Birthday cake showing photo of Author Angela Lansbury

We ordered the birthday cake from caketoppers.co.uk because I wanted a cake with a photo on top. The cake cost about £30. It was sent with a code for a discount off another order within a month. The choose of cakes was plain sponge or chocolate sponge. I would have preferred a fruit cake or a healthier cake with an almond marzipan but we opted for the cheapest cake with a photo on top, as my first choice was a cake in the shape of a book, but you had to pay at least a hundred pounds for the ones we found on line and all I wanted was an amusing cake with something personal on it for my birthday. I could have ordered or bought a second cake made of fruit with a marzipan topping and served that separately, or moved the cake topping onto another cake.

More information on cakes from: cake toppers.co.uk

More information on Angela Lansbury author on Facebook, linkedIn, You Tube and books by Angela Lansury on Lulu.com

Beds and mattresses needed in a hurry

Lots of sites offer next day delivery of beds and mattresses. But you may have to order before midnight, before 6 pm, or before 4 pm,or before 11 am. You might have to pay extra for weekend delivery. If you want something special such as a 7 foot mattress, they may need two or three weeks as it may be made specially.
   One of my favourite shops is IKEA. But not ideal for beds, if you are moving into a new place and need a bed tomorrow.

Angela Lansbury's note
Yes, I sometimes upload posts and revise and update the same day.

    You may wonder why I did not wait until I had finished, then put up a proper post. That's because first time around I spent ages checking facts and revising.  But then a timeout or failure meant I lost all my work. I had wasted time.
   So now I upload early, so if I lose a connection or get called away, at least some of my post. If you come back later you may be rewarded by updates.

Write Your Life Story And Obituary

I just read that Walter George Bruhl Jnr surprised his family by writing his own obituary. Great idea. Write your own obituary and life story. That way you can save everybody time, get the facts right, and know what will be said about you. 
    By the way, here is my obit in summary: great author, 20 books, blogs, witty, wonderful, reliable family member and friend to the world.

Pancakes

THE HISTORY OF PANCAKE DAY
Why make pancakes on Pancake Day? If you are religious, it is a religious Christian custom to give things up for Lent. You give up goodies for Lent by having them for the last time the day before, called Shrove Tuesday.
    I watched a Discovery programme about the Ten Plagues and Pharaoh and the death of the first-born. Detectives were brought in to analyse why the firstborn died. Impossible for assassins to have entered every house, undetected, and never to have killed anybody else. That leaves disease and poison. Poison could be deliberate or accidental.
   Why would a poison affect the firstborn more than others. Firstborn are older, often one year, two years, or four years older. They are given double portions, the only portion if there is not enough food to go round. (And it occurs to me that toddlers and babies may be drinking milk only, breastfeeding, in Ancient times.)
    Why would one group be affected and not another? Different grains eaten. The rich in one area eat one type of stored grain. The poor slaves living in another area eat another grain and do not grow or gather or save enough to have stores.
    What causes widespread poisoning? In the USA rural communities in previous centuries suffered from St Vitus dance. This was caused by a ind of mildew affecting stored grain when you had an unusually rainy season.
    Farming communities learned to clear out the old, diseased grain in the spring before the new harvest.
   In ancient times you could not persuade people to follow health and safety rules. They were lazy or thought if they could get away with ignoring the rule once they would try to get away with ignoring the rule as often as they could. The only way to make them obey a safety rule was to make the rule a ritual, a habit, a rule, a superstition. God said do it. You did it to celebrate a famous event.
   So the ancient Hebrew communities celebrated not dying from the plague by have the Seder night. Seder means order. Passover - when the angel of death passed over. You get rid of all the flour in the house. (You can't eat moist bread. Only matzoh, dry flat crackers.)
    The Last Supper of Jesus was according to some historians a Passover meal.
    When Christians took over the custom, they gave it a new meaning. Lent. You may or may not like this version of the history of pancake day. If you have an alternative version, and/or more stories to add, I'd be glad to hear them.
 
ANY CHILD CAN MAKE PANCAKES - MY CHILD DID!
    Belatedly I celebrated pancake day with pancakes for breakfast. the recipe for pancakes is easy. My son learned it from his maternal grandmother, my mother. He was a schoolboy. He asked a friend's mother for pancakes and she apologised because she had run out of pancake packet mix. He claims he astonished her by making up pancake mix and cooking her family pancakes.
   As keen cooks will know, the main ingredients of pancakes (like the four ingredient quick sponge cake) are flour, milk, egg, with a little oil. (If you like, add a pinch of salt. Or oil. We are going easy on suspect salt and sugar.)

