I'm older than I look, I'm just lucky to have good genes. I was born in the 50's. My Dad is pushing 90 but still walks a couple of miles a day for exercise and can outpace me. He looks after a large house on his own, drives, cooks, does all the cleaning and gardening and mows the lawns, etc. Having interests and a zest for life keeps you young, as does using malt as an occasional embalming fluid. My oldest pal is my former English teacher who instructed me on ecclesiastical architecture and history from the age of 11, so I have a good intuition for all things ancient and crumbly.
There is another even more bizarre more recent history story I was central to, involving another stone. After the death of my great friend Ralph, an American polymath and fellow history nut, I inherited some of his bits and pieces. I was rather alarmed to find that a large chunk of elaborately carved high quality marble that became mine had been 'rescued' by him during the Greek civil war, and he sneaked it home in diplomatic baggage. It came from The Agora, a world heritage site by the Parthenon. I immediately contacted the Greek Cultural attaché in London, Dr Victoria Solomonides, and offered to return it free of charge.
"This will be a major source of National celebration", she declared. They are keen to be seen to be grateful when people give them back lumps of stone. A couple of weeks later I heard from Christos Zachopoulos, the Minister of Culture, that they wanted to fly me over, give me an official reception, free holiday and tour of the major sites and present me and the stone to the Greek press. My wife was very ill at the time and I delayed a while, by which time things got rather 'dramatic' in the Ministry of Culture.
Christos, a classical epitome of Greek manhood;
Christos had been having a fling with a young female employee, promising her a cushy permanent job in return for her personal services. After a few months when he hadn't come good on the deal, she tried to blackmail him by asking Euro 200,000 or she would take a file of evidence on him to the papers. He thought she was bluffing and told her where to get off. Next day a newspaper received a DVD with hundreds of explicit pictures of Christos 'in action' that his bit of fluff had secretly filmed, and a file of corruption evidence documenting his backhanders from developers of archaeological sites. The paper did a special edition printing all the sexually explicit pictures and sold out. Christos decided to call it a day and jumped out of a fifth floor window. He survived, but strangely lost his memory of all his corrupt dealings. The newspaper editor mysteriously lost his copy of Christos's corruption evidence the same day as the Prime ministers office dropped an investigation into the editor's dodgy financial dealings at his paper. The journalist who'd read the allegations jumped in front of a truck in another attempt to take his life. He bounced off, but lost all his memory too. The archaeological bit of fluff went on trial for blackmail, the Karamanlis government collapsed, and that was the start of the Greek Euro crisis. There were riots as central Athens went up in flames and a different government and ministers appeared every month.
"I tell you what," I told the Cultural Attaché, "I'll just stick the stone in the post".
So my stone is now on display in the new Acropolis Museum, I have a letter of 'eternal gratitude from the Greek people' from a new Minister of Culture, I never went to Greece, and the rest, as they say, is history.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/02/11/us-greece-scandal-idUSL0888664920080211
That's one hell of a find - well spotted.