SMALL FIRE IN ITALY: NOBODY KILLED

UK media coverage of forest fires in foreign parts has developed a fairly standard format: when the fire's out and the dramatic pictures dry up, so does the story. My adaptation (above) of Claud Cockburn's "boring headline" exemplar sums up an approach I've had little objections to - until now.

The photo on the left shows TAS picking grapes, with help from grandson Morgan, a couple of years ago at our son's little house in Liguria. The top picture shows the same scene this week after three hectares of vines and forest went up in smoke. The story you don't get from the media is what it feels like to see your land turned to desert and all your hard work come to nothing.

It seems likely that a neighbour, fed up with cutting brush in the fierce afternoon sun, may have thought he'd just try and burn off a long-neglected bramble patch. Within minutes, the fire had roared through the brambles, jumped the road, demolished eight terraces of vines and ripped through the pine forest at the top of the hill (see "before" and "after" pictures) before helicopters arrived to douse the flames. But that's not the end of the story: when I've seen those dramatic pictures showing tons of water cascading on to blazing landscapes, it's never occurred to me to think about where the water comes from. Why, the sea, of course! So the burnt land is now contaminated by salt water and can't be replanted any time soon.

We all see lots of pictures like this but it's different when you've weeded those very paths, tied back the vines that used to grow on them, picked the grapes and loaded them into the masher. And of course tended the sunburn and endured the wasp stings. It's weird to see a familiar landscape reduced to its bare bones, and I guess it's going to be interesting to see how it does recover, and how long this will take. This fire was an object lesson in hot weather garden maintenance. Ben's other more socially conscious neighbour kept the grass cut all around the building that they share, and this was the only reason that their homes did not go up in smoke as well. Which reminds me: I must go and buy a strimmer, and I think we'll give that garden bonfire a miss this year.