>As I said - it DELETEs ALL therecords - it just won't pack, so it is seeing the correct table.

Not necessarily. The DELETE state of a record is not transient, so it may have been set before, nothing in the code you supplied is sufficient to assure that it is the DELETE ALL command that is in fact putting the deleted mark on records.

SET SAFETY OFF
SET EXCLUSIVE on
IF USED("Bookings")
  USE IN Bookings
ENDIF
USE Bookings IN 0 EXCLUSIVE
SELECT Bookings && make sure it's the correct work area
RECALL ALL && these 2 commands in sequence assure that it is this process that is actually deleting all the records
DELETE ALL
PACK
IF ISEXCLUSIVE( )
 MESSAGEBOX("Table opened exclusive (of course!)")
ELSE
  MESSAGEBOX("Not opened exclusively (this can't be!)")
ENDIF
SET EXCLUSIVE OFF
SET SAFETY ON