Strange times. Watch the skies. Everything disrupted… Everyone pulling together, media dominated by it, everyone knows someone affected, and can talk of nothing else… sound familiar?
As international incidents go, the Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption and resulting ash cloud grounding flights across Europe, is actually quite a nice one. Yes, I know its has cost recovering economies millions, clobbered already-struggling airlines that we all depend on, and had a hundreds of thousands of chaotic personal impacts around the world. However, let’s just remember, no one has died - at worst people have experienced extra travel costs and lost work time (when will everyone learn to work as flexibly as we do at www.sarosresearch.com?)
People are united against common cause in the face of disaster, but this time there is no-one to hate or fear. And no one to blame or sue. This is the earth reminding us what it is capable of, all on its own. Our latest aviation technology is just no match for a bit of dust in the upper atmosphere, so people are having to stay put, or find other ways to get from A to B. Someone remarked on the radio last night that they had been vividly reminded of the sheer physical distance between their home in the UK and their holiday villa in Tuscany, that they flit to and from without a thought most of the time. I believe it does us good to be reminded of this… of course the world is smaller today and that is a good thing, but now and again it needs to let us know that its curvature and bulk is still a present reality.
Of course we’ll be devastated if my Mum’s visit can’t go ahead next week as planned. Our landlady is stranded here with grandkids due back at school, no internet access in her holiday villa, prescriptions running out - lots of complications. Cassie’s LAMDA examiner hasn’t made it to school, and her karate grading may well be postponed as Sensei unlikely to be back from the UK, but all of these things are surmountable in time. Frozen food rotting undelivered might just make people more aware of their dependence on air-freighted groceries, and certainly no one in the UK is going to hungry as a result.
Despite the election fever there seems, from this distant vantage point anyway, to have been relatively little political capital being made - I am sure the Daily Wail will blame the government for everything somehow, but amongst normal people the mood seems to be more one of collaboration and co-operation. Twitter trends such as #getmehome and #ashtag are helping co-ordinate lifts across Europe, as is http://www.facebook.com/carpooleurope - of course there is some inevitable profiteering, and as much suspicion of, but is it too naive to think that there might be some long term learning from this… that you can preserve and not waste food, that cars travel as well full as empty, and that best laid plans can ALWAYS be challenged by things we’d never predict in a million years.
