Hestia and the blue balls

Ecozone website link

You may recall the story of the foamy gutters? Well that was around the time I started using Ecozone washballs.

Of course, the ecoballs weren't the cause of the foamy gutters at all, but I thought I'd tell you how I was getting on with these balls in case anyone was considering buying them.

I do try to be ecofriendly when I can, but sometimes it's just too much like bloody hard work and I have never been happy compromising with a replacement for my Fairy Non-Bio for my family's washing.  Tartarus may have skin like an old leather handbag and not be affected by anything other than sexually transmitted diseases, but Sonshine and I are hugely sensitive to lots of chemicals in washing powders and can often be found rubbing our bodies to shreds blissfully against fence posts like cattle if I use a new powder.

Hestia and the TABI Tarot Conference - in numbers

3- The number of days I spent indoors without feeling the sun on my skin.  Akshully, I didn't miss it.  I'm vampyric by nature and having your Chairman disappear in a puff of grey smoke isn't good for business.

2 - The number of Tarot decks I bought - both from Cilla Conway.  To say that I BOUGHT both of them isn't strictly true.  I pilfered one and left her a hastily scribbled IOU because I had run out of money because....

£3.50 - cost of a tiny bottle of beer at the venue. I thought I'd pace myself until happy hour at 5pm....and so I returned to the bar and requested another small bottle of beer.  'That will be £3.50,' smiled the bar lady. 'But it's happy hour,' I protested unhappily. 'Your beer isn't included in the Happy Hour,' came the reply.

Hestia and The Great Escape, Part II

Cute - but as cunning as a very cunning thing indeed

You may recall that we have a tiny family member who goes by the name of Nibbles.  He's much easier to feed than most tiny people that visit this house, but he DOES tend to pee and poop in his bed and endlessly try to escape, so it's not all win: win with a hamster in your life.

Anyway, we've been away in Birmingham since Thursday and My Day Carer's hubby was press-ganged into popping in to feed and water him on a daily basis.  We even leave the food out in short-glasses - weighed to the correct amount so that Ronnie doesn't accidentally turn the tiny hamster into a blimp.

So, we came home and I started unloading the car while Sonshine unlocked the back door.  Fortunately, I called him to return to the car and uplift some of his stuff to take indoors, so *I* was the sadsack who entered the dining room first and found the hamster cage sitting on the floor.

It was all very odd - the hatch was wide open and the food bowl was sitting outside the cage on the floor.  This could only mean one thing:  Nibbles endless quest for freedom had paid off and he had legged it.

Hestia's terrible realisation

Yes love, you bloody well scream

There can only be one thing worse than wakening up at  4.26 am with the terrible realisation that you have still not written the introductions for your Conference speakers, and that's wakening up again at 7.30 am with the bedside light still on and the imprint of a biro pen embedded in your jaw and realising that you STILL haven't written them.

Well, maybe just one thing is worse.

Doing the above AND feeling like someone has cunningly placed a hand-knitted balaclava between your brain and your skull:  Maybe a glass too much vino last night for me.

Oh no, there IS one thing worse than all of the above together....

...Realising that you decided to test Skype at midnight by contacting the handsome and talented Mark Ryan in Los Angeles without considering how horrific ypur hair looked after 2 days in the damply frizz-inducing hair-hell that is Birimingham 2011  (think: matted maned Afghan hound rescued by RSPCA) AND that you had NO MAKE-UP ON and were illuminated solely by the flickering grey light of the mac monitor....

Oh for sure, that is a fecking TERRIBLE realisation, mes amies.

Hestia's countdown to Conference

Bugger off advertisers - it's NEVER as easy and mess free as this

The final week before Conference is usually fraught.  Not because of anything in particular, but you waken up at 5am with an EXAM TODAY kind of feeling that cannot be quelled by any amount of jogging on the mental hamster wheel.

Tomorrow Sonshine and I depart in our little car for Darn Sarf and thus today is the day that I do all the packing and other lady things.

One of the lady things being Dye My Hair.

Hestia and Sonshine - the generation gap

So, I sent Sonshine to the post office this morning to buy a first class stamp to post off details of his father's speeding points*.

He was gone a long time.  When he came back, doing the theatrical teenage sighing and stomping around thing that he has taken to doing EVERY time you ask him to help you,  he said it had taken him AGES to get the stamp on the envelope.

Why?

Because he is so used to self-adhesive stamps, he had sat for an ice-age trying to pick, pick, pick off a non-existent backing sheet to stick the stamp on the envelope.  The man behind the counter took pity on his frowning little countenance and explained that the stamp needed to be LICKED.

So - what do YOUR kids do differently that makes YOU feel like an exhibit in the Cairo Museum?




* On the way to motorbike racing in Assen - done for speeding by a van on a bridge, somewhere on the M8.
Oh how I laughed when I saw Tartarus's face as he opened THAT envelope!

Hestia's dire warning about jam

Do not, under any circumstances, accidentally forsake the jam pan for a mindless hour-long ramble through the Twitterverse and Facebook or you will find 600g of redcurrants and 500g of sugar horrifically reduced to this:

The jam jar is close....the lip gloss is FAR AWAY,  Dougal

I put the other, unused, jam jars back in the cupboard - ready for the bramble-making jam horror story next month.  

Oh yes, it's THAT time of year again.

It has reduced so much I will have to hire a pneumatic drill to get it out.  And the concept of 'spreading'? Forget it.

Hestia's favourite Jim story EVER

There are so many excellent stories that we have that involve our recently departed friend, Jim - most of them ultimately resulting in a court appearance, but this one is my favourites......

Once upon a time, Tartarus decided to go through to Edinburgh to look at a new car.  Well, new to him anyway.

This was no clapped out old Escort, but a sleek BMW with pimped-up hub caps and central locking (we are talking a VERY long time ago!).  It was quite a big deal.

Because he didn't fancy wending his merry way alone through the dark streets of Edinburgh with bundles of cash in his jacket pocket, Tartarus decided that Jim would accompany him on the journey as a bit of moral support and company.

Anyway the day arrived and the two of them set off from busy Glasgow Queen Street station, heading towards Haymarket in Edinburgh.

Hestia's bad day....Tartarus's worse one

Yes, I know that I have been woefully slow at getting the hilarity that was our Isle of Man holiday up here on the blog, but I haz an excuse.....

.....the first one being that Tartarus, whose brain cells are obviously being raddled by too much motorbike racing on the telly and mugs of strong tea, didn't realise that his seaman's ticket expires when he is out in Mexico working next month.  This presents a MASSIVE headache for his company.

When did he notice this was a problem? The day before we left to go on holidays.


Oh my, he was a barrel of laughs for about four days!

Not.

Hestia and Tartarus say goodbye to Jim....

Gooseneck - The Venue

And so we set off for our hols on the Isle of Man....with Jim carefully stashed in the boot of the car.

We were having an overnight at The Mill Inn at Condor Green, just outside Lancaster (very nice it was too - on the banks of a little canal with walks along the tow-path where bad-tempered swans could nip your calves and ducks could quack their distain at your rubbish bread-throwing skills).

Hestia is not dead....yet

Dear reader, I have missed you!!!

I am not dead.  I am on holiday on the Isle of Man.  It is not the same thing.

Will tell you alllllllllll about it when I get back onto Bute soil and the monsoon conditions that increasingly come to represent The Great Scottish Summer.

Ali xxxx