year.

Ah - next year....the optimism and potentiality of next year is what keeps gardeners going.  Where you can draw a line under all the failures of this year and plan ahead for a Bright New Tomorrow.

Next year....

I WILL remember to stake up the poppies before they get too tall.
I WILL water the tomatoes EVERY day whether they need it or not.  
I WILL remember to plant out all my little seedlings and not leave them to perish, utterly forgotten, in the cold frame.
I WILL plant a bed for cutting flowers.

I WILL plant lots of vegetables.
I WILL harvest said vegetables and not leave them to rot in the ground.
I WILL keep my garden notebook up to date and not leave it in the shed for snails to eat like I did this year.


Next year I will.....

1 - Figure out a way to stop the neighbours cats from shitting in my greenhouse and polytunnel as soon as my back is turned.  Let me clarify that.  Let me find a way to stop them WITHOUT resorting to using poison or the air rifle.  Believe me, you only need to pick ONE strawberry with a splatter of cat shit on it and poison seems like a perfectly reasonable option.

2 - I WILL have a soft fruit harvest next year.  I will work out how those bloody birds and mice are stripping my glossy-berried redcurrants bare in the 24 hour window between me noticing that they are ripe and coming out with a bowl to pick them.  I got NOTHING this year.

I had to harvest my gooseberries when they were as hard as Katie Price's tits - but they made lovely jam. The gooseberries that is.

3  I have only one planting combination in my mind that I MUST get organised for next year - some Crocosmia (Montbretia) called Lucifer (fiery red flowers and deep green foliage) and Agapanthus bulbs - big, blowsy, purple/blue flowers that are going to look GREAT with Lucifer.  And yes, they flower at the same time!

images shamelessly nicked from gardenersworld.com

Share your SS11 gardening plans!

cerigtostigma willmttanium - suggested by viv

Cerinthe purpurescens - as suggested by Viv

Hestia tuts....at Wayne Rooney

Not even your official wallpaper can make you handsome

Oh Wayne, Wayne, Wayne......what have you done this time?!

When are you going to realise that Colleen is probably the only woman on the planet who sleeps with you because she loves you and not because of your massive wallet?

Hestia..contemplates Sonshine's oral hygiene

...and Sonshine at last grasps why his Evil Mother makes him chew his plaque disclosing tablets at NIGHT and not before SCHOOL in the morning.........

Yeah, sorry if you were eating something nice.....  it's not his most winning smile.

Now - GO AND BRUSH YOUR TEETH!

Hope you have a lovely weekend!  See you Monday :-)

Hestia loves...Fee Doran

Who? WHO?!  Oh believe me, you might not recognise the name, but you sure as heck will recognise her work!

Remember this?

Well, Fee Doran is the designer behind the label Mrs Jones and THAT jumpsuit was one of hers.

She's featured over at Fashion's Most Wanted in an interview. And what an interview!  If you're sitting with a cup of coffee and a kitkat and looking for something to read, get your tail over to Fashion's Most Wanted and fill your boots!

Don't say I'm not good to you......

Hestia drools over ....new journals

Bookshops are my refuge from the slings and arrows of every day life.  When I enter a bookshop, the same sense of peace infuses me that I’d imagine people experience when they enter a church.

Somehow, nothing bad can happen to me while I’m perusing books.  I love the smell of the new paper and the print.  I love the uncracked spines.  I love the weave of safety, sanity, beauty and escape that I find amongst the book stacks.

Hestia has......a new baby!

M'new baby!

So, it came to pass that the insurance debacle was sorted out and Thursday saw me flying down the roads of Ayrshire towards my new baby, my mini clubman.

I was a bit anxious about it all because I'd not even had a test drive in it (Tertarus:  'It's a mini.  You've got a mini. You don't need a test drive.') and I would be required to discuss some code words with the bank to prove that I wasn't a drug baron laundering money on small cars.  If anything is designed to make you sound shifty, it's discussing your passwords with the bank on the phone.

