That's why in restuarants I'm either a very generous tipper or the meanest one your average head waiter has ever sneered at! I simply don't 'do' sums. And certainly not sums of the complexity required to work out a 12.5% service charge. Thus, I am truly impressed with all those 'sum-ematicians' who worked out how to send that 'juke box-thingie' up into space and let it spin round and round the earth using gravity (something else I have never worked out) and then let it go off like a sling shot into deep space to land, precisely and exactly, on a bit of old cosmological detritus that is the equivalent of finding exactly the right speck of sand in the Sahara. I mean, how do they do that?
I gather it all cost several gazillion quid but at least now that the 'juke box' has landed safely - I trust it 'spoke' some truly momentous words after it landed, you know, like, "Thank Christ for that, a soft landing!" which is what I mutter everytime some monstrous great aircraft of which I am a passenger actually hits the ground without disintegrating, always a minor miracle in my view. I gather that its first task is to look for water althought frankly I would have though a large gin and tonic would have been in order. Anyway, they are testing a theory which has it that life arrived on earth via these old bits of space rubbish which might have been carrying organic water which means, I gather, either water with organisms in it, or water capable of supporting organisms as and when they pop into existence. Of course, none of that actually proves exactly how organisms developed from inanimate matter so the really Big Question remains unanswered and if it all cost several zillion quid, well, just be jolly grateful and doff your caps to the Intergalactic Sums Meisters!
