I know I’m easily amused, but the little Christmas hat on the Tesco logo did make me smile… it’s quite cute!

This Christmas will be the tenth for which Wendy and I have been together. For six of the past nine Christmases, I’ve made Wendy an advent calendar: I didn’t for our first two Christmases, and a couple of years ago – much to her disappointment – I just bought one from Hotel Chocolat.

I’ve done all sorts over the years, from a hamper of small gifts, to small gifts hanging on the tree, to stuffed “mini stockings” (aka trainer socks), to customised crackers. Oddly, I’ve noticed that several of those ideas are available in commercial packages this year… perhaps that’s been going on for a while, and I just haven’t noticed.

This year, I’ve prepared 24 mini gift-bags, all assembled on our mantelpiece. Frustratingly, 24 wouldn’t quite fit side-by-side, hence the two odd ones at the front… but I guess that problem will be solved by 2nd December anyway! I’d normally keep it all hidden until 30th November, but couldn’t find anywhere big enough to secrete it this year! And fear not – the rest of our decorations are most certainly not up yet!

This big wheel is next to Asda in South Shields. I guess it’s related to the remnants of St Hilda’s Colliery which are next to Asda, but whether it’s a bit of the colliery or some artistic interpretation I’m not entirely sure.

The colliery was active for 130 years, during which 118 miners were killed, many of whom were in their teens or early twenties. Some were as young as 9. Fifty-one miners died in a methane-fuelled explosion on 28th June 1839.

Next time someone complains about ‘elf ‘n’ safety, remind them that there are few workplaces these days with mortality figures quite like that.

This picture shows the Goldcraft jewellers, located within a Morrisons store near me. A jewellers in a supermarket seems a little odd to me – perhaps it did to others, too, explaining why its shutters were down today.

This is the Normand Installer, an offshore construction vessel moored at North Shields. It’s just six years old, and was built in Norway. The orange paintwork is certainly eye-catching, but perhaps it’s common for seafaring construction vehicles to have highly visible paintwork, like their land-based equivalent. I’ve really no idea whether that’s the case or not!

To my eye, this Christmas “tree” – one of several at the Metrocentre – is spectacularly ugly. It isn’t even festive!

It’s supposed to echo the artwork that you can just about see on the right of the photo. But, if anything, the juxtaposition just makes this particular decoration look even cheaper!

I wonder if anyone recognises where this is? It’s the panelling along a train platform. It’s uniform and superficially quite dull, but the angle of the lighting provides an unusual optical illusion in which it becomes difficult to determine whether the inset panel centres are indeed inset or outset.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t really come across terribly well in this photo!

We’ve all been there: you get to the airport, and with a jolt of horror realise that you’ve forgotten to buy a souvenir gift for your friend or loved one. What will you do? You panic, and then decide that you’ll have to pick something up at the airport.

Luckily, Heathrow has your back on this one…

Simply buy this life-size steel mesh sculpture of Tom Daley, a snip at just £18,000 and oh-so-easy to slip into your hand baggage.

I shouldn’t mock. Nikki Taylor is clearly a very talented artist, and it is sort of nice to see an airport trying something different. I guess the idea is that people might appreciate the art while trapped in an airport in a way that they may perhaps not at other times. But there’s something so amusingly incongruous about the experience that it’s hard not to smile.

Someone must have been feeling a little sign-happy at some point…! Actually, I think each sign refers to a different individual bay, but still…

This second-storey room at St Mary’s Hospital is where Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin on 3rd September 1928 – arguably one of the greatest discoveries ever, and certainly one that has transformed the course of human history.

It took the Scot about a year to come up with the name “penicillin”, referring to it in the interim as “mould juice” – which is certainly a more entertaining name, and one which I think the WHO should consider introducing as it’s recommended international nonproprietary name. “500mg mould juice stat” has a certain ring to it…!

The serendipity of his discovery is sometimes exaggerated: Fleming had dedicated much of his life to finding anti-bacterial agents after watching so many soldiers die of infection during the First World War, during which he served in the Royal Army Medical Corps. In fact, he wrote an important paper for The Lancet during the war explaining that applying antiseptic to deep wounds was probably counterproductive. Unfortunately, nobody listened, and it’s likely that countless unnecessary deaths resulted.

I was surprised to discover that Fleming was a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. The reputation surgeons carry with regards to antibiotic knowledge is not one that suggests that the father of microbiology is one of theirs…!