We were in a coach, driving from our hotel to the airport, sitting quietly, when three women in our party all shrieked and began to weep uncontrollably.

What on earth…?

It turned out that a dog had been standing in the road, right in front of the bus, and the driver simply ran straight over it. Whether he could have braked or swerved wasn’t clear. We weren’t even sure whether it had ducked and survived or met its maker.

Besides this moment of trauma and grief, the rest of the trip was a breeze, metaphorically. We were in Cyprus on press trip to try kite surfing. But as luck would have it, we picked three completely windless days, out of the handful that Cyprus has every year.

So instead, we water-skied on the calm, unrippled bay and ate and drank as much as we fancied, which was plenty. This was the view from our hotel, as the sun set on another perfectly windless day.