Ode to Croydon

The Tenth of March Two Thousand and Sixteen. Thursday.

How did I end up in Croydon?

I mean, it's not the most glamorous part of London. Nobody seems to like it. It's making headlines at the moment as being the home of the 'Croydon Cat Ripper', the person or persons unknown responsible for senseless animal mutilations thereabouts (although subsequent victims have been found in Richmond and Edgeware, the 'Croydon' name seems to have stuck). There was a reward notice asking for information posted when I visited a couple of weeks ago. (Breaking news: during my research I came across an article in the Croydon Guardian about a psychic who knows the killer's identity. Apparently he has short hair and a wide face).

I had a quick look tonight to see if the news had gotten any better. I was promptly gifted with a You Tube clip of a mouse having a day out at the Burger King where I've enjoyed one of my brown breakfasts in the past.

Don't criticize the portrait alignment of this shot. From a documentary point of view I think it's important to establish exactly which menus the mouse is checking out.

Even as I was taking in news of the exciting new trailer for Captain America: Civil War tonight, I was reading tweets about what a let-down Croydon is.

Ha-ha! I have humorously edited that picture so that it looks like Spider-Man is in Croydon! And why not? When they started putting up high-rises in the sixties it was with the ambition of making Croydon a Mini-Manhattan. Nowadays it revels in a different nickname: The Cronx. 

I suppose the fact that the first link on the news page of the Croydon Advertiser is for 'crime' says a lot about what goes down there (and click on that link if you dare. It leads to some peculiar stuff). But until the day I inevitably do get mugged I'm rather fond of the place.

So how did I end up there? A combination of cheap rooms at the Croydon Travelodge and free travel on First Capital Connect services from the centre of London, basically. I can't remember the first time I stayed there, but I've been back many times since. It almost always seems to be the cheapest option when staying in the capital, and despite it's Zone 5-ness it's pretty easy to get to for a rail bod like myself with connections to Victoria, London Bridge, Blackfriars and St Pancras. It's been a stopover on the way to Paris on a couple of occasions. In fact, most of the time I've been there it's been only a stopover. So the last time I visited I decided to check out some of Croydon itself.

The Museum of Croydon is in the Clocktower at the Town Hall. Ah, the Clocktower. I don't know how well the above photo will zoom, but if you do look closely at the grey stone half way up you'll see a familiar inscription: 'Carpe Diem'. What you will also see is a less well-known inscription: 'Venit Nox'. A figure separating the two phrases holds a scythe, emphasizing the message of the ticking clock above: 'Seize the day, for the night cometh'. That's pretty rad.

The museum itself isn't huge - you could probably get round it in less than an hour. But it's full of interesting artifacts: a Crystal Palace season ticket from when they reached the First Division in 1969; a pottery figure of Nellie Chapman, the 'Lion Queen' of Victorian Croydon Fairs; and a wooden carving of 'Paper Jack', the eccentric tramp who slept on the streets of Croydon in the 1930s

Paper Jack

Listen it's got four stars - or those circle things at any rate - on Trip Advisor and I'd pretty much go along with that. 

I think what really won me over about Croydon is that it contains three of my favourite things (four, if you count the two comic shops down on Church St).

There is a Pie and Mash shop that will do you veg pies if you phone your order in before visiting.

In Shirley, there is a windmill. It's only open infrequently, so I plan to pay a proper visit in the future.

And, of course, it's home of Greater London's only tram line, which rather fabulously is free for railway employees.

So, I like Croydon and I'm looking forward to exploring it further. I haven't been to Croydon Airport yet, where Amy Johnson set off on her record breaking flight to Australia. And I'm determined to get in a round of frisbee golf at Lloyd Park.

Among the many disparaging remarks thrown Croydon's way is David Bowie's dismissal of the town in a 1999 interview in Q magazine. He says that if he wanted to be derogatory about somebody or something he would say 'God, it 's so fucking Croydon!' That seems to have been quoted a lot, summing up the world Bowie tried to get away from, with it's not entirely successful concrete futurism, bland and uninspiring. But what's not mentioned is how he completes that thought in the interview.

'I suppose it looks beautiful now.'

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Sunday Night at the Palladium Tetrafluoride Factory

The Fourteenth of April Two Thousand and Thirteen. Sunday.

Palladium Tetrafluoride (PdF4) is is a strong oxidising agent and undergoes rapid hydrolysis in moist air and is only mentioned here in order to shoehorn in a very weak pun. Although, it was interesting to note that palladium - the metal - has its own currency code (under the ISO 4217 standard that labels pounds as GBP, euros as EUR and American dollars as USD one troy ounce of palladium is represented by XPD) and that one of the chemists associated with its discovery - Richard Chenevix - was awarded the Copley Medal. I mention this because at this moment I'm listening to Gary Copley on Radio York (big bands, vocals and jazz. Not normally my thing, but doing it quite nicely at the mo). Here's Gary rocking a tank top:

Ha-ha, they've reversed that photo! His buttons do up on the wrong side, like he's wearing a blouse! Still, that tank top is fierce. Man, I wish our tank tops at work were like that. Instead they look like this:

Brrr! (Incidentally, have you ever wondered why they're called 'tank tops'? I did until I Wikied it two minutes ago. Here's why. Remember: knowledge is a bell you can't unring.

Anyway, that's not the same Gary Copley as the Dublin artist who paints pieces like this:

All of which is my way of saying that things have been pretty much the same all the time I've not been blogging. Everything bumps into everything else. The sails of the Blut Vin Windmill rotate back to their origin as they must.

I've just bought the 3rd season of my Nineteenth Telly Recommendation, Community, which they didn't have on Region 2 so I have gone and forked out for a Region 1 disc. Before watching Manchester City reach the FA Cup final I spent my Sunday watching three episodes of it including the sublime Remedial Chaos Theory which follows the characters through seven different timelines. Clever and funny.

I also watched three episodes of my Twentieth Telly Recommendation, The Mimic. It's being repeated on More 4 from next Sunday (as well as the whole series being on 4od) and I think it's worth a watch. The trailers all show Terry Mynott as the main character, Martin, doing his impressions and I thought "oh, this is all a bit obvious". But then a clip featured this exchange as Martin discusses the merits of a DVD with his friend, Jean:

‘Nah it’s got subtitles. I hate that.’
‘Subtleties Jean; it’s got subtleties.’
‘I don’t like those either.’.

That made me smile and I thought I'd try it after all. I was rewarded with a sweet and melancholy short series (it's only five episodes - give it a go) that mixes a deliberately aimless charm with some very good character work and performances.

That'll do for now. Excuse me while I get some toast before bed.

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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.

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