As you may have seen over on the forums (fora? forae?), Bora Zivkovic from A Blog Around the Clock visited London a couple of days ago, and we took the opportunity to organise a mini-meetup for bloggers of science.

Before we turned to the serious business of getting drunk together, we took a peek inside the nether-parts of the Natural History Museum.

The esteemed institution houses some 70 million specimens. The public can gain access to this pickled Noah’s Ark via the Darwin Centre, a modern annexe to the main building.

Karen James of the botany department took us on a tour of the highlights, which included Archie the giant squid. Archie has a skin problem – it keeps exfoliating, leaving the late cephalopod to stew in a calamari cocktail.

We also beheld fishes collected by Darwin himself, and a number of ‘type specimens’ (a kind of benchmark for a species against which others specimens are compared).

Phase 2 of the Darwin Centre is due to open next year in time for the Darwin bicentenary. It will allow even greater access to the bottled menagerie, and includes a multimedia area to be named after David Attenborough, surely the best candidate for a human type specimen.

And so to the pub, where I got to know a posse of writers from ScienceBlogs (they’re almost as witty, clever and attractive as Nature Network’s bloggers), and a few others.

We all got on famously, and after a raucous meal at the nearby Polish restaurant (sadly, no calamari) we’re planning a karaoke night for science bloggers.

Anyone game? And what would it be appropriate to sing?