Erupting

[shewhomust]

I don't really remember how earlier volcanic outbursts from Iceland were reported. I've been thinking that surely there was more coverage of the eruption itself, this extraordinary, fascinating, frightening thing, and less complaining about how inconvenient it is. But that's probably just the tendency to think that things were better in the past. I've seen wonderful footage of volcanoes (some of which, like this report on Surtsey and Heimaey, has ended up on YouTube), but it isn't necessarily news footage.

Perhaps I'm just disproportionately irritated by the refusal of radio and TV even to try to pronounce Eyafjallajökull. The Grauniad, being the Grauniad, can't make up its mind how to spell it, either, but I have more sympathy there. Not that I can pronounce Eyafjallajökull myself, either - I was hoping to learn from the radio. But the BBc has resources I don't have: these are broadcasters who pronounce the names of Sri Lankan cricketers, for crying out loud, with aplomb if not with precision, surely they must be able to do better than "the Icelandic volcano"? Set some researchers onto it! There's something dismissive about the formula "the Icelandic volcano", as if we really can't be expected to concern ourselves with such trivia as what those northern barbarians call their geography. As if Iceland had only one volcano! But then of course they're stymied when they want to report the concern that the eruption of Eyafjallajökull may be followed by a larger one from Katla - because to name Katla would be to admit that these places do have names, we're just afraid to use them. So Katla becomes "another Icelandic volcano". As janni says: "I picture it off in the corner, muttering, 'You want a volcano you can pronounce? I'll give you a volcano you can pronounce ...'"

So thank goodness for the internet which brings us our news: that same post of janni's has some fine links. People are posting photos to Flickr: this set has some great ones. Via makinglight, the Boston Globe's Big Picture collects some more amazing images: I particularly like the one of the farmers working to dust-proof the barn in time for lambing, while the barn door frames a view of the plume of ash rising serenely from the volcano. But there are some dramatic night-time views, too: the National Geographic answers my question: why is there so often lightning in these pictures?

Against this degree of upheaval and risk, the inconvenience of the flight ban is secondary. Which is easy to say, since I've not been personally inconvenienced. It crops up in unexpected places: an author friend reports back from the London Book Fair that it was "very odd this year. Like a ghost town." She had a day's schedule of meetings booked, but only her French editor actually got there. Sad tales of rose-growers in Kenya say something about the madness of the market economy. And the Poet Laureate has written a poem.

I came to the Today programme this morning halfway through an item about a family who had managed to make their way home from holiday - I suspect in Spain, though I missed that. Since they couldn't fly (and, as I say, I only heard half the story) they had hired a car. They'd clearly been unlucky: French railways were on strike, they said, and the main road through the Pyrenees was closed, they'd had to find their own way through. But it had been a revelation: France is a big country, they said, when you're driving through it, much bigger than it seems when you're floating above it. And it would be pleasant to drive through, if you were on holiday and could take your time... Well, yes. I wonder if they will, next year?