Monday, March 2/2026

 Buddleia on the terrace coming into flower. It’s a pretty colour and does attract butterflies. But have to confess to no great love for it. Related to the lilac but with a scent less powerful and less beautiful. But mainly annoying because the flowers at one end of each spike are visibly dying as those at the other end struggle out. Never anything you’d want to bring inside to enjoy.

But it is a sign of spring. March came in like a lamb yesterday in terms of weather - a warm sunny day for enjoying a read on the terrace with a drink. 

More like a lion in political terms as a projectile, apparently not armed, hit a hanger on the UK Akrotiri base on the southern tip of Cyprus at midnight Sunday and two others headed that direction were intercepted. The UK maintained two sovereign base areas in the country when Cyprus was granted independence by Britain in 1960. As recently as Friday the British government had confirmed that it had withheld permission for the US to use RAF Akrotiri to launch strikes against Iran. But a weekend is a long time in politics. By Sunday Prime Minister Starmer had announced that he had approved a US request to use British bases for the defensive purpose of destroying Iranian missiles “at source in their storage depots or the launches which are used to fire the missiles”. He has, of course, pleased no one. There was already some popular unhappiness among Cypriots about Britain’s allowing US presence on the sovereign bases at all, let alone making them a target, while Trump, never one to waste emotions on gratitude, said British permission had come “too late”.

But today warm and sunny. Vodka tonics overlooking the Mediterranean.

Sunday, March 1/2026

 Hadn’t thought of this poem by Canadian poet AJM Smith in years. Decades more probably. It’s called News of the Phoenix and was published in 1943 - and no, that’s not when I last saw it. But what brought it to mind, of course, was the nature of the reporting of the Iran war. The attacks and deaths that are reported and revised and denied as we evaluate the sources. And no doubt as the sources re-evaluate their own positions. Clearly Prime Minister Starmer would desperately like to be on the same side as Israel and the US, but also on the same side as history. As Lord Peter Ricketts, former head of the UK Foreign Office, warned: “If you’re going to attack a country you have to show it is in self-defence and that there is some kind of imminent threat. You can’t make that case here”.

So the British bases in the Republic of Cyprus have seen increased activity but it is referred to by both the UK and Cyprus as precautionary. On the other hand the UK Defence Secretary’s claim that two missiles fired “in the direction” of Cyprus were intercepted has been flatly denied by President Christodoulides, a politician not normally known for understating threats. 

Meanwhile reasonably consistent rumours have it that Netanyahu’s plane was not given permission to land in Cyprus and settled for Germany instead (presumably en route to New York). Noting that he was required to avoid French and Spanish airspace.

And the title of Patrick Cockburn’s biography of his father, guérilla journalist Claud Cockburn, which we read a year ago, comes to mind. “Believe Nothing Until it is Officially Denied.”