At the end of episode 3, Season 3, of Sherlock, a BBC TV series filmed in Cathays Park, the fictional detective is shot. As he falls, time slows, and the viewer is taken into his ‘mind palace’. This mind palace is a ‘map’ Sherlock has created to store his memories which, if he is lucky, will help him work out a plan to cheat death. His ‘mind palace’ is sited within a central corridor of Main Building, Cathays Park. As Sherlock struggles in the liminal space between life and death, he rushes into rooms along this corridor in order to locate the inspiration he needs. This scene reminds the viewer of how all of our encounters are tied to places, and how important these connections are in offering us a route map to the future.

In a parallel dimension, Doctor Who and his companions seek a similar map, in the same place. They hunt this corridor for the (fictional) ‘Map Room’, a location in which they hope to find a ‘Trap Street’ – an invented landmark added to a map – which may provide a clue to solve their mystery.

Each of us, like Sherlock and the cartographer in Doctor Who, map our own alternative atlases. Our maps may not be ‘mind palaces’ or ‘trap streets’ but they nevertheless weave together personal encounters and cultural memories to help orient ourselves in the world.

To acknowledge these alternative atlases is significant. It is not simply an entertaining process (indeed, what would your own alternative atlas look like? where would you locate it? what encounters and memories would you include?), but it is also one that positions us in various times and spaces that are meaningful to our identity. To map an alternative atlas is therefore fun, but it is also fundamentally important to who we are: these maps give us a sense of place in the world, they root our interests, and provide us one way to articulate who we are, and where we are. They may even save us when we are shot.