Look, I know it’s irresponsible of me to keep you in suspense for this long over my spice rack dilemma. I must apologise if it’s been keeping you awake at night.

The solution, as to so many things in life, was Tupperware: a box that lives in the cupboard and can be lifted out as required.

The blossom’s here and the clocks have sprung forward. Easter has arrived. Hope is in the air, growth and renewal are all around us, if we only let ourselves notice.

Just along the River Tees from the Princess of Wales Bridge, one finds the Teesquay Millennium Bridge—locally known as the ‘wobbly’ bridge. I trudged across this many times when I lived locally.

At its northern end, the bridge used to give onto the Castlegate shopping centre. The bridge was accessible to pedestrians, but not to wheelchairs, when the shopping centre was closed. This gave rise to the above unusual sign, roughly 250m away from the south end of the bridge, directing those with disabilities to use the aforementioned Princess of Wales Bridge.

These days, the Castlegate centre is no more. While the new Stockton Waterfront is under construction, the northern end of the bridge is disconcertingly dangling. Once it’s complete, the bridge will be extended to join it, and will—for the first time—be fully accessible at all times.

It was always the bit over the road that wobbled. I wonder if it will still wobble after the extension is constructed, or whether a new moniker will be needed.

Twenty years ago, this piece of land near Thornaby station was home to The Rocket. This was the Students’ Union associated with Stephenson College at Durham University, where I started my medical degree… and where several of my fellow students performed a ‘full monty’ striptease for the local mayor. I’m not sure that would be a University-sanctioned activity in 2024. It feels more like an event that could lead to a political scandal.

I’m not certain when The Rocket closed, but it had been long abandoned and had suffered a large fire by the time it was torn down in 2021. It could hardly be called a rapid unscheduled disassembly.

It’s surprising how quickly things change, and also how quickly time passes.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, it was the Vernal equinox yesterday, which means only one thing…

I didn’t realise how wonky our egg-house doors were until I took that photo!

Sunderland has a long heritage of making cranes, most notably at the Crown Works site belonging to Coles Cranes. Cranes were built here from 1939 to 1998. In 2015, the site was cleared to make way for the construction of the Northern Spire bridge.

Much as with the Doxford Arch, this stonework was retained when the headquarters of the Crown Works was demolished and has been re-sited nearby in this memorial.

You might reasonably ponder the relevance of the retained 1879. This is the year Coles Cranes was founded, initially based in Derby.

The site is due to have an exciting future, with one of the UK’s most extensive sets of film and television studios planned for construction—the Crown Works Studios. Separate, though seemingly less-developed, plans exist for constructing Shipyard Studios nearby, including re-purposing the old shipyard to create the world’s largest underwater studio.

It seems like Sunderland is making a concerted push to pivot from heavy industry to visual arts.

From 1870, William Doxford & Sons Ltd has a large shipyard in Pallion, Sunderland. After a storied history, the final ship floated out of the yard in 1989.

The yard’s gatehouse, built in 1903, was a local landmark. Many thousands of workers plodded through its archway in the twentieth century. Yet by the twenty-first century, the gatehouse was badly dilapidated and in need of demolition.

In 2019, the gatehouse was knocked down—but the archway was preserved, and reconstructed close to its original location in 2021.

This metal sculpture by Ray Lonsdale in Sunderland city centre commemorates the Vaux brewery. The brewery operated from 1837 to 1999.

The brewery continued using horse-drawn delivery wagons long after other methods became financially preferable. Five delivery horses were rehoused at the Beamish museum after the brewery ceased production in 1998, and the last surviving horse—Justin—died there in 2016. The chains on the sculpture were donated by a former driver, and are part of the original tack.

The Northern Spire bridge in Sunderland opened in 2018. It’s the tallest structure in Sunderland, soaring to 105m—a little taller than Parliament’s Elizabeth Tower.

The A-frame pylon was manufactured in Belgium and brought to Sunderland by barge. Perhaps appropriately, the first three vehicles across the bridge after it opened were locally-built Nissans.