Where in the world Wednesday

A good company I do stuff for are running a #whereareyouwednesday thing and it’s attracted all sorts of posts in real time. Y’know, selfies from Sri Lanka to Teeside to “@ my bloody desk”. On Twitter the hashtag attracts posts from forgettable to enviable to  what-on-earth-able and back again.

This got me thinking to my whereabouts on each successive Wednesday so far in 2016 starting from the first week of January.

Bracknell – Leeds – Home* – Manchester – Leeds – Edinburgh – Rome – Home X 5 – Birmingham – Edinburgh – Gloucester – Edinburgh – Reykjavik – Gloucester – Bristol – Gloucester – Nottingham – Barcelona – Home – Gloucester – Macclesfield – Worcester – Heathrow (Airport Hotel) – Bracknell – City of London – Croydon – Nottingham – Livingston – Rustington – Copenhagen – Home X 2 – Lisbon – Manhattan – Bracknell – Ohrid (Macedonia) – Home – Phoenix (Arizona) – Middlesborough – Home – Poole – Middlesborough: today, Wednesday 23rd November 2016.

And it’s only November.

Just time to sneak in a probable Dartford, a cheeky Bracknell but yearning a turned down Houston Texas before a home for Crimble #notgoinganywhere.

Not a rigorous exercise I admit – how many Wednesdays so far this year? – but it kind of reflects how busy I’ve been. Where busyness is not necessarily a good thing. If only someone would write a practical and readable book about that. What’s that? Tony Crabbe has?

Am going to lie down now. Here’s a relaxing photo from a Wednesday in May at the Blue Lagoon.

Okay, it was a Sunday when we marinaded. But we drove past it on the following Wednesday.

*Home = Wiltshire by the way, just north of Marlborough.

 

Up the Boro on a November Tuesday

Jogging around central Middlesborough you get a sense of a great future behind it. Blue plaques reporting that something industrially significant happened on the adjacent patch of waste ground harking back to when Britannia ruled the waves. That now vacant robustly pillared building? That was a bank when global trade used to need stuff shipped direct from Teeside.

But it’s not all ruin porn. The bank as-was is now funky new-wave office space BOHO FOUR. Yes,the Transporter Bridge still ferries across the Tees with a backdrop of cooling towers and chimneys gushing different grey hued vapour into an already leaden sky. There are Call Centres. Inevitable retail. The Tees Barrage. Even modern art has a home here: Anish Kapoor sculpture and MIMA.

And then there’s food.

Behold, the Kebabish Bar & Grill!

So with their wealth of oriental wizardry the dish du jour was obviously… chicken parmo.

Chicken what?

Allow Wikipedia to expound:

"The Chicken Parmesan, colloquialy known as the Parmo, is a breaded cutlet 
dish originating in Middlesbrough and a popular item of take-away food in 
the North East of England. Similar to a schnitzel, it consists of 
chicken in breadcrumbs topped with a 
white béchamel/Parmesan sauce and cheese."

It’s mahousive, it’s oh so wrong and that makes it right. Although I did wuss out and only had a creamy, delicious, juicy, satisfying “half”. Am trying not to think of the calorific armageddon especially as I washed it down with a full fat Coke.

Don’t judge me.

Next time: stotties!