Hestia loves...M&S

Continuing in the spirit of Zero Waste Week I found this info on the M&S website:

"Nothing to wear, but no room for more? Free up some space and fund next season's style. On Wednesday 8th September we're making it even easier. Bring the M&S clothes you no longer wear into participating M&S stores and you'll receive a £5 voucher* there and then."

Find a participating store**.

Hestia's favourite men

s

Someone actually sent me an e-mail asking me about Tertarus.  Of course, I haven't told him.  He would be utterly unbearable to live with.

But I have to say that Tertarus's pic won't be making an appearance on the blog.

He'd go mad. 

Anyway, here are some of my favourite men.

Mr Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters - funny and sexy.

Mr George Clooney. Dreaming about this man has kept me sane during many a tedious meeting.

Nicked from Fashion's Most Wanted's blog :-)

Quirky, funny, sensitive and, frankly, just a bit odd.  Mr Depp is one of my favourites.  Looook at those cheekbones!

Hugh Jackman.  What else is there to say?  If you can't see it, I can't explain it.....

 So, you're probably thinking that Tertarus looks like the above. Wrong.  He actually looks more like this:

Duncan Bannatyne

After being hit in the face several times with one of these:

 But I love him anyway ;-)

Hestia....is hanging on the telephone *grrrr*

By Joyce Ballantyne

I've been sitting here in my jogging clothes since 8.30am trying to sort out a glitch in my car insurance.  Well, not really a glitch.......sorry to keep you waiting........I contacted my insurers a few days ago because my existing car insurance needed upated with my new car details (more of which tomorrow!).....sorry to keep you waiting......which I've now done.  Great.

Tomorrow I travel to the mainland to pick up m'new car and was all good to go when the salesman phoned this morning to say that I needed to bring my up-to-date insurance details in with me .....sorry to keep you waiting....... or he wouldn't be able to give me the car! So here I am, sitting on the phone trying to sort out the precise location of my cover note.......one of our operatives will be with you shortly but no-one is picking up.

Today is, after all, just about the worst day for trying to get through to an insurer for a new car .........sorry to keep you waiting.......because the new registrations are out today. 

And I've been...

'Hello thank you for calling Ludicrously Expensive Insurerer.  My name is British, how may I help you?'

'I've just been told that I need to take my insurance documentation with me to pick up my new car tomorrow.  I am insured with you for the new car, but have not received a cover note yet - can you send some kind of insurance confirmation correspondence to the dealer, please?'


'I'm afraid that we can't do that.  We can't fax or e-mail insurance certificates at all.  Fraud prevention, you see.'


'I see.  So how am I supposed to pick up my car tomorrow?'


'Perhaps your updated insurance details will be with you tomorrow  before you go?' *Brightly* 'Is there anythign else that I can help you with today?  Household insurance? Contents Insurance?'

'No.  Just my car insurance.' 


'I'm so sorry that we were unable to help you further in this matter.  Thank you for calling Ludicrously Expensive Car insurers, my name is British, and I've been very pleased to help you with your enquiry today.'

*click* (hangs up)

Look at that - my knife arm is twitching involuntarily again.......

Right.  Now what?

I phone the dealership and speak to the salesman.  He promises that he can  get me 7-days free cover, but I'll need to sit through a spiel from the insurance salesman.  He gives me the telephone number and off I go again.

'sorry to keep you waiting, your call in a queue......' and so I've been sat here for 40 minutes now, waiting for EvenMoreLudicrouslyExpensive Insurance to get me to the front of the queue.  If I can't get the free insurance, I can't pick up my car.  It'll be damned inconvenient to have to reschedule EVERYTHING......your call is important to us....... and Tertarus will go BERZERK when he finds out. Oh, I am suck a fuckwit at times! I never even thought about having to take my insurance details with me!

*sobs quietly onto computer keyboard*

It's no good.  I've hung up and will call again later....am off out for a jog.  I don't need insurance for THAT mode of travel anyway.