I'm a Greek goddess and so is my house

Just answered this quiz on FB on Greek goddesses and as it turns out, I'm Hestia. Hestia is the compassionate carer among the Olympians. She was the eldest (which I'm not) but when re-born, became the youngest (which i am). But, eldest, or youngest, her family was important to her (ditto, again). Keeping them warm, safe and happy was something she took on herself. And thus, she became the Goddess of the Hearth.

If some of you are wondering why I'm posting inane stuff about facebook quizzes, there's a reason. Somewhere in a previous post, I've written about my pretty little house which I moved into last year. I needed to name it, which was easy really. I'd decided the name for my house when I was about eight and read King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table for the first time. Avalon. I just knew it. For sure. For ever and always. The rest of this post will prove why no one should take my forever-and-always vows at face value. I'm fickle. In love with a name for a house for 32 years and when the house comes along I change my mind about the name.

Now, as at least some of you reading this blog know, I grew up in a large rambling house that my grandfather built. Growing up in it was fun. It had nooks and crannies which most people didn't even know existed. It had staircases, inside and outside, wooden and concrete, regular and spiral, it had verandahs and terraces, sloping tiled roofs, terracotta tiled floors and red, blue and green oxide floors with mirror finishes, and (and this is where my pretty little house comes into the picture) my grandmother's great big huge kitchen, which many years later became my pretty little house. As a cousin put it, "Oh my God, one lady's kitchen has become another's house."

My grandmother's domain began at the pantry door. If you'd visited my childhood home you would have stepped from the dining room into the pantry and into a world of buzzing activity. To start off with, you'd have seen my grandmother sitting on her chaise lounge in the pantry (I kid you not, she had a chaise lounge in the pantry).

You'd have gone on to see the rest of the pantry (which remains my pantry) with the very functional, very very functional, old, slightly chipped sink (which I have retained) and the bathroom (where all of us were bathed as infants with all the attendant parapharnelia), which is now my my kitchen. The kitchens (all of them) have become the drawing-cum-dining room, and the stores and the attics (all of them) have become bedrooms. The old wooden stair to the attic (I retained this) leads to the upstairs bedrooms now. An enclosed terrace above the pantry has become my library and an old bathroom is now my study.

It's a cosy house, my pretty little house, and somehow, somewhere, the name Avalon, with all its royal connections seemed out of place. And so I began searching for a name. I knew that the kitchen connection had to be there, so I started off with Kusini, which means kitchen, but it didn't really appeal to me. I tried out various words meaning kitchen, cooking, food and so on. But no, nothing seemed to click. I read, and i browsed, and i talked to people, and drove a couple of friends, and my poor long-suffering parents up the wall with my search for the perfect name.

And then one day, while I was feeding the fish (yeah, I got more and they're doing pretty well in the well), it came to me. A pretty name. A short name. A meaningful name.

"Hestia"

Hestia, the Greek goddess of the hearth.

And there, I had found the perfect name for my pretty little house which used to be my grandmother's kitchen.