Bulldozer at Breakfast

The rumble of a bulldozer is quite unmistakable and it's never a welcome sound and especially not so at 7:30 am. This one appeared to be heading towards our garden wall. I watched it with mounting dread as I drank my morning tea on the terrace. Earlier in the year a whole swath of forest had been cleared next to us and a new road put in.  As I've said before in this blog, we built our house 20 years ago and still have no near neighbours, so consider ourselves very lucky to have escaped Bodrum's building boom but realise that this blissful state can't last for ever.  That said, I was already constructing a very high imaginary garden wall to keep out what ever this dozer driver's employers had in store for us.  Despite the mechanical beast's noise and the dog's hysterical barking, my husband had slept through the row and as 3 men appeared at our wall with GPS machines and maps, I decided it was time to get him involved.  I watched from a distance as hands were shaken. A cigarette break ensued. The machine stopped and the driver jumped down. The dog was introduced to the bulldozer which stopped the barking.  Peace reigned. A lot of pointing went on and maps were waved about, much pacing up and down and gesticulating followed. The digger then started up and backed off the way it had come. Hubby and dog came back both looking very pleased with themselves.
It turns out that the new road put in 9 months ago had, unintentionally, been driven through private rather than forestry land so had to be moved. The three chaps with maps had decided to direct it towards us but listened to hubby when he suggested that they could send it up to the existing forest road and keep it well away from our garden wall, and surprisingly agreed to move it again. And that was that - no hassle - they redrew the map and the bulldozer started again on a different tangent.  If that wasn't good enough news, we found out that the area is to be replanted with "fire-resistant trees" what ever they are, so our nightmares of industrial estates and factories can be put to bed for a few more years.