HE'S reckoned to be the UK's longest serving Father Christmas but 82 year old Ron Horniblew from Luton has told the Daily Mail that he has no plans to retire despite racking up 53 years in the job.
Ron said: “If I can make one person happy and smiley, then that's great. And you'll get some people who are a bit miserable and think, 'silly old fool', but I'm the one who's the clever one because I'm happy and it makes me feel young.”
He added: “I've no plans at all to retire, no. I'm going to make it hard for the next person who says he is the longest-running Santa.”
Mr Horniblew, who raises money for charity through his festive endeavour, said he struggled to understand the huge numbers of presents children now receive.
A blue plaque is to be erected in Napier House, Carmarthen, Wales, dedicated to Dorothea Bate, who is believed to have been the first woman employed as a scientist at London's Natural History, says the BBC.
Born in 1878, Dorothea had little formal education but a fascination with wildlife and nature prompted her to leave Carmarthenshire aged 19 and ask for a job at the museum. She continued working there until her death in 1951.
According to the BBC, a fragment of bone claimed to be from St Nicholas - the 4th-century inspiration for Father Christmas - has been radio carbon tested by the University of Oxford.
The tests, for the Oxford Relics Cluster at Keble College's Advanced Studies Centre, have confirmed that the bone is from the correct era for St Nicholas. The Oxford team says these are the first tests carried out on the bones.
The Daily Mail reports that 65 year old Lynda Huckerby, of Glenfield, Leicester, is selling an signed autograph by legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix at auction for an estimated £2,000.
Lynda was just 15 when she managed to get Hendrix to sign her programme after leaping onto his coach after a concert in Leicester in 1967.
Apparently Hendrix was so impressed with the teenager's audacity as she marched up the bus and sat next to him that he signed her programme - but misspelt her name.
Lynda commented: “It was Sunday April 16, 1967 and I'd bought tickets to see The Walker Brothers at Leicester's de Montford Hall. Jimi Hendrix was a support act along with Cat Stevens, Nick Jones, The Quotations and Engelbert Humperdinck.
“I was a bit of a groupie back then. In fact, I'd tried to climb on to the stage at the concert that night but the security men got hold of my legs and pulled me off.”
The Guardian tells us that works by an artist who died in the Grenfell Tower fire are to be shown in an exhibition in Cambridge
They will be included as part of the reopening of Kettle's Yard in the city which is showing from February 10 to May 6.
Khadija Saye had asked to be part of the show before she died with her mother, in the flat they shared on the 20th floor of the London tower block.
Kettle Yard's director Andrew Nairne said he recalled seeing Khadija's work – a series of six small framed tintypes – at the Venice Biennale’s diaspora pavilion.
He added that he thought Saye's work reminded him of early Tracey Emin.
“I had slightly the same feeling about reading Khadija’s text, that she had sort of broken the rules for how you talk about art, she had been so up front.”
Included among a record number of treasure finds reported by the British Museum in 2016 is a jewel made from hundreds of tiny pieces of garnet set in gold to form geometric and animal shapes which lay for 1,400 years on the breast of an unknown woman until her Norfolk grave was rediscovered by a first-year university student.
The Guardian reports that the pendant and other jewels and coins buried with the woman were among the discoveries mainly made by metal detectorists – including a hoard of 158 bronze age axes and ingots, the largest of its kind to be found in Yorkshire and more than 2,000 silver Roman coins in Piddletrenthide, Dorset.
Reference list:
The Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk)
Daily Mail (www.dailymail.co.uk)
BBC (www.bbc.co.uk)