Skip to main content

Posts

12th December 2025

more Advent Calendars we think you'll enjoy: Our colleague Matthew Scroggs designs an amazing Christmas card every year (download them from https://b.link/alevelchristmas ) and he also makes a puzzling Advent Calendar online. It's hard! https://www.mscroggs.co.uk/ We love to visit the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, though a lot of its exhibitions seem to be of stuff they found down the back of the curator's cupboard! They have an Advent Calendar of ancient and historic objects, and you can find it at https://www.ashmolean.org/advent In terms of physical advent calendars, here are two that caught our eye. The first is from Broughty Ferry near Dundee, it's the home of Bob Servant (a fictional character played by not-Professor Brian Cox), you can see his extension on the right. And the second needs no explanation. Ho Ho Ho.
Recent posts

11th December 2025

Today we've got a poem for you, it's by Adam's father Kenn, and it is called Ampersand. &  I get lots of cards at Christmas from Relatives and Friends. They start around December First, the blizzard never ends. Some come from individuals, like those who live alone. But with those who send from more than one, I’d like to pick a bone. They’ll write “From John and Janet” or maybe “Jack and Jill”, It’s sometimes “Fred and Family” or even “Liz and Phil”. But instead of writing A. N. D. to spell the short word “AND” They do a little squiggle and pretend it’s “Ampersand”. I’ve already had a few this year, they’re hanging on the wall. Some of them look like an 8 and the rest, nothing-at-all, One or two look like a lower-case E or a C that’s been turned round, Or a Number 3 with a line through it, are among those that I’ve found. I don’t object so strongly, but don’t you think you should Get round to doing it properly? I’m certain that you could. Remember all you need to do is s...

10th December 2025

Very positive response to yesterday's Radio Times post, so here's a couple more things in the same vein. People liked the recursion photos, and one Mark Gatiss fan sent this Radio Times cover from 2017. They are copying their own ideas! There were some fond memories of this maths textbook from the 1990s And this is mathematician and comedian Matt Parker with his friends ina very confusing recursion picture But if youwere hoping for something more Christmasssy from today's Advent Calendar, may I recommend "the book of the classic film, which was originally a book anyway". Maybe they will make it into a film.

9th December 2025

It's here! Embargoed until 9th December, the Christmas Radio Times is now on sale. Quick, fetch the Sharpie! There's our favourite Aardman characters, Gromit and Shaun. But look! Shaun has taken a bite out of the Radio Times. Gromit will not be happy. How on earth did that happen? Find out in the video clip here: And there is an Easter egg (most unsuitable for Christmas): Because they couldn't have the real back cover in the picture, there is an in-universe set of adverts! Also, notice the recursion on the front cover. Gromit is reading a magazine with a picture of himself reading the same magazine! This reminds me of a famous Ladybird book.

8th December 2025

Do you have any books you always read at Christmas? Last year we told you about The Dark Is Rising , by Susan Cooper. It's also a great time of year to wait for dark and read some spooky stories. Our favourites are by M.R.James, an academic who wrote stories each Christmas for his friends, now collected in Penguin Books. There are also some great adaptations of them by the BBC, who did a whole series of them in the 1970s , recently revitalised by Mark Gatiss. We also like a new series of books from Profile Books, edited by Cecily Gayford, where she collects together Golden Age detective stories (Allingham, Christie etc) with a wintry theme. There's definitely no shortage of them as she is up to about 12 books by now!

7th December 2025

We hope your weekend is going well. We had an exciting day with friends opening advent calendars, singing Christmas songs, learning some new games, eating pizza, and after a 10 minute training session, playing FIFA on the XBox against Sarah. I'd like to report that we mastered the game's mechanics, but the only goal was an own goal and the shouts of "Switch! Switch! Press B, it's on the right!" did not help. Final score Adam 0 Sarah 1. Decorations are halfway up, and we have been sent some lovely pictures from our friends Lou and Joe in Cardiff, who always have an amazing display of foliage and vintage. Enjoy!

6th December 2025

A quick poll of Adam's tutor group revealed that half had alrady put their tree up and the other half were doing so this weekend. We're packing a lot in, but will definitely try to sort out all the decorations before the last 2 weeks of term. Here's a round-up of other great Advent Calendars we have seen online - hope some of them are of interest: Transum - a maths calendar with a game each day, and maybe some hidden Maths behind it Sketchpad Advent - our friend John (who has written great books ) uses his encyclopaedic knowledge of town planning to share a different sketch of our glorious urban future each day Helen Day , who loves the illustrations in Ladybird Books , is doing an Advent Calendar of their great artists and wintry pictures. More Advent Calendars next Saturday. Send us your suggestions!