PANCAKE INGREDIENTS
   I egg, 150 ml/gram milk, fifty mil/gram for flour.

A millilitre is a thousandth of a litre (litre ending re in England er in America), a centilitre is hundredth and a decilitre is a tenth. Wine bottles are 75 cl, three quarters of a liter - the word is abbreviated to make more room on the label.
   For water or milk you can say mils or grams. Depending on density - mil is a volume, and a mil of water weighs a gram. But a mil of light, less dense oil weighs less than a gram. Oil may look thick, but oil spills float on the sea. If you have a balsamic vinegar mix, the ingredients separate and the oil floats on top of the vinegar. A mil of honey weighs more than a gram. Vinegar is the same density as water and goes to the bottom of your sauce jug.

PANCAKE TOPPING(S)
Lemon
Sugar
Cinnamon
Jam
Or other sweet/savoury topping
Traditionally lemon juice and white sugar. But the latest research suggests that for health and dieting sugar is bad whilst cinnamon is good. You might also like to use up old jam.

Utensils needed:
Bowl for flour.
Weighing scales (We use a flat scale.)
Stirring spoon
Sieve
Non-stick frying pan (the size of pancake)
Non stick spatula for turning pancake
Plate (dinner plate or at least the size of frying pan for serving pancake
(Smaller side plate will do if you serve the pancakes folded)
Knife and fork to eat pancake
Small spoon to serve jam from jar

METHOD
1 Sieve your flour into a bowl so flour does not make lumps.
2 Stir in egg. Mixture becomes thick like a solid dumpling.
3 Add milk slowly, stirring gradually to be sure you do not make lumps. I got fed up with this and used a blender.
4 Add small amount of oil to frying pan. Pour back excess and/or wipe off excess.
5 Turn heat under pan to low.
6 Pour in enough batter to cover surface.
7 When batter is turning solid, turn upside down with non-stick spatula in order to cook the other side.
8 When both sides are cooked, turn off heat.
9 Remove pancake with spatula to plate.
10 Add topping to pancake or serve to guests and allow them to choose their own toppings.
11 Host/cook. Ask guests to help clear and wash up. (Or say, 'Don't worry. I'll clear up.')
12 Guest. (If it's your turn to be the guest. Compliment cook and thank host/householder. Smile at children and nudge or tap their toes to encourage them to copy your thanks. Nod and grin when they do!)

   Can you store extra/surplus pancake mix? It contains fresh egg.
Some people make a stack of pancakes and turn them into a cake, with chocolate or other sandwiching ingredient. Or serve with fruit after dinner.

Crying Babies

You can silence a crying baby but keep it alive. A crying baby wants attention, warmth, rest, distraction, food or drink. You hug it, keep it warm, jiggle it, wave something in front of it, feed it milk. Put a finger or nipple or baby milk feeder or pacifier in its mouth to give it something to suck.

Mother's Memories - Widowed 1941

  Harry Godfrey of 38 Squadron died 21 June 1941.  I remember that my mother said others in the plane had survived.
   If he wasn't the pilot, he might have been the rear gunner. They are the two people most vulnerable at the front and the back and who stay in the plane, if it is shot at and damaged, until after the others have jumped out.
   The survivors would have formed a new team. My mother was upset that she was avoided afterwards. She felt they were unsympathetic, unhelpful unkind, no longer interested.
   A woman I met a few years ago told me that avoiding the family or widow of a deceased airman would have been normal. Other crew members and their girlfriends or wives were not merely embarrassed because they could not think what to say.
   The feeling was stronger than that. They wanted to maintain morale.
    More importantly, they were superstitious. They did not want to be associated with somebody who died, which was bad luck.   Instead, they wanted to not think about it, just move on with a new group hoping for better luck.
    My father was my mother's second husband. After she died, I had to help him deal with all the paperwork, her birth certificate and marriage certificate to show her records and that my father was her next of kin.
     She was listed on her second marriage certificate to my father as a widow. I had previously thought she might have concealed her first marriage from him. But she was listed on the second marriage certificate as widow. I asked if he could remember anything she had said about her previous husband in WWII.
   My father was more concerned that he had just become a widower. He shrugged, "It was a long time ago."
   My first thought about her being described on the marriage certificate as a widow was how unkind. Why did they have to say that?
   A minister of religion pointed out that it was a legal requirement. You could not marry a woman a second time if she already married somebody else. She had to show that she was either divorced or widowed.
   The only picture I have is of the Alamein Memorial from the CWGC website.
He had a father called John and a sister.
   I am still haunted by the mystery. What did Harry Godfrey look like?
Angela Lansbury I am still hoping that somebody, somewhere will have a record of his family and a photo of him - better still a photo of him marrying my mother.