Stupid Australian Scientists

Note to new-ish readers:  there's some back-story to this post which you can read, if you like, here. 


I'm sure you have been lying awake at night wondering whether it was my Mum's barnacle or that ridiculous snail which was eventually named Australia's Top New Species.

Let me say: I feel your pain. The bad news is I still don't have an answer; the results were meant to have been announced by now, but because of some unspecified problem I don't know the details of, they haven't.  My Mum has heard a few whispers, but nothing concrete and I would hate to raise your expectations only for you to have them dashed.  So I'm afraid you're just going to have to wait a bit longer.

I don't know if the hold-up has been caused by an overly-complicated preferential voting system, but given how long the Labour party leadership announcement took yesterday, it wouldn't surprise me.  The one thing I do know is that the winner won't be a Miliband.

In other news: I am navigating the murky, unknown waters of what might be described as a burgeoning new relationship at the moment; with someone who is neither stupid, Australian, nor a scientist, and as such could hardly be less relevant to this particular post, but whatever.  I'm not really planning to mention much else about it around these parts, mainly because, well....you know.  I'm just not. It's nice, though, and I do sort of think he is the bees feet.*

Finally, also from the department of burgeoning things which are not very scientifc: I started making a batch of sloe gin yesterday. Sloe gin is made from sloes, gin and sugar; the proportions of which vary wildly depending on which of five different recipes you believe.  In fact, there are almost definitely more than five recipes available on the inernet; that's how many I read before I decided my head was going to explode and I just dumped as many sloes as I could fit and what looked like around about enough sugar into the amount of gin I had left in the bottle that has been knocking around in my kitchen for a while.

 It is going to be another two months before it's ready, making me think they don't call them sloes for nothing and also making me think that there is no way in the world I can be the first person to ever think of that joke.

*Any scientist worth his or her salt could tell you: they don't have knees.