We always joke about heights. Like Adoption being the heights of laziness, any many more that cannot make it to this post rated 'Parental Guidance'!

Well, well, we do have a real life example of patience personified!

John Mainstone, a professor at the University of Queensland, won the 2005 Ig Nobel prize in physics for an experiment in which a blob of congealed black tar has been dripping through a funnel at a rate of about one drop every nine years!

Professor Maidstone said he was elated to win the prize for the slow drip, which he shared with his late colleague, Thomas Parnell, who started the experiment in 1927 and, sadly, died after the second drop. "Obviously, I've seen a lot more now that we are into the ninth drop," said Professor Maidstone.

MadeStone, eh?