Wild and windy weather suddenly blew into Bodrum battering gulets and propelling chips off dinner plates. However, the concrete tresses of the fawning waiters stayed resolutely in place. Hurricane Katrina wouldn’t disturb their gelled masterpieces. The cooling gusts were a welcome respite from the sopping humidity of the last few weeks but now every surface of the house is draped in a fine film of dust and sand. It’s too hot to mop. We awoke yesterday morning to find our courtyard covered in leaf litter and dislodged adolescent olives still attached to broken twigs. We also found our landlord supervising a burly man with shovel hands and bad teeth. The florid stranger decimated the shrubs, hacked back the bougainvillea and shaved the ground cover. By midday our garden had been well and truly scalped, pruned to within an inch of its life. Beril and Vadim, our Turkish neighbours, are due back from their Ramazan pilgrimage to Ankara tomorrow. Vadim has been lavishing attention on our shared plot all summer. What will he make of the drastic Ground Force makeover?

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