As I’ve said in this blog before, chewing sand at anytime cannot be good. I doesn’t matter how hard you try to find a just reason for it, it hurts, it’s awful and something you wish you hadn’t embarked upon. Sand, a simple substance, broken down from larger rocks and stones and a rather pure form of silicon. It is rough abrasive and gives you a neat free pedicure if you walk the beach often enough.
I was walking with my wife and two kids on a beach last week, some days before the Icelandic island decided to erupt and catapult ash and debris thousands of kilometers into the air. Out of the blue my daughter executed a few cartwheels perfectly and I was smiling to see that all that time in acro and gymnastics has been about something. Then out of the corner of my eye her mum spun around and then did another cartwheel. We all laughed at the girls being little girls as the ‘men’ went on walking and collecting comber materials like shells and feathers. Cartwheels are the girls domain. In short the ‘men’ knew their limitations.
A week later….. then the glacier in Iceland had been blown off and the steam was causing chaos in airline schedules in Europe, impacting much further afield as those in other continents couldn’t get in. We had prepared for a cancellation and then a call from Virgin Atlantic said we were going as the window allowing access to Scotland opened. An hour later we were through security and waiting in the lounge. Two hours later we were prepared for the overnight flight and going ‘home’. A further hour later and after a very detailed explanation by the pilot we were ‘deplaned’, as our American cousins call it, and stood in our pyjamas in a terminal which was earily empty but for 400 or so disappointed (but safe) travellers. We collected our luggage and then returned ‘home’ as the window had truly closed and here we are.
Isn’t it funny, peculiar, that the human race seems to have the thought that we have almost all the bases covered and then something natural, or supernatural happens and reminds us that even though brainpower has created metal tubes with wings full of aviation fuel, and because of the skill of pilots and groundcrew can fly thousands of miles. But some melting ice (admittedly agrressively melting ice) can stop the ‘globalisation’ world in its tracks and leave thousands displaced, but thanks to modern communications everyone is more informed than they have ever been – almost too much information. I’ve become an ‘expert’ on volcanoes, the geography of unpronouncable names in Iceland, the NATS website, BBC news 24, CNN and the Virgin Atlantic website and call centre (more with the hold message than anyone human).
So it was all rather surreal to hear a human voice as I apologised to the call centre respondent after the 56 minute hold I had endured. Having been greeted repeatedly on the ‘hold’ message by ‘hello gorgeous’ at least 20 times I was beginning to believe that their misguided view might be correct (alright my wife made the call). I apologised to the human because I could only imagine how bad her day had been with thousands of ‘me’ calling for the same unavailable solution (press #8 for a miracle) - to get 4 people on a flight asap, home. It simply isn’t going to happen so we will make our arrangements and do what we have to and get there when we can. There will be missed scheduled meetings, a late return to school (the cheers are echoing in hallway still), some upheaval, but not the wrought worry as those camping out in airports near you, or those with no money to find a hotel, or eat and at the mercy of others. If a flight is cancelled in the US they need only rebook you, there is no safety net for hotel and dinners.
Just at the point where an Election in the UK, and a President making radical changes in healthcare in the US, and unprecedented unrest, war and middle east pressure, the roof blows off a volcano which was dormant for 200 years and last reported in his documents by Benjamin Franklin. Some 30 years after the Independence of America, before Waterloo, and the rise of the British Empire as was.
Just as mankind thinks he has it all sussed and sorted, some vapour, sand, and ash stops the game and if you think beyond the hassle of it all, there is something more meaningful in there. All the meetings in the world don’t matter when it comes to it.
We are hopeful of making it home this school term, but no point worrying about it because there is little we can do to change the wind direction. Perhaps we’ll watch Mary Poppins. Then again that might remind us of bank failures and aside from the Icelandic money going up in smoke, the island has too.
