The Laboratory

Wishing all of you a very Happy Christmas, from Adam & Sarah. We hope your travels over the next few days go safely, and you have a lovely time with your nearest and dearest. Thanks to all who have encouraged us to do the Advent Calendar again this year, you know who you are. For the final window, here are some brilliant Nativity scenes you may have missed: The baby cheeses Santa at the nativity Toilet nativity And finally the best Christmas tree decoration we have seen. As our friend Sophie said, "When tensions run high at Christmas, John McClane is still saving a whole bunch of people from something far more dramatic."

The last Friday before Christmas! Let's have a jolly video that you can play on full volume in the office and cheer everyone up. Does your boss let you go early today, or do you work for Scrooge?

More Christmas traditions: We like to watch The Muppet Christmas Carol, and (on Youtube) The Box Of Delights, to get us in the Christmas mood. But one of our friends John likes to watch K9 and Company. For those of you that are too young (it only had one episode, in December 1981) this starred Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, one of Doctor Who's companions, who after she left the TARDIS was sent a robot dog, K9, to protect her. This adventure is set around the Winter Solstice so has a seasonal feel, at least. A new Christmas tradition is where bespectacled Richard Osman, of Pointless, runs a "World Cup of Christmas" on his Twitter feed. This year is Christmas Films and the first round is still going on and you can vote (if you tweet). Please help Muppet Christmas Carol (or Die Hard) to win!

Last minute present ideas! This is one we genuinely saw in Boots, where you can personalise a whole range of beauty gifts. SO tempted to buy this!

One of the funniest Christmas stories of recent years is that of the Gävle Goat. Starting in 1966 a 13 metre high wooden sculpture of the Yule Goat has been built in the centre of Gävle, Sweden. Unfortunately, almost every year it is built, it gets burnt down, sometimes on the same day. The town council have tried over the years to prevent the burning. Because the fire station is close to the location of the goat, most of the time the fire can be extinguished before the wooden skeleton is severely damaged. To date four people have been caught or convicted for vandalising the goat. In 1968 the council added a protective fence. In 1976 it was hit by a car. In 1979 after the first goat was burnt, the second was fireproofed, but then kicked to pieces. In 1985 soldiers built a 2m high fence and guarded it. Despite this, it was burnt down in January. In 1992 there were 3 goats, all were burnt down. In 1995 a Norwegian tried to burn it down. In 2000 the goat was thrown into the...

You can tell it's the school holidays when the Advent Calendar starts falling behind ... sorry! We have enjoyed meeting lots of friends this December, and a special hello to John B who we caught up with for the first time in 2 years yesterday. While we were round at a party on Saturday we spotted this rather strange Xmas tree decoration. Either Han has got really big or the Millennium Falcon has got very small.

We all have Christmas traditions, and one I'm sure we've shared before is Adam reading Susan Cooper's 1970s Puffin sequence The Dark Is Rising. A lot of adults of a certain age loved the books and the second one is set at Christmas time, so it's an ideal holiday to read all 5 books. There is a beautiful set of hardbacks published by The Folio Society, who have Susan Cooper on their website reading extracts and being interviewed about the books. The first one in the sequence is called Over Sea, Under Stone and follows 3 children as they discover treasure on the Cornish coast. They have a mysterious Great-Uncle who turns out in the later books ... well, that would be telling!