some of this is true

The volcanic ash cloud of doom, according to the BBC, is still there but not there enough to cause death and disaster, or perhaps the government was worried about prolonging the “crisis”, as it is called, during an election, so flights are leaving again and Britons will have their pineapples and East Asian orchids and Kenyan roses once again, thank god. Even the seagulls that live at the massive rugby stadium across the river from the hostel here in Cardiff seem especially loud this morning, rejoicing, no doubt, at the news that they can fly high once again.

Air Canada, god love them, still hasn’t posted a note about how things will go as the week goes on, but I’ll continue on and assume everything is well in hand and, come Friday, our flight path I’m sure will stay as far away from the cloud of doom as possible.

It’s sunny today, the latest pleasant day on a trip without rain, and my first stop will be a castle that no doubt has an audio guide, hundreds of people wandering around with headphones bumping into each other and, through the magic of audio recording, travelling back in time to a world without volcanos or ash clouds of doom or, I presume, pineapples.

The skies above Edinburgh were a bright mix of blue and grey this morning, with a gentle wind cooling off a pleasant day. You can’t see the volcanic ash cloud of doom that has washed over — from what I can tell — the entire civilized world, can’t smell it, can’t taste it. But it’s there, hanging over the United Kingdom while grinding life — or some reasonable fascimile of it — to a stop.

Today I was supposed to fly from Edinburgh (from where Nicole and I went on a tour to Loch Ness, where we swam, very briefly, in the frigid water but saw no monster) to Wales, but the flight was grounded lest tiny pieces of ash and gas melt the engine, which would not be good, apparently. It wasn’t a huge deal, of course, because the train heads the same place, albiet more expensive and longer, but still quite nice along the English countryside, rolling green fields and sheep and cows.

It is, naturally, all that most people are talking about here,  jokes and comments peppering cash register conversations, stories of woe making for easy eavesdropping. The newspapers have been unable to resist the references to World War Two (Britons stranded on the the beaches of France; chaos in the air not seen since the days of Hitler), and there is a real sense of panic on the covers of the tabloids. The tourism and airline industries will collapse. Japanese flowers are running low. Some grocery stores have already run out of pineapples. How bad will things become?

I’ve still got five days until I’m due to fly out of here, and predictions aren’t worth much, changing, it seems, by the hour. So I’m going to plug along, tomorrow here in Cardiff, Wales, Wednesday in Bath and Thursday in Avebury and Stonehenge and back to London, and I suppose I’ll deal with the rest when it comes. In the meantime, I’ll have to settle for canned pinapples.

Here's where I'm going, mostly

The batteries and iPod are charging, and the clothes are busy tumbling in the dryer, and let’s be honest, I won’t get around to packing them until tomorrow, which is when my flight lights off over the Atlantic, but that’s not for hours so everything will be fine.

I’ll be in the UK for just under two weeks, the first week or so in London hanging out with Nicole and wandering around museums and castles and a comedy show and a musical before we head north to Scotland to find the Loch Ness Monster, which we will see, obviously.

And then it’s just me, to Cardiff in Wales and Bath and Stonehenge, which is old and broken compared to newer Stonehenge that I saw last year in the United States of America on the side of a hill in the 40-degree desert heat, where it was just called “Stonehenge,” as if it was the only one that mattered. And then it’s back to London, just like that, and off on a plane back to Vancouver, leaving on my birthday, which, with the time changes in the air will be the longest birthday I’ve had, but I’ll be owed those hours anyway.

Perhaps I’ll post updates along the way, if there’s time and Internet and something interesting to say, which I imagine there will be, even for a line or two and a picture of something pretty.