Alex

You are unpacking boxes of books from being in temporary accommodation for a year and discover that your copy of 'If on a Winter's night, a Traveller' has gone missing.

You can't help but think that this is stretching the metatextual narrative a little *too* far.

Deborah surely? Admittedly that may be both my Derbyshire bias and my 'bizarrely high number of tangential connections to the Cavendishes' bias speaking.

With the death of Jane Goodall, I am suddenly reminded of David Brin's Uplift series, in which the Chimpanzees humanity has genetically engineered into having human level speech capabilities and visible intelligence invoke her name like she's some sort of deity/guardian spirit.

That makes sense and is somewhat reassuring.

There is a part of me that's very concerned that part of the reason the series has been greenlit is because Rowling is annoyed that "her" stars have pretty much all been vocally against her bigotry and she needs a replacement set to be the new faces of the franchise.

Andrew Wakefield is so famously discredited my school textbooks *20 years ago* were using him as the headline example for why it was important for journalists to have a scientific grounding.

Better coffee than Renfé mind. I had to start taking it con leche since it was so bitter.

I have found that 'at seat' is just much more preferable to 'trying to get through 3 coaches with a sandwich and coffee at 300kmph

I think the bar/trolley service is a necessity on longer journeys - It's 90 minutes from me to London, add on the time through customs and 'I'll go Premiere on Eurostar and that's lunch/tea sorted' is a life saver.

The most bonkers version of this is the Trojan Horse. We have oodles of references to it, paraphrases and quotations, a huge chunk of the Aeneid that's essentially a fanfic retelling but the original poem? Pretty much entirely lost.

Reckon it's 50/50 on this terrace beingbthe setting for a spy thriller chase scene or a romcom date scene...

In case you think I was kidding...

The Alhambra also has a colony of cats who the general public are NOT ALLOWED to stroke, feed, kidnap, pick up or go psspsspss to. Photos are fine however.

It feels vaguely insulting to give him the horses at thst point. Maybe that's why he's sad?

I think this would be 'Roman Catholic' considering its an early Pope.

I have no idea what story this is referencing and don't really want to know at this point

Which is impressive comsidering how some of them were martyred.

Altar piece depicting Pope St. Marcellus in church with horses

You can lead a horse to Chapel, but you cannot make him pray...

Why yes that is a direct bus from Malaga to Ukraine.

Not anywhere specific *in* Ukraine mind you.

The rules on the Rock of Gibraltar can be summed up as:

"Rule 1: Do not feed the monkeys.
All other rules: This rule exists because someone fed the monkeys. :("

*Looks across from Algeciras*

"Huh, Gibraltar's bigger than I thought."

*Considers*

"It's the zoomed in inserts."

And finally, here's a very good boy who wants some walkies as a palette cleanser. 12/12

11. So is it just me or does Queen Isabella of Castilke appear to be *the actual light source* in this painting. Because that's a... bold level of historiographic glorification. 11/12

10. A tricky subject to be sure, but apparently this is a painting of a painting stopping an earthquake and not, in fact, a House of Usher situation. 10/12

9. This painting is called 'the Virgin with St John and the Marias on the road to Calvary'. Note we're saying the Marias because I'm pretty certain there's only meant to be three max *including* the Virgin so somebody's lost count somewhere here. 9/12

8. San Francis asking the angel if they know it's over 30 degrees out there and he could really do without a heavenly being stealing his water. 8/12

7. When you're trying to explain to your patrons and subscribers that you have writer's block. 7/12

6. Juan de Valdés: Would have excelled at hard rock and metal album covers. 6/12

5. St. Thomas Aquinas: 'So if I move 10 feet and get a flanking bonus, does that negate the negative effect of being poisoned?'
Doctors of the church: *Furiously check rulebooks* 5/12

The last supper with some slightly odd positioning of the disciples compositionally.

4. Is the Apostle John sitting in Jesus's lap here? Between that and the meal of whole roast lamb there's some weird symbolism going on in this one. 4/12

Saint Sebastian wearing an unusually large amount of clothing.

3. The world's least horny (and oddly proportioned) Saint Sebastian. Just seriously, when was the last time you saw this guy depicted with anything more than a modesty robe? 3/12