Monthly Archives: August 2024

©GeraldineBanksAug2024

What is my favourite recipe?

My favourite recipe by far for a Cornish Pasty. I love them and they are so easy to make from scratch.

They have a great history too, and were used to pay casual workers in past times, for example for working on the ground work in Trenance Gardens in Newquay, the workers were paid a pasty a day for what was incredibly hard labour.( Well it was all in a good cause.) All for the benefit of the great and good of Newquay. Who after completion of the project would be able to promenade through the park in their Sunday Best.

Miners, traditionally, would have a pasty that contained meat and veg one end and a sweet filling the other end for their lunch. Some would throw away the pastry as it was covered in coal dust and they had nowhere to wash their hands down the mine while having their meal.

So a Cornish Pasty has a long history of providing nutrition for people. The first pasty I made was at School and I made a giant one, much to the teacher’s puzzlement. I suppose I miscalculated something and I had one large pasty and one small pasty. Everyone else had the required 6 medium pasties. Whatever, when I brought it home , everyone loved it .

Basically , I think you should make the pastry from scratch( a lost art) and prepare the filling which consists of beef ( not an expensive cut), finely cut potatoes and diced swede or turnip( whichever is available).

Roll the pastry out and make equal size rounds and put a layer of potato, then a layer of swede/turnip and then some beef. Place a small nob of butter on top so as to add flavour and moisture while the pasty is cooking and season each pile with loads of pepper and a little salt. Don’t overfill as you will have to will have to seal the pasty and crimp the edges as best you can. There are encyclopaedias on how to do this correctly.

Once you’re pasties are sitting neatly on the baking tray ready to go in the oven, then brush them all over with beaten egg, to give them a nice rustic brown pastry colour and cook at Gas Mark 6 for around 50 minutes.

Eat when ready, I personally think it’s best to eat them and make a fresh batch each time. And remember it’s nice to share.

Warning: This is not an official recipe and I’m doing it from memory, if I were you and you really want to make a Cornish Pasty do check out the recipes from real cooks and chefs.

Namaste

Everything would need to be high, as I think there is something magnificent in buildings that reach for the sky and also that are self sufficient. So a building that recycles it’s water supply and has a perpetual enclosed heating and an air-conditioning system. A combined business and living space so that there is a genuine opportunity to work from home.

Everyone would be guaranteed a place to live and would have access to funds for whatever they need for recreation and education.

There would be dedicated buildings for Health, Leisure(Sports and Entertainment) and Government and Banking, all of which would be fully accessible to everyone. These buildings would be within a 10mile square perimeter in the city which would contain everything that everyone needs. There would be no cars or buses. Everyone would use a system of conveyor belts to move themselves and goods and services around.

Outside the 10mile square perimeter, there would be suburbs, where the transport methods to the Countryside and Foreign Travel would be located. This would consist of rental car ports and air transport ( both local and international).

There would be total freedom of travel, but the Cities would be so nice that visiting the Countryside though enjoyable was a leisure choice for some but not for all. There would definitely be citiphiles.

Our current obsession with owning Land will have ended and the Countryside would be managed effectively both for leisure and food production by the people and for the people( and for wildlife and fauna too). It would be seen as pointless to surround yourself with acres of redundant land purely for your own edification. The Countryside and the leisure and farming opportunities would be pleasant and easy to visit and indeed participate in should you so wish.

Finally when you think about it , why have we made such a mess of things? Our cities are horrible and we seem to want to decimate the Countryside either by farming it intensively , killing it’s wildlife or polluting it’s rivers and seas. We’ve only got 50billion years to improve things before the sun burns us up and we disappear into a black hole, so we’ve still got time and the opportunity to improve things for everyone.

Namaste.

Where did my name come from?

©GeraldineBanksAug2024

I am very excited to share this story, my Christian Name “Geraldine” is I don’t think Worldwide, it is however present in mainly the Northern Hemisphere with a spattering in the Southern Hemisphere due to emigration and also the expatriate longing for home, whereby children are christened with names from the long lost home Country.

Mine, however, has an origin I only found out recently through some papers that a long lost uncle (recently deceased) passed on to me in his last will and testament. Uncle James had moved to Spain in the 1960’s, somewhere near Valencia. He had married a Spanish Lady and had a three beautiful children, two boys and a girl.

Although very sorry to hear of my uncle’s passing , I was unable to attend his funeral. However, I was most surprised to receive a package through the post from the Spanish Executor of his Estate. The parcel contained some papers and a family tree and also a letter of explanation from Uncle James. Apparently my father who abandoned my mother along with me when I was a few months old, had a secret. A past that he thought very dark and that should be concealed. He was off course Spanish, but his relatives had all been pirates.

The family tree went back to the 16th Century, and even mentioned the exploits of the Pirates and in some cases their sorry end “hanged for Piracy”. It did make dark reading, however, the men on my father’s side seemed to have much success with their Pirating , all being Captain’s of their own ship’s at an early age and some receiving money and awards from Spanish Royalty for their exploits.

However, one particular area was highlighted by my Uncle, it was my father’s great, great grandfather, he had been married to a lady called “Herradine” and she my uncle explained in his letter had been the great love of his life. The wad of papers along with the family tree, explained her role in ensuring the family’s future fortune, she was the driving force behind all my late relatives achievements.

It had been my father’s wish to call me “Herradine”, but due to a language misunderstanding at the registry office and possibly an error by my mother, it was transcribed as Geraldine. However, in my mind and particularly as I am learning Spanish it will always be “Herradine” to me.

