It’s plume-ing marvellous for some

AIR traffic may have been grounded but internet traffic was busier than ever yesterday with stranded travellers taking the information highway to try to get home, away or anywhere but here.

Blogs, boards, chat rooms and discussion forums have been bursting with volcanically challenged contributors swapping lifts, sharing tips, dissecting timetables or simply spreading their misery around the world while they and their emotional baggage stay put.

The uploaded cry of “Help – I’m stuck in Malta/South Africa/Bangkok (but being very brave about it)” is now the new passport to instant kinship in the global village.

Lonely Planet, the bible of independent travellers, has set up an online Volcano Refugee Network to boost the spirits of backpackers whose socks are now supporting an ecosystem worthy of a UNESCO world heritage site preservation order.

Members of the international online cycling community on warmshowers.org are throwing open their doors to fellow peddlers caught under the cloud and in need of the balm of kindness for their saddle sores.

Couchsurfing.com, the reciprocal hospitality site for travellers happy to let a stranger snore on their sofa, has set up a special emergency response section called: ‘Travellers Stranded due to Natural Disasters or other major situations’.

Obviously, they’ll be besieged by frantic gap year types claiming that losing their wallet up a palm tree after infuriating a water buffalo while three sheets to the wind on rice wine in Thailand constitutes a ‘major situation’, but their compassion is to be commended.

As is the generosity of those jamming Facebook’s “Stranded in Ireland by Volcano – we can help” page to offer tea, sympathy and a spell under a 13-tog duvet to those marooned here by the airport shutdown. In years to come, anyone who wasn’t stranded by the volcano, or didn’t take in a strandee, will occupy the same lowly position as those who confess in whispers they weren’t in the GPO in 1916.

Of course, there are those who refuse to enter into the blitz spirit and join in the jolly camaraderie. Online forums are also full of mournful mall rats bemoaning the fact that their parents/girlfriend’s parents can’t get away to their villa in Spain so the free gaff is off. “Ruined our BBQ/sesh” is typical of the wails emanating from that particular demographic.

Then there are those who take pleasure in other people’s misfortune. Hiding among the concerned contributors to the normally very grown up tripadvisor traveller forum was the following: “My mother-in-law is stuck in Cork Ireland, was due to fly home on Tuesday, but doesn’t look like she’ll get a flight until Tuesday week. As they say, every cloud has a silver lining!”