Accounting for coincidence

It rained all day Friday, so I didn't go for a walk. A long one was needed on Saturday, to make up for the lack of paces. And my walk was indeed long (over 16km); it took me from Chynów to Krężel, the next station along the Radom line, followed by an eastward turn towards Barcice Rososkie, then through Gaj Żelechowski and Machcin II, and home.

Along the way, I come across a signpost for the village of Henryków. I stop to take a photo, being minded of the 1970s British progressive/ avantgarde group, Henry Cow (anyone else remember them?)

It was name one would bandy around the sixth-form common room to demonstrate one's on-trend credentials; often mentioned in the quality music press at the time, and heard late-evening on John Peel's Radio 1 show. (If you actually knew Henry Cow, it meant you had an Older Brother.) So while not a group whose works I could hum along with, Henry Cow was certainly a part of the musical landscape in the pre-punk era - a band to be reckoned with.

I think no more of it until returning to the działka; I listen to some Henry Cow on YouTube and read up about the band and its rich history on Wikipedia. Below: the cover of The Road, the box set of the band's works.

One of the more immediately accessible Henry Cow tunes, Nine Funerals for a Citizen King.

And then I make a stunning discovery. The definitive book (512 pages long) about Henry Cow, published in 2019, entitled Henry Cow: The World Is a Problem, was written by American academic Benjamin Piekut. 

Benjamin Piekut. Piekut...

PIEKUT IS LITERALLY THE NEXT VILLAGE TO HENRYKÓW.

The two villages border each other, and their centres are less than one mile apart. What are the chances?

The photograph below was taken just a few hundred metres from the one towards the top of this post.

Although Poland has a Piekuty, a Nowe Piekuty and a Piekutowo, it has only one Piekut.

Below: an OpenStreetMap view of the area, Piekut abutting Henryków.

On to the philosophical point. It is indeed possible that a young American, Benjamin Piekut, curious as to the origin of his surname, googled it and found it on a map of Mazovia, next to a village that sounded like the name of a 1970s British prog-rock band. Which piqued his interest to the point that he ended up writing a book about them.

Or not! I shall have to find out!

It's coincidences like this that make physicist Richard Feynman's famous quote about coincidence sound like bollocks: "The most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight?"

I return to Henryków by motorbike to have more of a look around.

The universe is indeed held together by a latticework of coincidence. 'Plate' or 'shrimp', 'plate of shrimp'.

This time last year:
Działka food

This time two years ago:
Proper summer in Warsaw

This time three years ago:
Poland's trains failing in the heat

This time four years ago:
"Learn from your mystics is my only advice"

This time five years ago:
Out where the pines grow wild and tall

This time eight years ago:
Behold and See (part V) - short story

This time nine years ago:
Syrenki in Warsaw

This time ten years ago:
What's the Polish for 'impostor'?

This time 11 years ago:
Running with the storm on the road to Mamrotowo

This time 13 years ago:
St Pancras Station - new gateway to London

This time 14 years ago:
Mountains or sea? North Wales has them both