Do you ever get the feeling that you’re being watched?

You know what I mean. You can just feel someone looking at you. But, when you turn around, there’s no one there.

Anyway, before we talk about that, I want to tell you a true story.

What you are about to read actually happened.

It was about10 years ago, and we had gone on a three-week holiday to Kyrenia, in Northern Cyprus.

Northern Cyprus is under Turkish control, which means that you have to fly to Cyprus via Turkey.

Now I’m just a touch particular when it comes to choosing airlines and, in this case, we had flown with British Airways from Manchester to Brussels, and onward with KLM to Larnaca in southern Cyprus.

We then drove north to Nicosia, to cross the border control into Turkish Cyprus. We had already spent many pleasant holidays in Southern Cyprus, but this was our first venture into the Turkish sector. We were not to be disappointed.

The rented house that was to be our home for the next three weeks, was perfect. Kyrenia and its harbour were all that had been promised, and the Turkish Cypriot locals made us feel completely at home.

We soon established our daily routine and I had plotted a route for my daily, pre-breakfast walk. Just a short drive from our rented house was a newly finished, but not yet opened, stretch of dual carriageway road.

It was quiet and peaceful with no traffic. I would park my car and walk out for 30 minutes, and back for 30 minutes. After a few days into my routine, I had, on two occasions, met a tall, ordinary sort of bloke, who was walking his two large lurcher-like dogs.

To cut a long story just a bit shorter, we had soon struck up an acquaintance, and each day I would join him and his dogs on his regular morning ramble through part of a nearby wood.

We had several pleasant conversations about nothing in particular and, as it turned out, he was a retired regular officer in the Swedish army and had lived in Kyrenia for quite a few years.

We were invited to his home for tea, which turned out to be an old, large, very comfortable, colonial-style house.

But, all too soon, holidays come to an end, and on our last day, our flight was to leave Larnaca in the late afternoon.

I met my new friend as usual at 8am for our last woodland walk.

We exchanged some gifts, shook hands, got into our cars, and drove away.

And that, you would think, was that.

We arrived at the border control checkpoint in Nicosia in good time. A long line of vehicles was moving smoothly through the barrier.

I was instructed to pull into the side of the road and get out of the car.

The car, my suitcase and I were searched, and an hour later we crossed the border.

We landed in Manchester to find one of our bags was missing.

Two weeks later, safe and sound in sunny Greeba, my missing bag turned up.

Later on that year I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, and life would never to be the same again.

With Parkinson’s, things carried on, more as less normally, and we still went on holidays.

We had decided on a last trip to Cyprus. I hadn’t given much thought, in the last five years, to our new friends in Kyrenia, and I thought that it might be a good idea to look them up when we were in the neighbourhood. I had his address and phone number, but something had tickled my brain, so I gave him a quick Google.

I discovered that something rather serious had happened in Sweden in 1986.

It was a pleasure to see our friends again, and we enjoyed a superb lunch,

We haven’t seen them since.