Anger and volcanic ash

I think the last one sounds most likely. They should be grateful they weren't caught in it! I heard we are having strange skies in sunrise & set, I missed yesterday & this morning, so plan to get a ride & chase the sunset home today.

There was one very irate Scottish bloke at Glasgow (I think) airport, who said (imagine thick Glaswegian accent here): 'Well, it's not at ground level, is it, so why the disruption'? I assume he meant the ash. Good job he's not a pilot, as he hadn't seemed to grasp the concept that planes flew quite a few thousand feet up in the air. Wouldn't want to be skimming along a metre above the earth in any Boeing 747 he was in control of... http://www.ukauthors.com http://www.ukapress.com

The strange thing is looking up into a midday blue sky and not seeing anything different. Here in London we make enough of our own particles to generate spectacular sunsets any old time. I was supposed to be on a transatlantic flight around now heading over to Vancouver. But last time I flew there we went straight over Iceland so I wasn't holding out any hope. It's one of the flight routes I remember the best - seeing Iceland and all that grass, having changed very little since Laxedale saga days. Then passing somewhere over the Northern Territories at night - nothing but moonlight reflecting off lakes and occasional lights from settlements that must be unimaginably isolated and on the edge of everything. So I've been having fairly happy memories with it all, even though the flight was cancelled. Plus, if I don't tell too many people I'm still around, I get to work at home for most of next week. Couldn't be more contented. But then I've got it easy and a missed flight can mean much worse things for many people. Perhaps the anger is accentuated by having nothing and no one to blame. We live in a world where these unpredictable things are not supposed to happen any more - and if they do then they're somebody's fault somewhere. Signs of the times ...

I blame consumer programmes on TV, it has turned us into a nation of wingers. People only see things in terms of what they want, the world has to run to their timetable, they are the only thing that matters.

Anger is a very natural response (especially if you've just spent the night in an airport), and it's prefectly normal to be angry at nothing and nobody when it's nobody's fault. Although it's less satisfying. I think the scotsman in this clip shows peculiar knowledge of his own feelings and cuts right to the nub of the matter.

Anger is also caused by a lack of information. Maybe people just aren't being told what their travel companies are trying to do. Our daughter is stuck in Tunisia - she should have been back at work teaching today - but it looks like she'll just have to sun herself for a few days more! They've been taken out of their resort to a 5 star hotel 'near the airport' where all appears to be OK. I guess at some stage they'll fly them to Spain and then coach them home. That won't be too much fun. Or maybe the Navy will go and get them.

Happily we are more fortunate today than for 227 years ago when the volcanic ashes killed farming and fishing in Iceland, even in France ( just before the Revolution!!) and subsequently caused famine and loss of many lives. We have lost money!!Because there is, almost, food enough to go around, at least in Europe, which has been hardest hit. No reason to be angry, but the remark about consumerisme and wanting "things" really hit the nail on the head. Must be a bit of a pickle to be stranded in a foreign place hence Tony's daughter and the loss of income when not able to show up at work??? Terrible- and the kids are waiting for their teacher. Consequences. oops

The real frustration is caused by the total lack of information. Her Thomas Cook rep turns up every day at their hotel and tells them to 'sit tight' and that they probably know more than her! I sat on the phone for 45 minutes this morning getting through to Thomas Cook who told me that they know nothing either! Finally I got someone to tell me that a plane was being sent at some time to Monastir - but they had no idea who would be on it. They gave me the rep's number in Tunisia - and it was the wrong one. Alice tells me that every hotel in Monastir is full of Brits waiting to get home and that they will need a fleet of planes to begin to make a dent in the numbers - but no one is giving out any information at all. It's just very very frustrating.

I hope that people would look out for eachother, especially I saw alone children sleeping in an airport on the news!

The lack of information may be due to our being a part of the grande information society! It just does not work when nature is at call strangely because there has been no lack of information on the news with Navi Air bearing forecasts for the ashcloud and its whereabouts. It just did not reach Tunisia- strange??

Burton St John- maybe a radio would be sufficient. I manage with that only. No telly here just disrupts the atmosphere which has been full of eruptions from Ash founder number One. I will not embark on spelling the volcanoes name then I surely would be thrown over starboard. Hope everyone is safely home very soon.

Admit it you get to buy your eu de toilette,after shave, chocolates, cigarettes and of course , whisky, when being a homing pidgeon. Not to mention the FREE meal on board a 727 or is it a 42" ? Cannut remember meself. Of couse an exotic resort , being a pidgeon an' all, no blizzard and caught in Chopin's hometown and being named Ashley Volcanoe 3rd from the tiny island called Iceland in the middle of nowhere. What an adventure. . . .

Outstanding summary of Ash, flight paths, acne, plastic food and the duty free unguents and potions we love but never never need. The possibilities to turn missadventure into adventure, to seek truth where, at this, our run up to a fake election, truth is a little hard to find and of course nature, raw nature.... Now, there's truth, a truth I wouldn't associate with duty free goods, 727's, TV or any man who wears a tie or, for that matter a woman with bullet proof hairdo and a manifesto. Walk into the woods and listen to the birds, lie on the leaf mulsh and dream of flying with your own wings, there's more truth and adventure in that than in just about eveything else.

We can take the train and stand up all the way from München to Copenhagen on FIRST Class because everyone wants to fly and there aint enough trains to go around. Oh I believe in lying in the mulsh(?) and looking up at the clouds and sky and dreaming about birds singing and not about plane smoke and sound emission or CO2 from, yes, ash clouds! Bulletproof hairdo- like that expression Ms Burton St John

I think now all the countryside disappearing, with so many people want to live in it, they love nature ofcourse. Yet everyone depending more on the chemicals & modern way of life now, if only could cope without it & ofcourse hygeine obssesed, we could not cope well if earth was returned to natural state try as it may with these natural disasters targeting not the citys of pollution yet the vulnerable small islands and its more ecofreindly people, maybe we all of larger islands to blame for they pay the revenge of nature.

God I'm glad I don't and won't ever fly. Especially after seeing the documentary film on Channel 5 last night when a 747 unwittingly flew through a volcanic ash cloud. It ended up losing all 4 engines. They only regained power when it passed through the cloud and the engines cooled, and the clumps of hardened ash fell away. As they landed they couldn't see through the windscreen because the glass had been sandblasted. The paint from the plane had been stripped away save for a small part on the tail. Overreaction from the authority that stopped all flights? I think not.