Category Archives: Short Stories

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Z Cars always seemed so real and the Police were decent men and women  who solved crimes and looked after old people.

Anytime is a good time if you live in the moment.

©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