Ashes to ashes

Nature has a way of taking care of itself. The Eyjafjallajokull (go ahead, you pronounce it!) volcano in Iceland  has apparently entered a calmer stage, whereby more lava and less ash (picture above) is spewing forth. Nevertheless, chaos is still spewing from just about everywhere with any connection to Europe. Anywhere in the world, that is. An entry on Wikipedia, that not entirely reliable encyclopedia, explains what exactly the ash is and does.
As far as I'm concerned, I've seen enough about it for over a week. Now I wake up in the morning with gratitude: I wasn't going anywhere, I'm not anywhere else, I'm at home unstranded. That the world's air transport system, especially the European, came to a standstill at the hands of Mother Nature just goes to show that we humans are as powerless over her as we have ever been. Not unlike a power cut, when we realize how much we depend on it but only notice when it isn't instantly available.

I have every sympathy for people stranded hither and yon, particularly those with small children and no credit on their credit card. But little sympathy for football hooligans trying to hooliganize matches abroad - whichever abroad it may be. Little sympathy, too, for business travellers who must, must, must get to a meeting somewhere else - if they stayed home and videoconferenced instead, our air might be a lot cleaner. And I have no sympathy at all with Brussels fonctionaires trying to get to Luxembourg (go by car, it's close) or Strasbourg or any other place they are intent on bureaucratizing - if they stayed put, life would be a lot simpler.Least of all have I any sympathy for those who pay exorbitant amounts of money for 'private transport'. The news showed someone who paid €1200 to a driver to take them from Paris to Vigo in Northern Spain. With that kind of money, they could have stayed in great comfort for a couple more days in that beautiful city - and enjoy it, as opposed to 'seeing' it.

There have also been cases of true solidarity. One of them had a young couple with small children (two and four) being offered a flight on a private jet to get them back to Amsterdam from the Canaries, where they had been on holiday over Easter, for which they had saved up for three years. Dad had been unemployed for over a year and Mom earned €450 a month cleaning offices part time. The kind millionaire also paid for a car trip from Valencia on and up.

The Dunkirk spirit rose out of the ashes, too, when someone tried to get across the Channel in a rubber raft or three - well, not exactly a raft, more of a Zodiac, I believe. The spirit was dashed by the French authorities, who didn't think this was a good idea. But the spirit will not be put down quite so easily what with the Royal Navy coming to the rescue (should get Brown a couple of votes...).

To get to the point (at last): the Chaos Theory was proven thanks to that unpronounceable volcano. Or, as the Honorary Spanish Consul in Reykjavik put it in an interview, "We were blamed for a lot of the recession. Now this!" I think she meant Iceland, which turns out to be a lot more than a frozen food outlet. 

(C) Alexander Bewick 2010