Remember; you heard it here first.

After years of painstaking research, and, in the interests of animal welfare, of submitting myself to gruelling experimental trials, I can now proudly declare:

I have done it.

I Have Invented Hot Chocolate.

Growing up in Australia, I, along with every other Australian child, read British stories in which, far away in that fantastic place of snow at Christmas-time, coal fires and elevenses, the children would snuggle up with their Nurses and drink hot chocolate. Only ever having tasted cold chocolate, I naturally imagined that hot chocolate was made by melting milk chocolate bars until, somehow, it was runny enough to drink from a cup, but not so hot as to scald. Oh, the decadence! Surely only the wealthiest British children would have hot chocolate to drink. This was confirmed in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which Charlie, the poorest little boy in all of England, only gets to drink hot chocolate when he wins the prize and visits the marvellous Chocolate Room, where he drinks it from the Chocolate River.

I was somewhat disappointed when the movie came out and the Chocolate River looked exactly like water with brown food colouring added, but I decided that this was because movies can't really capture the reality of a river flowing with melted chocolate, mixed by waterfall.

You can imagine my disapointment when I discovered that what the Brits meant, when they talked of hot chocolate, was cocoa. Cocoa, in hot water, with sugar added. This, of course, looks exactly like the water with brown food colouring added.

Oh, we had cocoa, alright. And Quik. And Milo. But nothing ever even approached the wonderful heavenly beverage advertised in the books.

Anyway, my point is coming, and my point is this: The awful truth of the matter is that, until recently, hot chocolate did not exist, except in the minds of Roald Dahl and myself.

Until, as I said, recently.

This morning, in fact.

It is indeed a fact that, this morning, as I was making my morning cup of coffee, I did notice that on the bench had been left a jar of Nutella. Ajar. Further, it is also a fact that, after I had poured boiling water into my cup, and was sleepily stirring my teaspoon of coffee in that cup with a teaspoon, I noticed that I had a teaspoon in my hand.

Although I was as yet unaware of the fact, history was about to be made.

For, although outwardly my appearancewas that of a person barely able to connect two logical thoughts in sequence, inwardly the neuronal networks were already connecting and firing, dancing a mad, frenzied electronic tarantella. Subconsciously, and without even thinking about it very much, I removed the teaspoon from the cup, steered it toward the Nutella jar, scooped out a teaspoon full of Nutella, and guided it swiftly back to the cup. All of this in a matter of seconds. Thereupon, I rapidly stirred the sticky substance until it was fully disolved. Rapidly, I mention, because I knew I was onto something. Then, in one crazy, serendipitous moment, it occured to me that, only steps away, in the refrigerator, I had some milk. Quickly, and without stopping to process the monumental significance of the moment, I dashed to the fridge, poured a standard quantity of milk into the cup, stirred again, had the rare forethought to remove the spoon, lifted the cup to my parched, yet hopeful, lips, and tasted the concoction.

Yes! Hot Chocolate had been discovered.

My life's work was complete.