The first few weeks of April remained pretty quiet. We had Easter, and people ate lots of eggs, before complaining that they had eaten lots of eggs. I think Easter is actually a very intriguing part of the year. I think that Easter is actually a more important, momentous and a generally better religious holiday - beating Christmas. Easter doesn't change days every year to confuse people; it stays in the same place every year. Okay, it is the same Sunday of every year, and occasionally it finds its way into March, but still. It is a more relaxing holiday, without people spending a month prior to the event, worrying.
I prefer Easter I think, whereas years ago I preferred Christmas. Maybe this is because I have become less superficial, or possibly because I like Chocolate. It isn't either of those reasons. I now prefer Easter as the weather is nicer and it just is generally a more relaxed holiday. You still find shops open on Christmas day. If you are lonesome at Christmas, you can walk around Tescos and do your shopping with all the other lonely sods yearning for human contact. Easter day, you can't (as far as I am aware anyway). You have to spend the day with family and friends without the option of going clothes shopping. However, you could always stay at home and sit at the laptop all day while eating the occasional bit of chocolate as I did.
April was also a sad month for me. The band Supergrass announced they would be splitting up. A band not many people have heard of these days, but you can guarantee that most people have heard a few of their songs. 'Alright' and 'Grace' are favourites for advertisers and television producers wanting a happy and cheery song to match their images.
Anyway, really those three paragraphs are just a waste of binary because neither Easter nor Supergrass breaking up were important events of April. I think we can conclusively say that Iceland and their impossibly pronounced Volcano, Eyjafjallajokull, shutting down the world was a reasonably big event for April. For a very small island, they are an angry bunch of people. First during the recession they effectively stole a lot of Britain's money and refused to give it back. Now, they try to not only shut down our country, but the whole of Europe, and the USA for a bit.
I done Geography at school, but I still do not know a great deal about Volcano's. Infact, I am very ignorant towards them, but of course here in Britain we don't get affected by Volcano's. Our country being shut down by a Volcano then is quite an unusual and a history-making event. 2010 clearly is the year in which the UK is not meant to travel. We go the first three months with snow constantly being in the news about it stopping people from travelling anywhere using pretty much any mode of transport. Then April has a cloud of ash coming from another country which stops us from travelling by plane. Maybe this is all just a lead up to 2012 when the planes fall from the sky, the boats sink and all the trains and cars are uncontrollable and all crash. Or maybe it is just coincidence.
Hundreds of thousands of people were stranded abroad and the radio was full of people phoning up to tell them their tale in the hope that someone might phone up and go "Yeah, I’ll go and pick your family up from Spain for you. Wouldn't want them to miss your daughter’s wedding would we and you're obviously so selfish you refuse to do it yourself." It is times like this where people’s true personalities shine through. Some were stupid and lazy enough to sleep at the airport for a week - just incase they were lucky enough to get a flight. Some caught buses and trains to get to airports which would take them closer to home where they could catch a train back to Ashford and go home from there. These were the determined, clever and rich people.
Then there were those that were damn right kind. While sitting at home doing my work, I heard many stories of people driving half way across the world just pick their loved ones up to go back home. There were also stories of people giving complete strangers a life home in their cars. There were other stories of people who had a few days off work, offering to go and pick people up. These are the heart warming stories of David Cameron's 'Broken Britain'. What did the Government do? Nothing for a few days, before they sent some war ships across the world to pick people up. These are the scenes I expect to see when War Of The Worlds come true, with the soundtrack playing all the time through some speakers.
The cloud sat over Britain for much of the week (insert depressing metaphor about clouds and a gloomy feeling here). However, it was still a very sunny and hot week, and I found this slightly odd. I'm being told that about 4 miles up in the sky is a gigantic ash cloud, and all I can see is a blue sky, a sun and no planes. It made for an unusual sky. Another thing which I am sure the ash cloud changed, but no-one else can answer me, is the moon. During the period of 'The Cloud' the full moon had a distinctive red, ominous, shaded glow around it. I only speculate that this was caused by the cloud, but I would love it if someone who knows the answer could tell me...
Anyway, Iceland has cost us a lot of money. Firstly, the money lost in their banks during the recession when they collapsed and secondly all the palaver from 'The Cloud'. All that money wasted by passengers trying to get home or having to pay for accommodation. The money spent by airlines and holiday companies trying to get people home. Then of course the most painful for our economy, the money lost through no flights. I think the costs were in the edge of a billion, but I can't be bothered to research, and like proper journalists, I just write what I've heard. There was one company that profited from this, and it was RyanAir. It was revealed that it was cheaper for them to cancel all flights and refund their customers than it was to pay wages and for fuel. What an odd company...
Then there was all this hoo-ha about insurance. Were they going to pay or not? It is depended on whether it was an act of God or not. How do you decipher whether events which caused a lot, and will continue to, cause a lot of mayhem and chaos is an act of a religious creation? It certainly is an odd system which we have here. We have a country full of cynics and atheists, yet blaming an idea created by a religion means they do not have to pay out. As you can gather - I'm not religious and I don't care much for Iceland either. What can I say, I don't care about religion and I prefer Tesco's. I know everyone's made supermarket jokes about all this, but I hadn't, so I'm happy now.
As seems to always be the way in my blogs at the moment, I turn to Facebook. There have been numerous groups created, making light of another event in media. Some make jokes like my previous one: 'Volcano's in Iceland. What's Next, Earthquakes In ASDA?' Others were actually funny, like the one I joined: 'Whos laughing at Peter Griffins Volcano Insurance now?' which actually relates to the current situation and to Family Guy. People making Facebook groups should learn. Actually, people should stop making Facebook groups all together. It's campaigning for lazy people. Anyway, off topic.
Speaking of Volcano's, I have 'erupted' into Chicken Pox; thus why this blog is over a week late. Sorry about that; was not intentional. However, just a quick plug for those who care about me and want to know how I've been getting on (and I would not blame you if you did not want to - it is not exactly the most thrilling thing in your life), you can read my Chicken Pox blog here: http://chickenpoxat17.blogspot.com/
I hope you are not too fat from Easter, upset about Supergrass or stranded now or later by Eyjafjallajokull.
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