Tuesday, November 22

I got given this English Tea Company advent calendar and, like a good boy, I decided not to open it until December 1st. I could not resist fiddling with it though.

When I received it the little boxes (which come out so that you can access your daily teabag) lined up in chronological order. A quick glance at the numbers will show that this produces a very unharmonious pattern of colours. A moments thought will make you realise that advent calendars just never have their boxes in chronological order, since part of the pleasure allegedly derives from the momentary effort to locate today’s box.

I decided to treat this as a challenge and work out the best way of mixing up the boxes to make a visually pleasing pattern. I realised that the calendar had boxes in six different colours and that five colours had a set of four boxes while one colour had a set of five boxes.

I came up with this. I can think of another arrangement that might work and now I have photographed this I might try it. I suspect that it will not prove as pleasing as this one.