Ash 2 life, ash 2 reality...

I agree with Blog...

So, I've taken a break from the Leaders Debate on SKY and the frankly astonishing sight of Gordon Brown trying to swarm up to the Twitter generation by grinning in a vaguely sinister manner out of the corner of his mouth like a cartoon pirate. It's almost sad watching him offering weak platitudes to the centre left and filling every silence by grumbling tediously about fiscal policy while flanked by NC/DC (Nick Clegg, apparently auditioning for the vacant 'jocular everyman' slot on the sofa of The One Show and David Cameron sweating nervously like a sixth former waiting on the results of the head boy elections) and batting back and forth sense and relevance while a comatose audience of mannequins wonder where Ant and Dec are and if there will be nibbles afterwards.

Actually, I really wanted someone in the audience to ask if the collapse in the economy was responsible for Iceland claiming their revenge for their treatment at the hands of the British Government by inducing one of their volcano's to vomit ash into the air like a Geordie chav on a hen night spewing 14 Jagermiesters into a skip. Indeed, the unprecedented ban on air travel seemed to send the nation into a kind of existential crisis of confidence. News outlets couldn't decide if this was a story of tragedy; reporting the families stranded abroad and chaos at the airports whilst simultaneously showing gleeful weathermen, explaining tedious looking satellite pictures and looking smug at finally being on the "big" news rather than only being noticed for wearing quirky ties or predicting drizzle.

In fact most of the major news outlets accompanied the doom and gloom reporting of 200 million pounds a day being lost by the airlines in refunded tickets with slide shows of astonishing lightning storms taking place inside the ash cloud. The ethereal and other worldly pictures made my eyeballs sweat with glee whilst also leaving me with an odd sense that an apocalypse was coming. If I felt like that, with Google, newspapers and cuddly-wuddly weathermen to guide me through the science behind it all, it makes me wonder what people who saw Vesuvius erupt must have thought about it. They probably thought it best to bar the door and stay inside out of wrath's way "Oi, Claudius, come away from the door.... I don't care 'ow 'ot it is in here, there's no way you're going out in this.... what do you mean river of fire? Come away from that window you nosy boy and help me arrange pottery into useful places to be discovered easily in 2000 or so years...."

Yes, there was panic at the airports, panic in the stations, panic in hotels, panic in Majorca, panic on the ferries, panic on the beaches, panic in the fields and in the streets. There was panic in oceans, panic in the wood, panic in the schools, panic the homes, panic on the streets of London. I wonder to myself....

Yet, despite all this panic, there seemed to be precious little once it became clear that the cloud wasn't simply going to blow away and become just another minor irritant, like the snow or the Conservative party, but a fully fledged threat to the viability of Northern Europe's airlines. With a combination of the recession, increasing fuel bills and losses going back to 2001 still putting a strain on the industry, the collective might of the airlines finally upgraded the ash from "dangerous" to "safe" which is the kind of leap of faith that I would certainly trust to a large corporation struggling to find profits to appease their shareholders, right up there with footballers offering marriage counselling or Tim Lovejoy opening a charm school.

Still, not all of the newspapers were convinced but the assertions that flying a huge metal object into a plume of broken glass, sand and rock is a good idea. The Daily Star (that beacon of sense and rationality) ran a suitably sensitive headline: "TERROR AS PLANE HITS ASH CLOUD" which was incomprehensibly pulled from airport concession stands because some namby-pamby travellers were a tad upset. The fact that the accompanying pictures and story related to a TV drama based on an incident that occurred 28 years ago might have weakened the relevance of the headline slightly with the Star incredibly being accused of sensationalism. Luckily, on Pg 3, Katie (from Bristol) says "The cloud of ash has been a worry". Phew. That's cleared that one up, cheers Katie. Now put some clothes on love, you'll catch your death.

Other than semi-literal representations of terror in the skies, most of the news has been taken up with grumbling travellers bemoaning the lack of planes flying into said plumes of danger and telling their tales of barefooted, un-business classed pilgrimage without so much as a free hotel room to call their own. Obviously, I'm being a bit flippant, but who are these people? Shouldn't you be at work, instead of taking the children out of school to lounge about by a pool on the Costa-del-Boy? These people got exactly what they deserved... an extra 6 days of holiday.... damn them.

I for one have had to cancel my worldwide tour, despite having made my savagereservations months ago (6 months I've been waiting to crack that gem out) and therefore disappointing both the fans attending the live blogs in New York, Rome and Swansea. The Icelandic audience were weak though. Ashen faced throughout (HAHAHAAAAAAA)....

sorry...

Takecaremylittletulips. xx