Volcanoes

Oops.  There's been a huge eruption in Iceland and now there's a cloud of smoke and ash so big that all the flights out of the UK have been cancelled.

Or that's what they're saying.  It's abundantly clear that the Icelanders have done this to get back at Europeans trying to make them repay debts built up in the 2008 crash.  They're just trying to punish us by turning the sky black.

Perhaps that's implausible.  I suppose it's much more likely that all the smoke and ash is coming from a ginormous pile of promissory notes that they've set on fire, in the hope that it would cancel the debt, and nobody would notice.  But they didn't reckon with me (and a few thousand air traffic controllers).

Behave yourselves, Icelanders!  Stop spraying dirty stuff into the sky!  That's taking jobs away from honest Chinese factory owners.

(Oh, and I'd like my parents' visit to Hong Kong not to be delayed by atmospheric conditions.  They're meant to be bringing me a re-up of Marmite supplies, after all.)