Year of the Fighting Cock.

During their initial months together, Sherlock Holmes was explaining one of the basic rules of his mind palace to John Watson. (In the 1880s version, Holmes called his mind palace a "brain attic," of course . . . an attic being the perfect mental metaphor a child would develop for storing interesting things away.) And that rule of mind palace governance was simple: Don't put anything into it that you aren't going to need.

The reason for this explanation was Watson's astonishment that Holmes didn't care about what celestial body orbited what, specifically that the Earth travelled around the sun. Later, when Holmes would display knowledge of such things as the obliquity of the ecliptic, it would seem to have been a bit of a put-on, but still, it gives one pause to wonder if Sherlock Holmes cared at all about the lunisolar calendar used in China . . . the one that brings us to Chinese New Year every year.

The are twelve animals symbolically assigned to each year in a twelve-year cycled of the Chinese lunisolar calendar, and six elements assigned to those. A given animal-element combination comes around only once every sixty years. And this year, after sixty years of waiting, we've come back around to the fire cock.

Those sensitive to words that also have sexual connotations might like to say "fire rooster," but going by the language of the Sherlockian Canon, a good Sherlockian must stick to the fire cock. And how does that relate to Sherlock Holmes?

Well, actual cocks are mentioned three times in the original Canon of Holmes.

First is in the innocent young Lucy Ferrier's words in A Study in Scarlet as she mistakes vultures for "Cocks and hens."

Second is the non-human murder victim of "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge," which Holmes points out as "A white cock, most interesting! It is really a very curious case."

And thirdly, there was the pub called "the Fighting Cock," from "The Adventure of the Priory School." In that story, an illegitimate heir to power with a brutal accomplice uses that pub to hold an innocent young fellow named Arthur hostage. Powerful men's secrets and less-powerful men looking to profit all combine for a mess that only Sherlock Holmes can straighten out.

And if you think that doesn't make for a fine forced metaphor about this particular year, you just aren't letting your mind open up quite enough.

A fire cock would have to be a fighting cock, and Sherlock Holmes's time at the Fighting Cock resulted in illegitimate and low characters being arrested or sent to the other side of the world.

We should be so lucky in our own year of the Fighting Cock. Happy Chinese New Year!