Hestia ... revisits the past

Where all the action happens. 

Let me assure you that it doesn't look quite as tidy as this at the moment 

It's been a salutary experience unpublishing every blog post since 2010 and then revisiting each one to see whether I have inadvertently used a copyrighted image before republishing (so far, so good - but still got two years to check back on).

Sonshine is - unbelievably- 25 now. Graduated from St Andrews with a Masters in Computing Science and living his life large in Darkest Dundee. With tattoos. The least attractive tattoos I think I've ever seen tbh. It's been lovely whizzing back through time via those blog posts where he's much younger and 'funner' as he would have said himself - his trials and tribulations with Clean Amy (I never did find out who she was lol!), becoming friends with a stick, decapitation of his sunflower, endless failed baking attempts...

Light of my darkness.
Source of my facial tic.

It's been a sadder affair looking at posts that feature my mum, Juno, though. She's still with us at 89 (don't gods go on forever?!) but her short-term memory is absolutely shot to pieces. At the moment she is in a lovely care home that is more like a 5* hotel, but I've still got rent paid on her flat - just in case she changes her mind about going back there. Her memory may be more holey than a block of Gouda, but her mind remains very much with us. It's been sad-nice reading her (often withering) input into Hestia's life.

But mostly I have learned a lot about myself, reading back over these old blog posts.

Unpublishing all my posts

I have been blogging for many years now and have really enjoyed my time in the blogosphere. However, I received - erroneously - an invoice from a large media company stating that I'd used one of their images without a licence. 

The invoice was for £500.

Convinced it was a scam, I contacted the media company in question. Thankfully it was not actually my blog (god knows how my details came to be linked to it) and I fully expected the company to say that it wasn't anything to do with them. 

But it was.

Hestia and knitting

The knitting of socks has progressed to the level that I can actually help another friend when she is stuck in her sock pattern. This is something of a miracle, given my own querulous and profanity-filled beginnings when socks were knitted inside out, turned to felt by the dog, needles fell out resulting in horrific attempts at picking up stitches, frogging (see? I've even got the terminology) back to the first sad little slip knot stitch.  Yet I have managed to knit half a dozen pairs of socks, even one pair for Sonshine and his massive man-feet.

Knitting and knitting patterns have become my new drug of choice.

I look at a sweater in a jewel-bright colourway and think YES, this is for ME! And have come to realise the insidious power of photography in marketing. It's not just the sweater, is it? You ache to BE the person with THAT life-style in the photo.

The current pattern of choice involves a glorious purple and green mix that immediately reminds me of a Next sweater that EVERYONE was wearing in Glasgow in the 90s. I think there must have been a fire sale of them in the Sauchiehall Street store. Oh how I loved that sweater!  Look, I even have a photo of me wearing it!

Hestia at 61 - warning: contains Gaelic

Back in 2012 - those halcyon days where nobody dreamed that a cough in the supermarket could shut down your internal organs and have you hospitalised - I decided to challenge my dislike of Scotland's native Gaelic language and try learning it via resources in my local library.

As with most things I start, it fell by the wayside almost straight away because I wasn't immediately brilliant at it. TBF it didn't get off the starting blocks because Gaelic is a very difficult language to master from books - sounds and letters don't correspond the way they do in other languages.

Fast forward to 2019 and the year when a cough COULD shut down your internal organs and have you hospitalised and I took up Gaelic on the Duolingo app.

Reader, I stuck with it for over 1,000 days - did the introductory course twice and completely fell in love with the weird little fucker. One thousand days - that Duo streak lasted longer than my marriage. 

Hestia is baking scones. And binning them.

I am very partial to a fruit scone, with clotted cream and strawberry jam. Very partial indeed *pats tummy* but also rather keen to cut down on processed foods. I would, I decided in a fit of culinary madness, bake my own scones.

How hard could it be? 

Reader, the first couple of times they were gorgeous! Light as a feather and I felt my full Hestia-potentiality might AT LAST be realised. If this is what I could do with plain flour with added baking powder, how marvellous might my scones be if I actually used SELF-RAISING FLOUR?! At this point you may laugh hollowly at my naive, beginner's optimism.

Thus I purchased a small bag of self-raising flour and set to work. 

I baked a batch on Friday (Tartarus was away for the weekend with his boyfriend) and I thought I'd have a little bout of domestic goddessness.  Not only did they refuse to rise, they remained resolutely doughy inside.

I would also like to tell you that I put the failed scones straight in the bin, but they actually went straight into my tummy. Cue stomach-ache, but not enough to make me put the rest of the scones into the bin. I am a waste-not-want-not kind of a gal.

Anyhoo, yesterday (Sunday) I finally gave up and put the final scones into the bin.

Today, Tartarus is BACK (from the NI road racing) with a vengeance and doing all the housework that his slut of a partner failed to do (correctly. Or just failed to do. Which is more likely). I would, I thought again, make him happy with me by making scones. This would prove that I was good for something.

Wrong.