A Pyrrhic Victory.

Having gleefully reported last night that I’d finally drawn a game of chess against the computer (level 1, sub-novice don’t forget), tonight I actually won a game. So do I want to win a game of chess, I ask myself? I’m not entirely sure that I do. You see, during that seemingly interminable succession of losses, I came to the tentative conclusion that chess players must be devious people, and I don’t want to be a devious person. I’m the full frontal assault type, not the clever-but-sneaky Trojan horse type. (I think it must be the Anglo-Saxon side of my ancestry showing itself.)

And then I fell to speculation, as is my wont…

Let’s suppose that on that fateful night when the Greeks left a big statue of a horse outside the gates of Troy and then retired to hide (sneakily) nearby, a Trojan captain had said:

‘Look what we have here, Lord Paris, a fine statue of a noble horse left by the fleeing Greeks in recognition of our valiant defence. Let us take it into the city so that future generations shall forever have a symbol of our great victory.’

‘Not on your life,’ said Paris. ‘I don’t want any Greek trash littering my town, thank you very much. It might frighten the children. Take it to the river and throw it in.’

How different would history have been? The world would never have had moussaka, would it? And there would be an awful lot of empty properties in Soho.