I met my first Bart through one of my brothers, who introduced me to the spike-haired, high-voiced cartoon character that’s so ingrained on all brains. My second Bart was a bit of an oddball, a boy in another brother’s class, who I recall once rubbed a burger across his face. Neither of these crazy characters could come close to the big Bart that’s beaming down from the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel: in the titanic scene of the Last Judgement there, St Bartholomew appears perched on a cloud, clasping the loosed husk of his own skin as well as the sharp tip with which it was removed. Michelangelo, the master responsible, painted his self-portrait in the molten pelt.

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Isn’t it interesting that 9% of the US population has a birthday in August? That’s the highest for any month and certainly brings the brain to wonder what was so conducive to baby-making nine months ago. So if August brings lots of new baby bundles, then an article I read recently can be brought into play. It was about a book called Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps – and What We Can Do About It by Lise Eliot, Associate Professor of Neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School.

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Ooh it’s enough to send even us grown-ups into a grump: today in DC (and only a week or so away in the UK), the summer holidays are officially over for droves of students. This morning they’ll have to rise and shine a lot earlier than they’ve got used to, to sleepily suck some cereal into their faces before boarding the bus, the parental taxi or the pavement to schlep to school. Summer assignments will be handed in and new ones set. There’ll be tests and trials and trying not to drop your lunch tray as you make your way to a table.

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I’m coming over au natural today, and taking you down a wildlife path. It started with shocking story from across the pond, of a fox attacking twin babies in East London. The animal came into the house through a patio door left open due to the heat, before finding the girls and mauling them as they slept. The parents (watching TV at the time) called 999 after chasing the animal away and a Scotland Yard spokesman said this: “Police were called at approximately 10pm on Saturday June 5, to an address in Homerton E9, to reports of a fox attack. Officers and the London Ambulance Service attended and found two nine-month-old girls with injuries. Both babies were taken to an east London hospital where their condition is described as serious but stable.”

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Shopping – it’s what the weekends are all about, right? No doubt there’ll be a need-to-see-to supermarket sweep, for the week’s essentials and the inevitable onset of that I don’t want to be here on a Saturday or Sunday slump. But, on the brighter side, there might be some proper shopping, where things are bought for pleasure and the blood-pumping feeling of “I just have to have these $300 shoes”. Shopping is a national pass-time in the last two places I have lived: London’s Oxford Street is never bereft of walls of marching shoppers all stepping in time to the beat of the buy. And in DC, my first proper pop at American life, there are malls galore and high streets to astound.

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Prepare to be taken aback by this week’s work: it’s an icon of early modernism that shattered the way art was seen forever.

Check out this week’s video blog. And special thanks to TC for filming this week’s video.

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Question for you: how many maps do you think you’ll see today? Is there a globe at home, or a world map on the wall at work? There might have been a metro map this morning, to check which line you needed to link to. If you’re new to an area (whether living or visiting), I bet there’s a place-map nestled inside your handbag or rucksack right now. Perhaps you made a mind map for a school project or company debrief, or looked at the layout of your local mall. Ever tapped into Google maps to decide on an area for happy hour?

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