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I feel that I should record this historic event for posterity. I'm sure regular readers are sick of hearing about it so please feel free to ignore.
Today the aeroplanes stood still. A volcano in Iceland (with the brilliant, but unpronounceable to English speaking people, name of Eyjafjallajoekull) erupted sending a huge cloud of dust, glass and rock over Northern Europe. The air traffic control people decided that the cloud is a danger to aeroplane engines and banned them from flying over the UK until 7.00am tomorrow. This is the first time in history that UK air space has been closed completely. I live very close to Heathrow and it's been an eerily quiet day.
I found out about this by checking my Twitter at lunch time. After work I went to the gym and the big TV was tuned to BBC News 24. Of course News 24 was blowing the whole thing out of all proportion. In the half hour I spent on the treadmill the whole schedule was filled with the latest volcano/dust cloud news, broken up by pre-reports for the ITV1 election leadership debate. The way they were covering the story you would have thought that the world was ending! I hate rolling news channels. Bring back the days when the news was only on at 1pm, 6pm and 9pm. At least in those days the story had time to develop between bulletins.
I also really object to the fact that reporters have to be standing somewhere 'on-the-spot' to deliver their reports. Today several reporters were standing outside airports where absolutely nothing was happening. Was that really necessary? Additionally, another reporter delivered his report from outside Granada Studios where the leadership debate was due to take place. What a waste of time. I bet he got expenses too.
Today the aeroplanes stood still. A volcano in Iceland (with the brilliant, but unpronounceable to English speaking people, name of Eyjafjallajoekull) erupted sending a huge cloud of dust, glass and rock over Northern Europe. The air traffic control people decided that the cloud is a danger to aeroplane engines and banned them from flying over the UK until 7.00am tomorrow. This is the first time in history that UK air space has been closed completely. I live very close to Heathrow and it's been an eerily quiet day.
I found out about this by checking my Twitter at lunch time. After work I went to the gym and the big TV was tuned to BBC News 24. Of course News 24 was blowing the whole thing out of all proportion. In the half hour I spent on the treadmill the whole schedule was filled with the latest volcano/dust cloud news, broken up by pre-reports for the ITV1 election leadership debate. The way they were covering the story you would have thought that the world was ending! I hate rolling news channels. Bring back the days when the news was only on at 1pm, 6pm and 9pm. At least in those days the story had time to develop between bulletins.
I also really object to the fact that reporters have to be standing somewhere 'on-the-spot' to deliver their reports. Today several reporters were standing outside airports where absolutely nothing was happening. Was that really necessary? Additionally, another reporter delivered his report from outside Granada Studios where the leadership debate was due to take place. What a waste of time. I bet he got expenses too.
On the plus side it must have been an unusually lucrative day for volcanologists (I have no idea how to spell that word and neither does spellcheck) especially those with a Scandinavian sounding name. Suddenly they're in demand with every news channel!
And on a totally different point, I'm aware that I promised to write a review of the Dex's play. I've been a bit busy this week but it's likely to appear over the weekend.
