“Did you see the tombs of Mary of Burgundy and Charles of Burgundy in the chancel?”

(Kate asked me this just now in the Church of Our Lady in Bruges.)

I couldn’t help thinking of when Emma and Jacob were little and they knew every detail of Pikachu and Charmander and the other Pokémon characters, each with its particular abilities and weaknesses and path of evolution. Pokémon for the kids, Harry Potter for the teenagers, saints for the Catholics, celebrities for the masses. Our appetite for particulars about people is infinite, and it hardly matters how small the facts are or whether the people are even real.

[31 December 2015]