Advent Is Each Year

It’s that most wonderful time again—time for my Advent Calendar, produced by my wonderful partner Heather.

Advent 2020

The 2020 version of my wonderful Advent Calendar

First, a reminder of last year’s offering:

Advent Calendar

November 30

Sweeties

A Puzzle

Milky Bar Buttons

Twix And Galaxy

Snickers And Bounty

Bear Head

Teaser And Bounty

Wall Crawling Snowman

Crisp M&Ms

More LIttle Chocolates

Twix-Bounty

More Raisins

A Mars Bounty

Mars Is In This Galaxy

Screwy Car

Galaxy-Mars

Puzzle U

Milky Buttons

Teasing The Galaxy

Between The Meals

Sun-Maid

The Snickers Way

Rugby Dood

Snowman Number 2

FInal Day

Balls

One big, two small, all chocolate

One of the awesome things about my advent calendar is that it starts a day earlier than others! Starting traditionally with some chocolate balls!

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Absolutely terrifying crash in the F1 race this afternoon, from which Grosjean somehow walked away. For anyone doubting the value of motor-racing, that’s the sort of safety advancement might one day save your life on the motorway.

Not Available Via Seance

The incomparable, and appropriately named, Amazing Randi died last week. He was the finest of sceptics, and a knight of truth. I feel his anger towards those who would lie and take advantage.

Here is his marvellous TED Talk

Here he is in an interview basically doing Uri Geller’s act without lying about things:

And a bit of “ESP“:

Surviving The Quacks (i.e. the lying charlatan “faith healers”):

There’s a wonderful documentary from a few years back, “An Honest Liar”, well worth a watch if you get the chance.

And here’s a link to some bonus Penn and Teller content because they get angry about this bullshit too.

An Historic Getaway

The world shutting down due to Covid has, for obvious reasons, somewhat curtailed this summer’s activities. Not a lot has been happening while this pandemic is brought more under control. We finally reached a point (at least for now) where restrictions were lifted enough, and Heather and I felt comfortable enough, that we could tentatively take up with the trip we had planned for Easter, just delayed by several months.

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NASA SpaceX Demo-2 looking much more hopeful for launch this time round. Come on!

Nothing like watching a new era of space launches (assuming the weather gets out the way) #SpaceX #NASA

More Than Enough To Perform

All Action

A close view of the band performing

Somewhere in all the chaos of going into isolation thanks to COVID-19 (setting up home office to work from home, generally trying to work out shopping arrangements, etc) got lost the fact that just before all that Heather and I went to see the Stereophonics at the O2 Arena. It’s been ages since we saw them (we were supposed to a couple of years ago but didn’t because of snow). Supported by the too chatty The Wind And The Wave, the ‘Phonics were as awesome as we remembered.

Yellow Jacket

The Wind And The Wave

In The Spotlight

Jones

Colourful Stage Lights

Green Tinge

Saxaphone And Guitar

Action

Band Closeup

Rainbow Spot

The Band

SInging

Intimate Shot

All Action

Pretty String Lights

Adam Zindani .Close

Multicoloured

Smoky Stage

Rocking Out

Colourful Criss Cross

Spotlighted

Touring Tut

It’s been a while since a little bit of history, so we took the chance to see some fairly ancient history, about 3000-years old, with a rather extravagant, and expensive, exhibition of the Treasures of Tutankhamun. That involved a trip to the posher parts of London and the new venue to us of the Saatchi Gallery; a trip complicated (as these things always seem to be) by transport closures which meant we had a little walk from Victoria (which strangely we could get straight to), arriving nicely in time for our timed ticket (though that was the point it decided to rain for the only time of the day!)

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