Round like a circle in a spiral

A second long day in the car. Endless miles of tarmac and metal. Migraine-inducing strobe lighting from low sunlight through trees. Fog affecting visibility around Barnard Castle, much to our amusement. A sense of inhabiting a world of grime

These loomed out of the murk to make me smile. Elegant and stately, with vague echoes of H G Wells, and a nod to a past landscape doted with corn-mills, they are heedless of the traffic whining beneath them - mere insects from their perspective - and quietly get on with the job of generating by far the cheapest, cleanest electricity we are able to generate

Somehow, these poor mute automatons have become embroiled in the black comedy that our politics has become since the last notes of the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony faded and we discovered that we are not quite the modern, inclusive, progressive, outward-facing nation the melodies had led us to believe

The sordid business of constituency politics, parliamentary horse-trading and fragile leadership has seldom been so mercilessly exposed as in the saga of the banned, then permitted, then banned, then permitted-but-not-really wind-turbine. Black comedy can so easily edge into tragedy, and the same three-ring circus has offered us a mine from which we can dig filthy, sulphurous coal that our industries cannot use and we must sell to other nations unscrupulous enough to actually burn it, thoroughly washing our hands after handing it over, I assume