Coincidentally

I posted about my faintly disconcerting initial experience with Random Street View the other day. In that post, I used the word “whirligig” for the first time in my life. I therefore found myself surprised this afternoon, when I encountered this conversation between two Oxford dons in the book I am reading (A Memorial Service by J I M Stewart):

"'The whirligig of time, as Feste says.'

'Yes. Do you know what a whirligig is?'

'A spinning top, I suppose.'

'It was a revolving cage for the ducking of petty criminals.'"

I am beginning to think that maybe there is a message that somehow is being conveyed to me from somewhere. 

In the context of messages, I recall the anecdote told to Giles Fraser by Peter Hitchens in the Confessions podcast episode that Hitchens took part in. As Hitchens tells it, a Liverpool dock worker is alone at the end of a shift when he falls and finds himself hanging above the ground, suspended by one hand gripping a girder and nothing else. He calls out, "Is there anybody there?" and a heavenly voice comes back saying, "My son, I am here". The dock worker yells back, "Thank you, lord - what should I do", to which comes the reply, "Let go." The dock worker pauses for an instant and then responds by yelling, "Is there anybody else there?"

Unlike the dock worker, I am not at the stage of rejecting the message that is being offered - I am still trying to make out what precisely I am being told.