Under the Volcanic Ash - 17th April 2010
21st April 2010
Because of the volcanic ash, there are still no planes in the sky. It’s the third day now. I have never seen a blue sky like this, completely unbroken by trails. It strikes me that this is what the sky must have been like for most of my ancestors. Perhaps this is what the sky will be like at the end of the world.
The daffodils (Narcissus spp.) have been and almost gone. Can flowers have a sense of humour? Maybe not. Daffodils around here seem always to be posing in absurd, slightly sulky scenes, like kids at a bus stop. There’s one clump on my daily dog-walk where all the flowers are looking at the same thing: another daffodil, hanging its head and looking only at the grass at its base. A single clump in a big field made me laugh out loud when I drove past it last week. It just seemed so ridiculous, there on its own as if it had turned up for an event that no one said had been cancelled. Now the blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) flowers are coming out everywhere, little sprays like confetti stuck to twigs. From a distance they look cobwebby, a thin white fabric draped over trees.
Later, buying oranges in the Co-op, I see all the tabloid headlines about the volcanic ash. One of them has made the volcano look like a face from a horror-film. Another tells us all to stay indoors or wear masks. But if we stay indoors we won't see the sky. It doesn’t say that the sky is worth going out for.
