The Laboratory

It's time for a round-up of all the best Christmas food we have seen. We recommend buying and eating as many of these as soon as possible. A staple of the in-laws Christmas snacks, the After Eight box has had a design upgrade this year. Don't pay £5 for it though! You can get it in Tesco for only £3. This is amazing. Adam bought one to take to the in-laws, and has had to since buy two more as he keeps eating all the cheese. The best flavour is the pepper and cranberry Boursin. Christmas donuts: the tree has a creme filling, and the Santa's belt and snowman are also delicious. McDonald's Festive Pie took a downturn last year with a chocolate caramel monstrosity, but this year it is back to the fruit and custard, albeit in a green-tinged Grinch-themed makeover. Still tasty. Sprout croquettes from Nandos. Delicious. Don't try to share a bowl, get your own. In memory of the beige buffet at school, here are the treats of beige on a tshirt.

That was a busy weekend! Hope you had a good time, we had 3 Carol Services, as well as a trip to Portsmouth, dropping off Christmas cards round the neighbourhood, and preparing for the last week of term (yay)! During all of our Christmas food shopping we keep noticing things that are a little bit strange. Like this: We have coped with Advent Calendars for cats in the past, and even Soup for cats, but I don't think dogs know what mince pies are, never mind recognise the pastry bone on top.  It's like these treats. I can believe a cat could take down a small garden bird. But a turkey? Or a lamb? I wouldn't want to see that battle. And how is a cat ever going to catch prawns? Anyway, send us the weirdest "my pet is really my baby and needs to have the full Christmas experience" pet foods you have found. We'll leave you with this:

Sorry for the delay! Also in London we saw not just massive Christmas trees, but also a massive tree pot. Here is Sarah for scale: Stranger Things mania has taken over London, not only the tree at Waterloo Station, but also the whole of the front of HMV on Oxford Street:

Sorry for the delay! On a stroll round London last month we saw some lovely Christmas windows. At Selfridges, they are paying tribute to two Disney designers, Mary Blair and Eyvind Earle, responsible for some of the most best loved Disney sets, including the castle that forms the backdrops at Disneyland parks the world over.  And we couldn't do Christmas windows without mentioning the best ones of all, Fenwick in Newcastle, who this year had a Dickens' A Christmas Carol theme. Here's a list of all the themes Fenwick has had over the past 50+ years: 1971 – Camberwick Green 1972 – Chigley 1973 – Rupert Meets Santa 1974 – Sooty’s Circus 1975 – Aladdin 1976 – Fairytale Christmas with Cinderella 1977 – Treasure Island 1978 – Storybook Christmas 1979 – Wonderful world of Pantomime 1980 – A Christmas Carol 1981 – Alice in Wonderland 1982 – Arabian Nights 1983 – Fly to Fenwick’s for Christmas 1984 – Gulliver 1985 – Fairytale Christmas with Pinocchio 1986 – Christmas Circus 1987 –...

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.

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...

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.

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.

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!

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!

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!

It's Friday! and if you're looking forward to the weekend, you might be looking for a nice Christmas movie to watch. You're saving up Muppet Christmas Carol for Christmas Eve, but may I recommend a great selection of RED AND GREEN Christmas movies: Yes, Christmas romance is back, and so is the queen of Hallmark Christmas and its rival Netflix Christmas, Lacey Chabert! Yes, she's playing a character called Holly, no sorry, Emily (missed a trick there), and it also stars John Travolta's sister. So successful, Haul Out The Holly went on to have two sequels, Haul Out The Holly 2: Lit Up, and a less seasonal Halloween episode. Hope you enjoy it!

It went very well, thank you! We only ticked 6 of these boxes: Anyway, today we are doing tree decorations. These are some of the best we have seen over the last few weeks. That last one for Doctor Who fans. Sorry you're not getting a new episode this Christmas. What are your favourite tree decs? Send us a photo!

It's the School Carol Concert today! It seems to get earlier every year, we used to have it 2 days before the end of term which meant a lot more practising time but also made the week very stressful! Adam has been accompanying choirs for maybe 15 years now, as well as playing the organ for the congregational carols. It's a whole day rehearsal and big evening with 170 students! If you are social media followers you will be expecting (and getting) the annual photos of the rehearsal piano ("do not move this piano") and the Narthex (look it up), and of course the rude-sounding organ stop. Check out  https://bsky.app/profile/themathsbazaar.bsky.social if you want to know more. For many years the music department was headed up by our dear friend Rebecca, who made it a glorious occasion and balanced the necessary choir discipline with an inordinate amount of joy and encouragement. So this calendar day is in memory of her:

Occasionally we are looking in design shops abroad and see something so clever you think, "why has no one thought of this before?". Manufactum, a German hardware and gift store, had these in Vienna, and we were like "Of course!" Like all Advent and Christmas candles, it feels like it would be a shame to light them. From the archive: ketchup and mustard candles (Zara Home) Also spotted in M&S: ketchup and mustard tops