I happened to be in Egypt when the sphinx came alive. I was there in my sand-coloured clothes, lifting binoculars to my eyes, which is the accepted behaviour. When I saw it get up, stretch, and make its way towards me, I didn't do any of that running and screaming nonsense like the others. I merely took my pith helmet off to swap my binoculars for a camera. It's quite a business, photography, though at least we have film now rather than those plates. Technology is a marvellous thing.

Anyway, so it lumbered over, this vast creature of stone with the body of a lion and the face of a human.

Its mouth opened.

"Why have you come to Egypt?" it asked me.

I was quite put out.

"You really aren't supposed to talk like that," I said. "It's far too commonplace a question, such as a bored hostess might ask dutifully at a dull party. You're supposed to be more enigmatic, and, well, sphinx-like."

"Why have you come to Egypt?"

It positively thundered out the repetition, and gathered as if to spring.

I smiled winningly. I have been told that my smile has great charm, though admittedly, mothers have to say things like that.

"To see things. You know."

"Have you come to plunder our artefacts, and to use our culture as light entertainment?"

"That's the ticket. It's fun. You sound rather like one of those tiresome chaps from Customs, you know."

At this perfectly affable reply, it raised its forepaw, which must have weighed a ton or two by itself, and smashed it down, intending to crush me like a scarab beneath it.

It hadn't reckoned with modern technology, however.

For I was wearing the very latest Macassar hair oil, and the paw slid right off my head and on to the ground, where it cracked.

The sphinx let out a fearful howl, and then it tripped over and fell into pieces. As quickly as I could, I took photographs to sell to the newspapers, and gathered some of the smaller and prettier fragments to give to my friends and relatives as presents.

The old has to learn to make way for the new, but it never does.

I shrugged my shoulders and left. I was pondering the idea of a visit to the Taj Mahal. I'm pretty sure that I can bring it down with my new (and indubitably natty) pair of spats.