A few years ago, on a family holiday in Madeira, I had the weird sensation of being surrounded by sea on all sides. Drive a couple of kilometers east, bump into the ocean. Turn around, drive another couple of kilometers, bump into the ocean again. Trying to be smart and go north or south doesn’t help either, the ocean is there waiting for you. It was a very strange sensation, a strangeness mixed with helplessness.
Fast forward a few years and now I am in Great Britain. The island is big enough to avoid that feeling of insulation. If anything, I miss the sea now; there’s none of it for miles and miles, no vast blue expanse, no soothing surf or angry waves. Just flat, green countryside. And yet, today, I am again stuck on an island.
Not content with holding a referendum where they refuse to pay back the money they owe to the UK, Iceland has decided to cover us in ash. To add insult to injury, they use a volcano whose name is unpronounceable. The net result is that no flights are going in or out of the British airports.
While I half expect the news of an Icelandic invasion fleet landing in the North, it’s not the geopolitical implications that are on my mind. It’s that feeling of being stranded in the ocean again. Time for some swimming practice.
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