Parmo vote: the results are in

And, surprising no-one, I did not make the cut in the finals of the World Parmo Cooking Championships, despite my best efforts to stuff the ballot box. Probably just as well, given the improbability of me being able to catch a flight to Teesside and make it to Stockton High Street this week, what with the snow and all.



So who are the finalists? The three winners include Borges (not Argentinean, as you might expect, but rather Italian) and Billingham's Mexi-maybe Mohujos, whose Angolan chef is trained in Portuguese cuisine. I guess, if nothing else, that this validates the "World" part of the contest's title.

So big thanks to everyone who voted for me. I owe you all several beers, followed by a deep-fried slice of chicken smothered in cheese, topped with more cheese.

Here's how the MSM tells it. (Votes from Cardiff, huh? I wonder which post code??)

Black Tucker boots

I bought these boots from Freeman, Hardy and Willis in Billingham town center. Tucker boots, as we called them. They were on the sale rack; cost me £5. It was 1985.



They have been to London, Luxembourg and Leeds (not necessarily in that order).

They went to a Depeche Mode concert at Whitley Bay Ice Rink in 1988, where the audience stood on temporary plywood flooring atop the ice, and dancing was pivotal to preventing frostbite.

They once became completely covered in thick mud during an ill-advised shortcut through a construction site, and recovered only after many, many hours of careful work with a soft brush.

Amazingly, they're still wearable. Sure, they're a little worn and scuffed, and the suede is pulling away from the heel in a couple of places. But the soles are still sturdy and even, despite many hours of pavement pounding, dancing, sightseeing and lounging.

I've disposed of less-perfect shoes. I've given many pairs to the Salvation Army with hardly a scratch. But these I keep, in part because they remind of being 16 years old, wandering around Billingham with just enough pocket money for a new pair of boots.

You can go home again, but be prepared

Things that have changed in my hometown since I was a kid:

1) Northfield Comprehensive School
When I went there in the mid-80s, the school was kinda crumbly. Despite being only ten years old, it was already prone to leaks and subsidence. The language lab had 30-some desks with built-in cassette players and headphone jacks, all of which were broken; the library was little-used and underpromoted; the nets on the cracked, pothole-ridden tennis courts had long been torn down.

I can't say for sure whether the first two issues have been resolved, but hey, who cares? Because now Northfield has a sports college! With competitive table tennis! And a shiny metal statue!



2) Mad Ken
Every town has a nutter; Billingham had Mad Ken. He'd stand at the rotary at the entrance to the town center, yelling at cars and mailboxes, his hair dyed jet black and slicked back. Sometimes he had an invisible dog with him, which he also yelled at.

I hadn't seen him for years, though I looked for him whenever I was home and walking past his favorite spot. I assumed he'd moved on to a better, more serene place. And then last week, I was round the shops with my mum because the weekly market was on, and she pointed to an elderly man at the fruit stall.

"Look," she said. "Mad Ken. Except he's not mad now."

What? How could Mad Ken not be mad? What did that make him? What did that make me?

So now he's Sane Ken. Or, I guess, just Ken. Regular Ken, buying peaches and strawberries on a Friday afternoon.

3) La Ronde
A fabulous piece of futurist-brutalist architecture, the La Ronde (as it was known) was a nightclub and lounge. Built in the sixties, it was like a concrete UFO. It was apparently quite the glamor spot in its heyday--a place where men wore suits and women wore long gowns--but many years and name changes (Bardot's, Eleanor Rigby's, K2) later, it had become something of a drug den, at least according to local lore.

So, as part of a revitalization plan, down it came.

Oh, and now it looks so much better.



Thankfully, not everything has changed in Billingham. The town center still has a Woolworth's, and disturbingly cheap department store Boyes (locally referred to as "Boyzees"), and that somewhat Soviet Glory of the Motherland statue ...

Get yer wellies on!

One of my favorite things to do when I visit my parents is walk their dog, Cassie.



