ARMCHERISHED

We met across a crowded room at a jolly lunch party given by neighbours. For the Armchair and I it was love at first sight.

It was the size of Surrey and welcomed me with open arms of such substance that, had they circled Constantinople, they would have protected that city from sacking by unsavoury Crusaders in the pay of the Venetian Empire. It was stuffed with the feathers of a thousand good tempered geese and I sank into its embrace like a lost soul come home to a safe haven.

We were so obviously meant for each other that Jeannie and Philip, my generous hosts, brought it over on Twelfth Night, the old Christmas Day in the Julian calendar, and gave me the finest gift in the history of that noble day.

We celebrated The Arrival with a magical dinner of pheasant, stuffed with apple, black pudding, breadcrumbs, thyme, parsley and brandy. Alas, a temptress lay in wait. A genuine Martini glass with the narrow stem of a Gibson Girl and an Ella Fitzgerald lip that was wide and welcoming. We found it in a curious Factory Shop where we always find something to buy but never the item we were looking for.

I had been searching for just such a glass since another friend, Brian Hitchen, passed on to me the recipe for a Mafia Martini, which, when he worked in New York, he had acquired from a great friend who was a Mafia Capo di Capo.

Alas, the Martini proved such excellent company that I had several, fell asleep in the armchair and had to have the pheasant again the next day to discover what it tasted like.

I am now besotted with the armchair and bought it, as a welcome home present, a loose cover so costly it is almost certainly cloth of gold.

Being stationary suits me. When we lived in Wales, I needed Quells to cross the Menai Bridge. Yet the voice travelled far and wide. Until I retired, I broadcast a weekly letter from Anglesey for the World Service, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Forces Broadcasting Service. Mine was a household voice in Hobart, a cult in Calcutta, very big in Belize and in Orange, New South Wales, they talked of little else.

The voice was a world traveller but the rest of me stayed at home and did a weekly radio interview “Skidmore's Armchair” and a programme based on our street called “Radio Brynsiencyn”, which involved the minimum of moving about.

Lethargy was brought to my christening by an insistent fairy and another brought the love of the world of books. I never missed a day at the public library. The discovery that there was a building in the village filled with books which grown ups were desperate to lend you was the defining moment in my life.

There was no need to leave your home in order to travel. Over the centuries this strange breed, The Author, has been eager to do your travelling for you. You could sit back in your armchair and enjoy the best bits whilst The Author got bitten by mosquitoes.

With no one to guide me, my reading followed no pattern. I took Herodotus home because I thought it was in some way connected with the Daily Herald and I had ambitions to get a job there. I could not have chosen a better guide to travelling in ancient Greece and Egypt. He wrote in vivid language and - in translation by de Selincourt - used the sort of short words which we used in everyday conversation. He was a great traveller but, as with most reporters, no one believed what he said. He described how the pyramids were built after interviewing Egyptian priests. For centuries scholars insisted his explanation was rubbish. Years later on “Skidmore's Armchair” I interviewed the keeper of Egyptian antiquities at the British Museum. He told me that scholars were coming round to believing that Herodotus was telling the truth.

Never mind, every dog has its day.

In today's tabloids every day has its dog story.

So with Herodotus. He knew his readers liked stories about lovable animals. So he told the story of a breed of sheep which was prized for its fat tails. Tails which were so fat and so heavy that the shepherd made little carts that the sheep dragged carrying their tails behind them.

Herodotus knew that a tabloid story must have sex, crime, royalty or scandal. In the story of the building of the treasury to house Pharaoh Ramphsinitus’s vast fortune he managed to combine all four. Herodotus tells how the tradesman who built the treasury contrived a secret way in, which, on his death bed, he told his sons so that they could steal the Pharaoh's hoard . He wrote:

“They came by night to the palace, found the stone in the treasury wall and took it out. The king on his next visit to the treasury was surprised to see that some of the vessels in which his treasure was stored were no longer full though the seals were not broken. He ordered traps to be set near the money jars.

“The next time the thieves came one of them made his way to the treasure chamber; but as soon as he approached the money jar he was after, the trap got him. Realising his plight, he at once called to his brother and begged him to come as quickly as he could and cut off his head. Less the recognition of his dead body should involve both of them in ruin. The brother, seeing the sense of this request,acted upon it without delay. Then, having fitted the stone back into place, went home taking the severed head with him. Next morning the king visited the treasury, and what was his astonishment when he saw in the trap the headless body of the thief. Much perplexed, he decided to have the thief’s body hung up outside the walls and a guard set with orders to arrest anybody they might see thereabouts in tears or showing signs of mourning.

“The thieves' mother was much distressed by this treatment of her dead son’s body and begged her other son to do all he could to think of some way of getting it back. At last he thought of a way out of the difficulty. He filled some skins with wine and loaded them on donkeys, which he drove past the guard. Arriving there, he undid the fastenings of three of the skins. The wine poured out and he roared and banged his fist. The soldiers, seeing the wine flow down the road, seized their pots and ran to catch it.

“Such a quantity of wine was too much for the guards. Very drunk and drowsy, they stretched themselves out at full length and fell asleep at the spot. It was now well after dark and the thief took down his brother’s body. Then he put the body on the donkey and returned home.

“The king was very angry when he learned the thief’s body had been stolen. And determined at any cost to catch the man who had been clever enough to bring off such a coup.

“I find it hard to believe, says Herodotus, the priests’ account of the means he employed but here it is:

“He sent his own daughter to a brothel with instructions to admit all comers. And to compel each applicant to tell her what the cleverest and wickedest thing was they had done; and if anyone told the story of the corpse she was to get hold of him, scream for the guards and not allow him to escape until they arrived.

“The girl obeyed her father’s orders and the thief, when he came to know what she was doing, could not resist the temptation to go one better than the king in ingenuity. He cut the hand and arm of the body of a man who had just died; and putting them under his cloak went to visit the king’s daughter. When she asked him the question she had asked all others, he replied the wickedest deed he had done was to cut off his brother’s head when he was caught in a trap in the king’s treasury; and the cleverest was to make the guards drunk so that he could steal away his brother’s body. The girl immediately clutched at him. But under cover of darkness the thief pushed towards her the hand of the corpse, which she seized and held tight in the belief it was his own. Then leaving it in her grasp he made his escape through the door.......”

A very sporting Pharaoh as it turned out. He was so impressed he offered the thief not only a pardon, but the hand of his daughter.......I only hope it was HER hand.