Several years after graduating with a joint honours degree in science (yes, it’s hard for me to believe too!), I am ashamed to admit that I am developing something of an “ology” fetish – which is strange given that I am completely rubbish at science. And yet, my curiosity has been peaked. Not so much for biology as ecology and evolution. First, I plan to visit the Eden Project in St Austell (hopefully it won’t be closed this week) on a little sojourn to Cornwall.
Given that we are celebrating 200 years since the birth of Charles Darwin (who suggested the natural selection accounted for the evolution of species), I also had the brazenness to sign up for the Natural History Museum’s press preview of their new Darwin Centre – complete with a tour of a cocoon that highlights 20 million plants and insects, from huge tarantulas to metre-high poisonous plants! How could I possibly resist? Their press release even starts with “The “Natural History Museum invites you to ‘The Grand Opening of Your Mind’”!
Never mind that I’ve never been a science writer, or the fact I threw away all my school and uni notes and that the only science book I ever bought was ruined in a flood some years back. Take it from me, I am more likely to be reading Jane Austen under the cover of ‘New Scientist’ than the reverse. I can’t recall many elements of the periodic table, can’t remember anything about cell division or what DNA stands for. What was I thinking? How can I possibly pass muster interviewing eminent scientists on a subject about which I know nothing. Is Darwinology even an acceptable term? If Maureen Lipman’s Beattie TV character had been my grandma, believe me, she’d have told me to take up pottery!
So please, intelligent suggestions about how I can ‘fake it’ as a science journalist would be much appreciated.
Visit the Darwin Centre at http://www.nhm.ac.uk/