Well, not the whole world, just my tiny part of it.
Last month, to celebrate the mister's birthday, the Boy treated us to a guided tour of a local landmark - the Transporter Bridge. I've written about the bridge here on the blog previously but this was the first time I'd ever been to the top (the mister had walked up and over it years ago and the Boy has been known to jump off it) by way of the fairly recently added lift.
We were joined by a young family from nearby Durham, also celebrating a birthday, and the two little boys kept us entertained with their endless questioning of the local historian who accompanied us to share facts, tell stories and point out various features from our lofty position.
It was a bitingly cold day and bloody freezing at the top but it was worth enduring for the panoramic view of the area and the reminder of how busy this part of the river Tees and the town used to be (Middlesbrough wasn't once called The Infant Hercules for nothing!).
The final part of the tour was a trip in the gondola (a carrier for cars and foot passengers which is suspended from the bridge) to the other side of the river. 'Are we flying?', asked one of the little boys as we made our way across to Port Clarence. Not quite.
The clock on the dock tower has only three faces. The story goes that the tower (both a landmark for approaching ships and a water tower providing hydraulic power to operate the dock gates and cranes) was built using money donated by local industrialists, one of whom refused to contribute as the last thing he wanted was for his workforce to be clock watching.
The Transporter is in the St. Hilda's part of Middlesbrough, known by locals as 'over the border', a once large and bustling community the other side of the railway line. This is where the town began, with a mix of impressively ornate buildings for the iron, steel and shipping companies, a market place, a cathedral and a grid of streets with back to back terraces to house workers and their families, which over time would become the worst slums in the town.
For an area that's currently being promoted by the council as a tourist attraction (ahem, 'the historic quarter'), it's a sorry sight. There are few remnants of the past. The houses and people are long gone, the original town hall (once the subject of a painting by L.S. Lowry) has been left to rack and ruin, and the one remaining pub (from over a hundred by the late 1880s) can only hint at its notoriety as a den of iniquity and brief stint as a TV star (the pub featured in a couple of episodes of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet).
There are plans for the building of a fancy indoor snow centre. Like so many ambitious projects which have failed to get off the starting block here in Cloud Cuckoo Land, it's doubtful it will ever materialise. Suffice to say, I'm not buying skis just yet.
After the step back in time, it was home for cake
and a bit of hand warming over the candles.