Volcano skies

Another volcano has erupted over Iceland, causing budget airline owners to go on television and talk about ash, explaining how it is more important that they be able to fly incredibly complicated and fragile machines through volcanic ash clouds in order to ensure stag and hen parties get to their destination than it is to ensure the safety of anyone living underneath the flight path.

If aeroplanes can fly through clouds of volcanic ash with no ill effect, how come you’re not allowed to smoke in the toilets of these same aeroplanes? I mean, if they are robust enough to stay aloft in a cloud of volcanic ash, I presume that a single B&H sparked up in the bog is not that much of a big deal, right?

The volcano has once again spoiled ‘the big getaway’. Are we to take from this that volcano’s are seasonal? It even meant that President Obama had to leave Ireland early. Didn’t Air Force One visit Europe last year when there was volcanic eruption going on? Possibly volcanic eruption is the ultimate deterrent to stop other aeroplanes sneaking up on it or something.


Looking out the window, I’m not sure if I’m looking at a volcano sky or just a normal vivid, polluted sunset. Apparently when Krakatoa erupted the skies were crimson for weeks. If anything, the skies seem clear of anything remotely resembling a special effect. Which is a good thing, I’ve seen the pictures from Iceland and have no desire to spend day after day scooping sooty talc off my lawn.

Certainly, in terms of stopping air traffic an erupting volcano has done the trick once again. The secret volcano base is, of course, the lair of choice for the supervillan. Usually however their plot to bring travel chaos to the civilised world involves lasers, missiles, computer hacking and at least one tank of piranha fish rather than a straightforward eruption.

What’s interesting is that the people stranded at the airports seem to kip under red Cross blankets or the sort of tin-foil sheets used to wrap marathon runners or chicken. Between the climate and industrial unrest, I’m amazed that every airport doesn’t have a thousand of those foam camping mats stockpiled in a room somewhere. Air travel is supposed to be romantic and glamorous. Christ alone knows that the budget airlines are doing their best to dispel this image by charging you for a sandwich on a sixteen hour flight, but checking in the passenger’s suitcases so they a) have to fly with you but b) don‘t have a change of clothes when they wake cold and gritty on the airport floor is either supremely stupid or the sort of evil genius that is deserving of an undersea volcano base.

Hethrow Airport

(On our drive into Heathrow, we gave the strikers from UNITE a friendly toot. This was not out of any particular sense of solidarity; after being comically overcharged by BA on a flight back from Edinburgh to London (my carbon footprint is the size of a yeti’s…what of it?) I’m going to be punching the newly uncluttered air when BA fold like a cheap tent, but I reckon a little toot makes the workers feel a lot better and hey, the flags were jolly. Actually, I can’t see what all the fuss is about over the BA strike. This is cabin crew striking, right? So, if the people who hand out sandwiches, crisps, tea and stun guns (I’m presuming) on National Express coaches go on strike, can we expect the same degree of media hysteria? God, I hope so.)

Heathrow Airport. It’s huge, like a modern urban sprawl composed of places that were once villages in their own right, with customs like inbreeding, morris dancing, scrumpy festivals and duck ponds for dunking witches in. At Heathrow, it’s the terminals that are the villages, with their own shops, cafes and pubs. But unlike most villages, the majority of the population are just passing through and those that do work here come from all over the world, (well, all over Eastern Europe) rather than from all over the surrounding half mile radius.

The main occupations of the transient population of a terminal village (odd name for a place where most people are going from or through rather than ending up) are: waiting, sleeping, eating, drinking, battling constipation or nerves, and shopping. Luckily the shops of the terminal village are there to provide a diversion, reasonably priced coffee and extravagantly priced luxury items.

In the golden age of air travel, rich people flew from aerodromes where the terminal was a hut and transatlantic flight was mostly powered by glamour and hair oil. The arrival of the package holiday meant affordable travel for the oiks – sorry; ordinary folk, while the rich invented first class. Now the terminal is full of the sort of people who might travel standard class on a train or even, throwing caution to the wind, decide that coach travel is for them.

However, if you want to purchase a handbag that costs three hundred quid and, because it’s tax free, still feel like you got a good deal, then the airport is the place for you.

Mostly because in the terminal you have quite a disconnected sense of reality and it does make sense to buy designer sunglasses in preparation for an English summer and a bar of chocolate bigger than your mouth (Toblerone, what’s going on there?). Boredom has a lot to answer for.

And like many villages, it has it’s own backroads, byways and winding lanes, or in this case, a walk to a boarding gate so far away that I fully expected us to be greeted with a different regional accent when we arrived and then asked to adjust our watches to the new time zone.

Postcard from Gatwick

Off to Sorrento for a family wedding (family member not Italian, just awkward). One reaches Sorrento via Naples. One reaches Naples via Gatwick.

I’ve seen pictures of what air travel used to be like. Unless you were bombing Dresden in WWII it was actually pretty glamorous. Certainly I bet it did not involve putting your shoes through an X Ray machine. Security at Gatwick is a bloody joke, it would be a lot quicker if you just climbed inside the X Ray machine yourself. Ticket check-in was terribly secure…these days one is checked in by a machine! At five in the morning I was not at my best, and neither was the witch from BA who was ‘helping’ people check in.

After that, Naples was a breath of fresh air. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a shit hole. Really, I can’t believe anywhere like that actually exists in Europe. The poorest places I visited in Cuba were better than Naples.

Still, at least you get to leave quickly – by hydrofoil across the Bay of Naples to Sorrento. The ticket booth was closed but luckily a gypsy was on hand to take me to an open booth, translate for me and then guide me to the right mooring – all for a Euro. Far better service than BA offer – wonder if she wants a job at Gatwick?