The milk of canine kindness, or How to appear classy while drinking Catalan champagne from the bottle in the freezing cold

Romulus and Remus have turned up rather a lot in the last couple of weeks, from Christmas spent in Aquae Sextiae with excursions to Massilia, and thence for a few days via the Viae Aurelia and Domitia through the province of Gallia Narbonensis and on to Matritum.

I seem to recall them being invoked during the audioguide tour to the Arena in Nemausus, whose French commentary for some reason invoked Seneca and whose English commentary made do with much tut-tutting about how it was the wicked Christians who gave gladiator fighting a bad name. Go the lions, I say!

But I digress.

The photograph jogged hazy memories of catching up on New Year's Eve in Tarraco, in a province whose preferred language only seems to require a moderate amount of good cheer and gesticulation for reasonable intercomprehension with the southern Gauls.

I maintain (though I fear the humans I was chaperoning may not) that sharing a drink with one's fellow creatures is always a worthwhile activity regardless of the consequences the next morning. Happy new year to you all, fellow drinkers of Cava just in time for midnight in front of the clock tower!

Was it not Lady Macbeth who lacked the milk of human kindness?

And was it not Romulus and Remus who accepted the offer of a drink from an unsung she-wolf, and went on to found Rome?

There's a lesson for you somewhere there, humans. I'm sticking by the medicine of my old mate Alcofribas.