A Circle in a Spiral, A Wheel Within a Wheel

The Twelfth of June Two Thousand and Eleven. Sunday.

It occurs to me that now might be a good time to explain the title of this blog.

I'm always fascinated by the echoes and patterns that turn up in people's lives. I don't believe in Fate, but it's strange how there's something like it in the way we group our experiences together and try to make something out of it. We latch on to an idea and soon we see it reiterated in other parts of our life.

And that's why I like windmills.

I couldn't tell you the first time they figured in my life, but they seem to be all over the place.

Since I share my name with Meneer Van Gogh the noted artist I thought I might find inspiration for my blog in his paintings. I wondered if he'd used a windmill for a subject and was pleased to find that he had painted several during his time in Paris. Both Vincent and the windmills lived in Montmartre, and the Blute Fin (the name comes from the French verb Bluter - to sift, the flour that was ground there) is still there today. Here's its Facebook page.

One of these paintings made the news in Feb 2010 when it was finally attributed to Van Gogh some 35 years after it was claimed as his work.

In fact if you put the name of this blog into Google it'll try and give you one of the other Vincent's pages instead of mine. The cheek.

Windmills have turned up elsewhere in my life too. I used to meet my ex-girlfriend for lunch in the Windmill pub in Swinton. I wonder if it's still there...

(Apparently it was in 2008)

I'm a big fan of They Might Be Giants (oh, they're probably going to figure here a few times on this blog and rightly so. Going to see them next month so let's make one of their fab new tracks Can't Keep Johnny Down the Third Music Recommendation). They took their name from a 1971 film starring George C Scott and Joanne Woodward, where he thinks he's Sherlock Holmes and she's his psychiatrist named Dr Watson. The film takes its name from Don Quixote tilting at (you've guessed it) windmills because he thought they might be, well, giants. I've got Don Quixote resting on my bookshelf unread, but I'm down with the whole 'impossible dream' thang. I can dig that.

And of course I courted my first wife with the promise of finding a disused windmill on a housing estate in Kidsgrove. Ah there it is. Although you might be able to see it better from here.

We even spent our wedding night at the Windmill Hotel in Scarborough

Our key wouldn't work in the door so we had to spend an hour in the Toy Museum they used to have downstairs drinking tea while they called out an emergency locksmith. Nice breakfast, though.

So I have something of an affinity for windmills.

I also like octopuses, but any mollusc-related thoughts must wait until another day.

More soonliest

Of Paper-Thin Walls and Loneliness

The Second of June  Two Thousand and Eleven. Thursday.

I don't live in Japan (one of the many places around the world I don't live) but I sympathise with the plight of some of their citizens. Sympathetic Resonance you might say as I am referring to the vibrations many Japanese have to endure what with there being all those earthquakes and that. My own bad vibrations (if you will (if you won't as well, really (what's that song by The Zutons called? You know, the one that goes 'you may, you might; your chest gets tight; you say you love day but you come out at night.' (checks iTunes) Oh. It is actually called You Will You Won't. Should've guessed that really (and I quite like the Zutons (and as I've said in an earlier blog I like A to Zs, so I've just been inspired to make a list called Autons to Zutons. Brilliant. That's tomorrow night's blog sorted out) but not enough to make them my First Music Recommendation. That will have to wait.)))) are due to the washing machine that lives upstairs entering its spin cycle ('and a tricycle has one more cycle than the washing machine'. Didn't have to wait long. Ladies and Gents, the First Music Recommendation is They Might Be Giants' kids album Here Come the 123s)

I think the washing machine lives alone. Certainly the post for the upstairs flat only ever says 'Mr W Machine' - there doesn't appear to be a Mrs Machine or anybody else at that address. But my other neighbours seem to have someone with which to share their life. This I know as their acts of congress have on occasion caused plates to rattle in my cupboards and windows to jiggle in their frames. It's all a bit like that scene in Delicatessen - which you might know better as my Fourth Film Recommendation.

I guess what I'm trying to say, what with all this talk of sympathy and what-have-you, is: don't worry. Everybody feels as lonely as a washing machine sometimes.

More soonliest.