One day they unearthed some bones in a sandhill that Mr Shinglar said were of the labyrinthodon, a great sloth-lizard that roamed in forests submerged for a thousand thousand years.

I was even more excited to tailor it with a choice of dressings — blue cheese, ranch, French, Russian, Italian, creamy Italian.

The living culture was all but strangled by an obsessive archeolatry, and by the systematic attempt to create an artificial, 'pure' language (the so-called katharevousa) that, cleansed of all 'non-Greek' pollution, closely resembled its long-dead classical forebear.

She turned her umbrella against the wind.