Redefining Beauty

I sit here "post pandemic" infected with COVID and a wife and baby daughter who I also seem to have infected! I am feeling awful, worried about my family and need a distraction. What better way to distract myself than to ponder a recent visit to my home town of Redcar? Situated on the southern side of the mouth of the River Tees it is a small town with a history rooted in industry, first the fishing industry and more recently the steel industry. Some of the world's most famous landmarks were forged in the steelworks which were the life blood for many of Teessides families, my own included.

I haven't visited Redcar in well over a decade, probably a decade and a half. I left when I was 13, to return for a couple of years in my late teens. It is though, and always will be, my home. It is where my childhood memories lie and where many of the most important people in my life still live, it is also where some of those important people are buried.

The visit was really impromptu, we set out on Monday morning to visit a museum about an hour away from where I currently live in Lancashire, by Wednesday morning we woke up on the opposite coast in a hotel in Middlesbrough, ready to visit Redcar.

Now it was a great visit for many reasons, meeting family, friends old and new and, most importantly for this blog, to see and photograph some of my old haunts. I took my wife to see the places I grew up, many of them no longer even there as redevelopment has given my childhood memories a facelift I didn't need, but perhaps the town did.

This is where I actually get to the point of this blog and how we define beauty.