(Please, whatever you do, don't tell my cat.)

Cassie is 15 and stone deaf. It takes her a while to sit down, and you can almost hear her joints creak as she does. But when we go for walks, she bounces along like a puppy.

Her usual circuit is along Billingham Beck, one of my childhood haunts. The beck is a narrow stream that curves around fields and through woody glades. Back around 900 AD, apparently, Vikings sailed up the beck and settled the area. I've always had trouble imagining those enormous longships maneuvering up what is now a six-foot-wide, three-foot-deep channel.



As a kid, I used to climb through overgrown undergrowth in spring, looking for seasonal pools of tadpoles and baby frogs, pondskaters and sticklebacks. The area is now a funded nature park with planned pathways and neatly maintained bridges. It still feels wild and rural, but there's no longer a need to thrash through nettles and blackberry thorns to get from one side to the other.

The best time to go is early in the morning, when the air is fresh and the rabbits are lively.

First you have to put your shoes on. (Before she went deaf, Cassie could be thrown into walkies mode by the phrase "Get your wellies on!" Now you have to mime the act of pulling on rubber boots. She'll still wait patiently for you to finish.)



This is where you start.



Follow the path down the hill and across the bridge.



Walk alongside the beck and play one of Cassie's favorite games: Wood-chipper. It's a lot like Fetch, in that you throw a stick and she chases it;



but with the extra wrinkle that she then attempts to shred the stick into tiny pieces before you can catch up with her.





Keep going; you might catch the scent of a fox or see a pair of magpies. After a couple of left turns, there's another bridge:



and then you're on a shaded path lined with ancient ferns and oversized wild rhubarb and trees shooting swordlike branches toward the light.



And then over another bridge--this one high above the water.



Follow the path on the right-hand side. Say hi to the horses if they're around (they'll come say hi to you anyway).



And then back up the hill.



If you want, you can play Cassie's other favorite game: Lazy Fetch. Throw a ball up the hill and she'll chase it, grab it, and then drop it on the path so it rolls back down to you. She's smart: why should she bother bringing you the ball when you're just going to throw it back uphill again?

And then back home to rest.



And have breakfast (you, not the dog).

Sunday breakfast, Sunday lunch

Necessity dictated a big ol' fry-up for breakast and my dad came through with the real deal: bacon, fried potato, thick wedges of peppery black pudding, grilled tomato, and double-yolker fried eggs.



And as it was Sunday, we went out for pub lunch to the Sutton Arms in Elton. The Arms has one of the largest menus I've seen, and while too many options generally means none of them are above average (it's really not possible to offer more than 150 entrees and expect everything to be made from scratch with fresh ingredients), they do a pretty good job.

Especially worthwhile are the game-related dishes: the casserole of local game with port and bacon; the rabbit pie; the roast duck confit with butter-bean sauce.

Somewhat intriguing (but probably best avoided) is the 200-oz rump steak (which costs £85 and requires a day's notice).

We opted for the straightforward Sunday lunch: my parents and The Boy had roast lamb, so I went for roast pork.



Thick slices of meat, reasonably moist, with whipped potato, roast potato, Yorkshire puddings, stuffing and a rich, salty gravy.

Oh, and veggies on the side: a steamed selection (turnip, carrot, slightly brown broccoli, slightly gray cabbage) and a big bowl of mushy peas:



(Do not adjust your set.)

Parmo!

Teesside has a secret. A culinary creation dreamed and realized right here. It's not available anywhere else. It's largely unknown, unheard of, by anyone outside the area.

It's parmo.

Think poutine, think curry, think gyros (aka doner kebabs), think pizza. Think of the food with which one traditionally soaks up booze after a long night on the town. And now add parmo to that list.

"It's great," enthused my cousin Andrew. "It's the perfect thing after about four pints. But I'm pretty sure if someone put it in front of me when I was sober, I'd think they were mad."

So what is it?

