I had promised to take the family to see Inception in the evening (see next post). But by the time we got to the cinema there were no places left. So the sprogs were left to choose a mutually agreed DVD. Their choice, exceptionally, was a Japanese anime film, with the English title Castle in the Sky. I thought I could slope off and do something else whilst they watched, especially when I saw the date of the film – 1986! But I ended up watching the whole thing and being enchanted. Afterwards, I googled it out of curiosity and found that it was, or had been, ranked as the second best animated film of all time. It’s proper title, Laputa, which is also the title of a Jonathan Swift novel, signals its ambitions, and there are so many diverse cultural references in the story that it would be difficult to know where to begin. In any case, it was an unexpected pleasure. It was also a trove of metaphors. One I particularly liked was a robot who still faithfully tends his masters’ domain, even though the masters have long since become extinct. How often, in our societies, do we continue to do things long after the original reason for doing them has gone?