“What the hell is that?”

I had been dragged out of sleep by a tinny electronic tune. “Fur Elise” came to my mind. Not my ringtone, obviously some dream legacy. I drifted away. “There it is again!” I blundered about in the dark, finally locating the handset in the living room. As is the longstanding rule sacred to the landline, it rang off just as I tried to answer it. Muttering, I returned to bed, pulling up the duvet just as the phone started again.

“Hello!” I barked.

“This is a recorded message...”

I’d forgotten we even had a home phone. For a few years we got the odd wrong number, with a mumbled apology in Greek whenever we answered in English, but even those had stopped around Covid. Now, we were getting emergency bulletins. Repeatedly.

First, we would get a warning that there was a threat, and that we should shelter in place and stay away from windows, then later we would be told that the threat had receded. It seems that my mother had been a nominated warden for the community on a list somewhere. The warnings were generated by the RAF base at Akrotiri, and passed through a local number to a phone tree.

I made a snap assessment that the combination of window blinds and a thick duvet were sufficient protection from any rogue strike. Nothing to do with the fact that I was cold, tired and grumpy, of course. We are twenty km away from the base, I reasoned.

RAF Akrotiri was hit by a drone on March the 1st. More precisely, a hangar where US stealth aircraft are kept was hit. By the looks of it, a drone crashed into the wall, but did not detonate. A couple of likely lads probably patched it up an hour with some corrugated iron from a nearby shed. Most estimate that the drone was sent by Hizbollah in Lebanon which is only 150 miles east of Cyprus. I heard one theory that the drone was a false-flag operation by Israel designed to drag the UK into the war.

Wherever it came from (and I suspect Israel was maybe a bit busy for such silliness), the event has triggered an outsized response. The RAF has evacuated families from the base (although many have chosen to stay) housing them in hotels in Limassol and Paphos. (Anyone with Army connections is now sniggering at the thought of war sending the RAF to the nearest hotel. “When war starts, the Army falls in, the RAF checks in”, goes the gag.) Belatedly the base thought it best mention something to the locals, some of whom have also put some distance between them and the airfield.

Every man and his dog is sending fighter aircraft and ships to defend Cyprus. The Cyprus government is at pains to point out that nobody is attacking Cyprus per-say, but rather the Sovereign Base Areas. Nevertheless, Greece, Germany, Holland, France, and Dave from up the road have all sent ships or planes. The fighters operate from the Republic’s military airfield at Paphos, which doubles up as the main tourist airport for the west of the island, and the ships circle the island. Any more and they’re going to need valet parking. The narrative is that Europe looks after its own, the truth is that it’s really difficult to stop drones, particularly slow ones. By the time a jet fighter sees the drone, it has flown past it. Still, it’s nice to be loved. Cyprus seemed to initially enjoy the attention - until, that is, it became apparent that potential tourists were not so enamoured with the idea of warships just offshore.

I know some people who are anxious and fearful. Others, carry on regardless. Certainly, if you put a 24 hour news channel on the TV, or doom scroll any curated internet feed, you can’t help but be terrified. US and Israel are unleashing huge amounts of weaponry on Iran and Lebanon. Israel is crystal clear that it will remove any and all perceived threats to its existence. USA is crystal clear that the day has a y in it. What they’re doing in Iran? Who knows?

As I type, oil prices are rocketing, which I assume the administration knew would happen and are consequently all holding substantial oil stocks, and “everyman” is feeling the pinch in climbing fuel and energy costs. Likewise, Trump Inc is undoubtedly profiting on defence stocks too. As ever - when it comes down it, this is a massive transfer of funds from everybody to Trump et al. That’s not to belittle the horror and carnage, it’s to lend it the same weight as the US administration.

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