- An arrogant disdain for the international community’s cessation of whaling.
- Bjork’s bravely avant-garde, but ultimately slightly disappointing, recent oeuvre.
- Wars fought over the right to exterminate the genus Gadus Morhua.
- The refusal of patently culpable financial institutions to refund Kent County Council (I’m not so bothered about the many other councils affected by this).
- Using lardy ex-girl-band-members to hawk bargain bucket frozen chilli dip turkey twizzlers to chavs using the frankly ludicrous pretext of maternal heroism.

Yes, there have always been plenty of reasons to dislike Iceland, but perhaps none more all-pervasive than the recent explosion of Eyjcouldntpossiblypronouncethat-butIknowthatattheenditlooksabitlikeskull. I, like many others, was affected by the second-most-irritating ash of all time*, stuck as I have been for most of the last week in strange foreign surroundings (erm, well, at my parents’ house in Italy), and facing the prospect of massive inconvenience and expense (I’d have had to switch the computer on to rebook my flight, AND I’d probably have felt morally obliged to buy my folks a bottle of wine to say thankyou for putting me up for another few nights. And did Gordon Brown, the foreign office or the navy offer ME any help with all this? Did they bollocks.)

Actually, I’m quite proud of my stiff upper lip and Dunkirk spirit - I may not have rowed across the Channel in a thinly-veiled attempt to boost my ailing father’s low-to-zero chances of once more manning the Swingometer at the upcoming election, but I DID check the internet every day for updates AND I didn’t throw too much of a strop when it was looking like I wouldn’t make it back in time for yesterday’s episode of “Waterloo Road”. And luckily, my strategy of coping with the disruption by gorging myself on pizza and red wine worked a treat - just as I was about to give up on the flight and resign myself to the horrors of the TGV, the independent-and-in-no-way-influenced-by-commercial-pressure safety authorities decided that volcanic ash wasn’t actually dangerous after all. In no time at all, the airspace had opened herself up to me utterly like the cheap, accomodating transportational whore she is, and, just as I had foreseen when booking back in February that the very last flight out before the  ban would be at 6am last Thursday, my return reservation was also for the very first one back (8am yesterday). Huzzah!

(* - After Leslie, obviously. Also in the running - the black guy from “Casualty” in the ’90s. He was a bit up himself. Well, the character was at least;  I’m sure the actor’s probably a very nice man. Actually, I’ve just wikipediad him - he’s Ian Wright’s cousin, so may well have been exposed to the same genetic mutation which causes Ian to suffer from such severe gobshittism.)

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