Take a chicken breast or pork escalope. Pound it thin, then dip it in egg and coat in breadcrumbs and deep-fry it.

Then top it with bechamel sauce.

Then top that with cheddar cheese (it was originally parmesan, which explains the name).

Then throw under the grill until the cheese melts.

The result:



Of course, this is the plain, unadorned version; the local takeout restaurant offers further toppings:

• The Hot Shot (pepperoni, garlic, onion and chili)



• Bolognese (white with cheddar bolognese)



• Mexicano (topped with pepperoni, of course)



• Espresso (pepperoni, ham, mushroom, onion)

This is usually served with french fries and shredded cabbage.

Naturally, The Boy and I had to be in the correct frame of mind to appreciate the experience. So after a night of open bar at The Swan, we walked, with resonable steadiness, down to Mr. Mimo's (famously known as the workplace for a female delivery driver whose 1989 murder--or rather the non-prosecution of her assailant--led to the overturning of England's 800-year-old double jeopardy law).

But I digress.

After a night of dancing in high heels, the stroll down Station Road (across the train tracks, past the gas station) seemed longer and more uncomfortable than it should have been. So in stockinged feet, across cold pavement and gravel, I made the parmo pilgrimage.

And was it all I had been led to believe?

Oh yeah. Ohhhh yeah.

[want more on parmo?]

A family do

Last night was the big "do" to celebrate both my mom's retirement and my parents' respective birthdays. The whole family was invited, as well as my mom's former work colleagues and the neighbors on their street (who, from all accounts, are party animals).

My dad had rented the function room at The Swan, a pub a five-minute walk from the house, and we spent the afternoon decorating it with balloons and banners (and trying to figure out how the duct-taped-together audio system worked).

The evening was a lot of fun; it was good to see so much of the family in one place, especially the cousins of my generation (perhaps predictably, we gathered at one table and passed our time insulting each other).

The food was typical Northern buffet of triangular tuna-cucumber sandwiches, sausage rolls, fried sausages, pickled onions, pork pie, open-faced egg salad sandwiches, potato chips.

And a cake.

A lovely real proper fruit cake--not the painfully dense American version with green cherries--light and buttery, with a nice fruit-to-cake ratio and a good thick crust of royal icing. My cousin Deborah's friend had made it, and (based solely on the knowledge that my mom has dark hair and my dad has a beard) decorated it with parental figurines:





See the resemblance?

Oh, and there was drinking, of course.

Of course. Because there was an open bar.

I asked the bartender if he knew how to make a martini. No, he said, he'd never made a cocktail before. (In Teesside, the drink of choice is beer (or wine, but it has to be either "sweet" or "dry white.")

So, I said, put four parts gin and one part vermouth in a glass.

"This one?" he asked, pointing at the sweet vermouth.

"No, the other one," I said .... but it was too late.

Anyway. Let's continue.

I asked whether he had a shaker. No, no he didn't. So fill the glass with ice, I said (which he did), and then strain it into another glass ... do you have a strainer?

"Umm ... I have orange wedges."

????

"No, to strain the ice out of the drink."

"Oh, right. No, I don't." He started looking around the bar for a suitable alternative--and came up with a beer mat.

Good enough. He placed it over the top of the glass, leaving just a narrow opening, and deftly poured the drink into another glass.

He pushed it across the bar to me and watched as I took the first sip.

Ecchhhhh.

"Mmmm ... this is really great," I said. "Just like James Bond would drink."

He beamed with pride.

For the rest of the night, I drank dry white wine.

Blighty ahoy!

This week we're off to England to visit my parents: they both celebrate milestone birthdays this month (turning 60, though to me they'll always be 30, climbing trees and building model airplanes--yes, that's at 30).

We'll have almost a week in Teesside, which is becoming more gentrified by the moment--Middlesbrough has a modern art museum! Billingham has a tapas bar!--and then a couple of days in London, staying with my oldest and bestest friend and her family.

Don't worry; I'll keep writing!