What’s your favorite recipe?
My favourite recipe is Cucumber Relish. Not for how it tastes, although it tastes amazing. Not for how easy it is to prepare and cook, although that gets easier every year. It’s my favourite because of what it represents.
A few years ago at work I was trying to decide what to get my colleagues for Christmas and, to be honest, I was drawing a blank. Everyone seemed to get something sweet for each other, and I have something of a lower threshold for sweet things than most. (Not to say I don’t enjoy sweet things, but I have to be in exactly the right mood to eat them.) I was looking up pickling recipes when I came across cucumber relish for the first time. I looked at the contents and the instructions and thought, ‘I can do that!’ so I asked who was interested in trying some. I think I got about a dozen testers and they really enjoyed it. So, a tradition was born! Every Christmas I asked for interested recipients and every October you would find me in the kitchen for four or five hours preparing my Christmas gift. As I tend to do, I played around with the recipe. The main change I made which lifted it to another level was the substitution of paprika with cayenne pepper. This gave it more of a kick and blended in beautifully with the rest of the ingredients.
Once the cooking was done I would put the mixture into jars and write labels for each one to give it that personal touch. I loved the reaction every time I did this, because I could tell that they really appreciated the gift. When I announced that I was leaving the job I had a number of my colleagues saying how much they would miss my cucumber relish. So, I made a special batch in June and the label this time proclaimed that I was ‘Resigning with Relish’!! 🤣🤣
I think I will miss the tradition of making jars of relish for my colleagues as much as they will miss the taste, but I will continue to make relish on a smaller scale as I can’t imagine Christmas without it.
I know that at least one of my former colleagues reads this blog, so if he or anyone else wants to try their hand at this recipe, here it is!
How would you design the city of the future?
For a number of years I have been teaching Engineering and Computer Science students, and this summer I have been teaching art and design students. Despite these divergent backgrounds the focus is clear, how to build a better world. There are, of course, disagreements about what a better world looks like, but they know that they can’t carry on like this. So, what are some of the best ideas I have come across for the city of the future?
First of all, the city of the future has to be built around the pedestrian and public transport not the car. The car lobby in just about every country is so powerful that we have been trapped in this spiral of congestion, building roads, more cars using those roads, congestion, building roads, more cars using those roads, and so on ad infinitum. In order to end this spiral I would make the inner part of the city car free during the day. Deliveries could be made during the times of the day where the fewest people are about. That way, cars and lorries would become far less dominant.
Next, I would make each home fit for the future by installing solar panels, roof gardens, water recycling and small wind turbines on and in every building. In our climate ravaged future we will need air conditioning not heating in the UK, so that would be built in to all new homes. Heating can be provided by electric heating which is centrally installed. In this way, the climate will not continue to change at the pace and to the extent that it has over the last two decades.
Finally, I would ensure that the city of the future has green spaces everywhere that they can be put. Trees reduce temperatures and increase wellbeing amongst residents. So, green parks would be built to replace the car parks we will no longer need and the roof gardens I mentioned earlier will provide further nature on our doorsteps. With fewer car parking spaces needed, we can reintroduce gardens as we remove the paved over entrances which replaced them to the detriment of the environment and which increased the flood risk by a huge amount.
So, there you have it. The new city of my dreams, the city that shall remain in my dreams because no politician is far sighted or caring enough to do something that will really help people. We are going to face a horrible future of climate induced misery because of the primacy of fossil fuels and the big businesses. Remember there is no Planet B.
Where did your name come from?
I am not sure why David was chosen for me when I was born, but my middle name is Gerald after my Dad.
It is a middle name that has caused a lot of amusement over the years, perhaps because it was never really fashionable and perhaps because it wasn’t what people associated with me. To be honest I always assumed the worst of people who laughed at it, but that probably reflects my secondary school experience where pretty much every student and the majority of the teachers never missed an opportunity to bully me. I have learnt over the years, however, to differentiate between those who do that with affection and those who do it with malice.
The irony of it is that no one, apart from his sisters, ever called my Dad Gerald, he was always Gerry. Something of a force of nature, he was tough as nails on the outside and a charismatic leader in our Scout troop. The scouts always respected him and occasionally feared him, but they all knew that he had their best interests at heart. To them, becoming old enough and trusted enough to be allowed to call him Gerry rather than Skip was a much appreciated rite of passage. No one would ever laugh at him for his name, but in any case he would give them short shift if they did. He was in the Navy for 15 years and as a younger man was very handy with his fists apparently. No, Gerry was a name that suited him and that no one ever questioned.
On the surface we couldn’t have been more different. He was ultra confident, I had very little, he was popular and respected, I was anything but. I both looked up to him and was nervous of him, as sons tended to be of their fathers in those days. As I grew older I started to realise that what was on the surface masked a depth of feeling that revealed a person who was incredibly complex. The vehicle for discovering that complexity was The Wonder Years, a programme we both became huge fans of. It was a ritual for one of us to ring the other just after the programme was finished each Sunday and discuss it. Jack Arnold, the father to central character Kevin, played so beautifully by Dan Lauria, turned out to be the catalyst for finally understanding my Dad. He admitted that he found Jack’s reactions to life in general and his son in particular very familiar. The inner emotional core that occasionally broke through was seen as something to be hidden because men of that time did not show it on either side of the Atlantic. To some extent they still don’t. Occasionally an episode would send my Dad off on an anecdote I had never heard before, but every episode seemed to bring us closer to understanding each other. The final episode really upset him because the final voice over reveals that Jack dies very young, not even in his sixties. He thought that was a poor return as years of hard work were finally starting to pay off, but his well earned time to relax and enjoy it in the future was snatched from his grasp. As I now reach the age my Dad was when he died, when his own retirement and his time as a grandfather was snatched from his grasp, I feel that I really understand his reaction at the deepest of levels.
So, a name that I used to hide because of the expected comments is one which I am now quietly proud of.
What motivates you?
I suppose this question goes back to the post on positive emotion. You are motivated by what makes you feel good. I like the sense of pride I have when I do something for some and it helps them. I like the sense of pride I get from achieving something in whatever field that might be. However, one thing motivates me above all else and that is my family. Everything I do, everything I am, is for them and because of them.
I remember when I first met my wife back in 1987. I was aimless and lost. Yes, I had potential, but it was being wasted. She saw that and slowly but surely gave me a new focus and a new determination. It was a slow process but it was, and remains, an ongoing one. When we were about to leave to go to Hong Kong the Mother of a friend of mine came to our farewell drinks because she wanted to meet the woman who had sorted me out!! She wasn’t wrong!
Since becoming a Father I have had another focus and another motivation. Providing for them, of course, but much more importantly, trying to be a good role model for them as a person. As with all of us, I fall extremely short on most occasions because human beings are generally speaking unsuccessful at being their best selves. However I am always trying.
Now that I am looking forward to life after year round work I suppose that’s where a small measure of doing things for myself comes in, but I have a set of projects to complete involving our family history so it all comes back to that. On my own I don’t amount to much, but with Janet and the children in my corner I can become someone who matters in a small way at least.
David Pearce - Popular Culture and Personal Passions 