A couple of years ago I made a visit to Cyprus. Half of Cyprus is occupied by Turkey with a buffer zone in the middle. There are a vast number of Turkish soldiers on the island, and the buffer zone is overlooked by two sets of watchtowers backed up by lots of military forces.

Where the Greek-Cypriot forces face the Turkish Cypriot forces, one cannot get anywhere near the Turkish soldiers. When one is in (Turkish) Northern Cyprus, one can there are all kinds of threatening signs about how one must not take photos of forbidden areas, military equipment on pain of five years imprisonment etc. This didn’t completely stop me from doing so, but I was very careful when I did it.

However, there is also an area where the British Sovereign Base Area of Dhekelia adjoins Northern Cyprus. Although it’s not wise to photograph the British bases themselves, the sovereign base area is much larger than this and photography elsewhere in it is fine. There is no buffer zone next to the Sovereign Base Area, and no forces defending it from the British side, presumably because Turkey is not going to start a war with Britain in any sane universe. However, there is a full set of Turkish defences on the other side.

So (getting to the relevant bit), when I was there I drove along the road on the Sovereign Base Area that follows the border closely and I stopped next to some particularly interesting looking Turkish defences. I stood next to the road, got out my camera, and started taking photos. A soldier emerged from the watch tower, and started blowing a whistle and making gestures, indicating that I should stop.

I was a British citizen standing on British soil. I certainly wasn’t breaking any British laws. He was a Turkish soldier who according to international law was illegally occupying part of the Republic of Cyprus. The idea that he would violate British sovereignty in any way in order to stop my taking photos ludicrous, and if he did it would have been a major diplomatic incident.

So I kept taking photos for the next five minutes. He kept blowing his whistle. When I told this story to Perry de Havilland, his thought was that I should have made a few rude gestures as well.

It doesn’t look high up enough, but I wondered if the tree might be to do with ‘topping out’, rather than Christmas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topping_out