18th February 2023.
Sorry about the blog free day yesterday, got distracted by this;
No idea what it is, but I’m sure it’ll make a great micropub when it’s finished.
Talking of micropubs, back to our Stockton Saturday. I was ahead of schedule so tried to track Mrs RM down in micro central,
gave up looking and headed for our rendezvous point.
“Meet you at 4 in the Tipsy Turtle” I’d said, trusting to better internet than we’ve had on the Acropolis.
Stockton’s little yards and alleys are an absolute joy to get lost in,
especially when there’s cracking little pubs like the Golden Smog and Kopper Kettle down every one, each with their own heap of character.
Corn beef cob, too, to accompany a rich pint of Durham Stout that Mrs RM nicked as soon as she turned up five minutes later.
“Ooh, crisps IN the sandwich, good to see !” said a lady who I then bored to tears explaining about the Crispin/out vote in Sandwich, Kent.
Mrs RM loved the soundtrack, veering from Eagles to Billy Joel to Dire Straits,
which on reflection suggests it wasn’t veering very wildly at all, stuck somewhere in that 1979/80 sweet spot.
It seemed rude not to buy Mrs RM her own drink since she’d drunk mine, and now I’m a completist I’m allowed to have cans of craft like this lovely Fierce; Jane would approve.
Cockles on the bar ? Great to see, but don’t mix them up with the jam jars.
Mrs RM wasn’t (yet) as convinced by Stockton as I am, and her shopping haul was a little, er,
Well, you decide.
We decided we’d better do Middlesbrough, before the smog monsters left the Riverside.
retiredmartin 
Even your most fervid subscribers will give you a day off to visit the acropolis.
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Thanks, Dave, glad you won’t be cancelling your sub.
I brought my smaller laptop to do a few posts but it’s psychologically not the same so struggled to feel motivated to blog on Stockton in Athens. Am tempted to do a BRAPA style 5 parter to Greece’s top crumbling buildings.
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That list is likely to exceed 36.
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Just saying to Mrs RM we could do a daily “Good Athens” and “Bad Athens” post from same street, perhaps same building. An astonishing city. Beer is a tiny, tiny, part of it, mind.
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We’re planning on heading out that way ourselves, later in the year. Not sure it would make much of a micro-pub, though!
Is that a new video, to the Dire Straits classic? It doesn’t seem terribly 80’s to me.
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Ooh, Golden Smog! I wonder if the name is a nod to the Midwest’s premier Americana supergroup, or just coincidental?
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Tsk.
And here’s me thinking that you’d been to the Pershaw Monument.
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*Penshaw, even.
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You mean the Pershore monument, shawly?
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I’m unshaw, about that and most things, tbh.
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