The End

©GeraldineBanksAug2024

What Motivates You?

The root of what motivates me does not come from external forces. I don’t give a hoot about how much money I make, whether I’m famous or not if I had academic degrees coming out of my ears or if I have the mind and body of a superstar athlete. It won’t get me out of bed.

What will get me out of bed is the prospect of enjoying what is my life. There are plenty of forces to make sure that you do not enjoy life. Just ignore them. You are the life ,are and you are it’s very spirit, it’s fire .The life force you enjoy does not depend on your looks your intelligence or even your attitude, it depends on you.

You can choose to listen to the external forces telling you what you should be doing or you can listen to what they are recommending and figure out what’s best for you. We are sold to on a daily basis , but we can choose not to buy, but to consider what we really do want in life and work towards that.

For example, there’s a voice inside my head constantly telling me I’m no good. I never really believed it , I know there are people much better at doing certain things than I am, but I always figured that was a good thing, because even if I wasn’t talented and able to do what they were doing , well there was probably something I could do that they couldn’t and that was how the World worked. There is a place for everyone and a role for everyone and without each other , well things would not work.

The calculable and quantifiable characteristics of human achievement are over analysed; and dare I say it ;over judged. Get out of bed and do the things you enjoy doing, that make a difference to you and others around you. Maybe you do have to spend some time doing stuff you don’t want to do to, but that doesn’t define you or indeed turn into your reason to be.

There are plenty of users in this World , but they are the losers, because the winners spend time avoiding them and in truth the users end up in uncomfortable beds that they made from stealing the pillows, sheets and duvets from other people. No one finds them interesting because they’ve just damaged their surroundings and all they’ve got left is an unmade bed.

Yes, the Life Force does exist and it motivates me to get out of bed (metaphorically speaking) every day and make the most of my Life. May your Life Force be With You too.

I’m the one at the Party when your favourite film question comes up that looks blank while other party attendees and lovers of a good quiz with an encyclopaedic memory rattle off their favourite films with me in the background saying to myself.

” Yeah , that was a good one!”

I can’t help myself , I don’t categorise things I like , I enjoy them at the time and move on. Is that wrong? Should I gather all my likes and dislikes and like a good librarian file them away so I can pass them on to the next person.

Or at a Party is it just friendly banter , to show your love and knowledge of all these wonderful and not so wonderful creative projects by discussing and grading with others ,what , could be, for someone their lifetime’s work.

The number of films produced in numeric terms, today , is almost infinite. I spend at least half an hour browsing through Amazon Prime, Apple, Channel 4 and BBC I player before even making a choice. I very often find a gem and it’s a delight to watch something that you didn’t even know idea existed until it turned up on one of the above platforms .

There are at least a 100 films I could watch again and again, some are old and some are current. It’s a good feeling when you experience a good film, one that makes you think differently or laugh out loud.

That is why there is so much creative effort and indeed money put into making movies that we watch. The makers probably don’t care if they make my top 10, they have their eyes on the bigger prize of entertaining or educating me.

No I suppose you’re not suppose to love Hellish Village, but I do. The neighbours aren’t friendly and the pubs and restaurants are closing down as no one has any money to eat out. There are a few independent shops run by people with more money than sense and there’s a Library run by volunteers.

A list the things that a good village should have would include, a good interactive social life ,a friendly atmosphere, happy people and contented children who go to school regularly.

Hellish has none of those.

Firstly, the primary school is well attended and supported by the local parents. However, once the children reach twelve or thirteen things tend to change. The good parents make a decision to move out of the area in order for the children to have a decent chance of life. Most children however stay, as not many can afford the move.

The resident children go to the secondary school , Hellish High, which a long time ago gave up trying to get any sort of “satisfactory ” report on it’s role as an education facility. It’s been in special measures a number of times and the discipline and attendance records make embarrassing reading for those who are responsible within the school. The Head of School changes at least once a year, and Hellish High holds the record for most Heads in a term , five at the last count.

This means we have quite a high rate of delinquent behaviour, as the young people argue that they have nothing to do apart from hang around “Hellish Offsales” and shoplift the reduced alcohol it sells. The young girls will sell their bodies to the local men for a bottle of vodka from the shop. Underage pregnancy is rife and the Community Police Officer hasn’t been seen on the streets for almost a decade.

I don’t own a car so I don’t worry about it being vandalised or it’s tyres being slashed just because “they can”. I don’t like it when they steal cars and then race them down the street in broad daylight , because frankly it’s very dangerous.

Best to stay indoors on days like that.

Fortunately, three of our neighbours are really good shots, so they tend to scare off any delinquents. I suppose that’s why I’m quite happy, we’ve got protection in the street we live. Strangers are spotted very quickly and if it looks like trouble well, our rough neighbours will sort them out.

Still, despite the problems we have our Mayor and Council Leaders who like to try and make out that Hellish Village is a good place to live. They certainly are good at increasing the taxes to pay for their fancy meetings and so called security. Not to mention the current MP who has been known to attend some local shindigs courtesy of the Council. There’s much talk about what goes on at those “celebrations”. Needless to say some of the village girls are involved.

Why do I love Hellish Village, well it survives that’s why I love it. Day to Day it’s hell, it has no future , and a rather dismal past, but it’s my home and in truth it’s no worse or better than a lot of places.

The End.